The Coming Singularity - Ray Kurtzweil

[ctechguy]

Has anyone heard of this concept of singularity?

The idea that we reach a point in the near future where the inevitable growth of computing power allows us to reverse engineer the brain, create artificial intelligence, and make medical advances where we extend our life greatly, among many other possibilities.

Ray Kurzweil talks about this idea of the singularity and what it might mean here

[Onefella]

AI does seem to be an inevitability. We'll probably have AI long before reliable gene-therapy and disease eradication though.

The term singularity is misleading. I always thought a singularity was a point in space and time where humungous gravity causes mass to have infinite density with no volume. A bit like a teenager.

[ben10]

[ctechguy]

Agreed Onefella, and I love the analogy! Kurzweil does mention in some of his interviews that this process of singularity will not be a point with an event horizon of uncertainty determined by a hard date, but rather a series of developments and advances culminating in approximately 16-20 years.

It will be these developments that bring us to the threshold along the way, where we reach a point that things become unpredictable.

[ctechguy]

Thanks for the reply ben10, I enjoyed the video.

The Simulation Argument, starting with Nick Bostrom, is something I'm very familiar with. It's on of my favorite topics, and the implications are pretty incredible.

The idea of an Omega Point is new to me, and something I'll have to look into further. The ideas of nested realities, and descendant ancestor simulations or alien simulations are endlessly fascinating to me. I assume there has been a thread on this topic before, so I'll look around for it? If not one can always be created.

[Uncle Fester]

Knowledge is not AI.

Computers are already superior to our brains in storing and processing knowledge.


Totally different steps are required to create AI and these are not in
interest of any market. so I do not see any developement in this direction for a long time.



For my idea of AI some radical changes would be required like an analogue signal processing, where different results are possible and the system then decides on it's own which one it "thinks" is right.

There is no binary 1 or 0, in our brains. We don't give a damn about a divide by zero or endless loops.


A unique decision ability forms our creativity, which you might be able to seemingly simulate with software programs on existing computers but like all software it will not handle unpredictable situations or results. This is always in the hands of the software programmer which is his intelligence not AI.


Computer power has absolutely nothing to do with this.
Quantum computers in the future... maybe ... attached to some kind of biological substrate that can power itself and multiply.


This is not happening in the next 10-20 years, in our world of gadgets and systems for controlling and monitoring all aspects of our general lives which is merely based on profit and fear.