technological singularity

The Transhumanist Reader

by Max More and Natasha Vita-More  · 4 Mar 2013  · 798pp  · 240,182 words

: Cognitive Liberty Design Thinking and Cognitive Liberty Caveats on Concept: Fictions of Freedom Freedom in Spite of All Else Part VIII Future Trajectories: Singularity 35 Technological Singularity I. What is the Singularity? II. Can the Singularity Be Avoided? III. Other Paths to the Singularity IV. Strong Superhumanity and the Best We Can

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Ask For 36 An Overview of Models of Technological Singularity Introduction Definitions of Technological Singularity Models Accelerating Change Discussion 37 A Critical Discussion of Vinge’s Singularity Concept Comment by David Brin: Singularities Comment by Damien Broderick Comment by

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). Vernor Vinge, PhD, is former Professor of Mathematics, University of California San Diego. He authored A Fire Upon the Deep (Tor, 1993, 2011); “The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era” (Whole Earth Review, 1993); and True Names … and Other Dangers (Baen Book, 1987). Natasha Vita-More, PhD

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the philosophy from the ancients through to the twentieth-century precursors, explains transhumanism’s relationship to humanism and to other concepts including extropy and the technological singularity, and then outlines contemporary variations. He concludes by identifying several misconceptions about transhumanism. Although the philosophical, scientific, technological, and even political aspects of transhumanism have

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is both possible and desirable. Beyond that, consensus immediately dissolves, with differences over the expected rate, shape, and risks of progress. Those who expect a technological singularity anticipate a drastic acceleration in the rate of change, either as a one-time jump caused by the advent of super-intelligence, or as a

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-faq/. Verdoux, Philippe (2009) “Transhumanism, Progress and the Future.” Journal of Evolution and Technology 20/2 (December), pp. 49–69. Vinge, Vernor (1993) “The Coming Technological Singularity.” Whole Earth Review (Winter). Vita-More, Natasha (1983) “Transhuman Manifesto.” http://www.transhumanist.biz/transhumanmanifesto.htm. Vita-More, Natasha (1992) “Transhumanist Arts Statement.” Revised 2002

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). The dramatic potential consequences of this sort of intelligence explosion led science fiction writer Vernor Vinge, in the early 1990s, to speak of a coming “technological Singularity” (Vinge 1993). Ray Kurzweil has done a huge amount to bring the Singularity meme to the world’s attention, via his 2005 book The Singularity

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, Anders and Bostrom, Nick (2008) Whole Brain Emulation: A Roadmap. Technical Report #2008-3. Future of Humanity Institute, Oxford University. Vinge, Vernor (1993) “The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era.” Whole Earth Review (Winter). Walter, Henrik (2001) The Neurophilosophy of Free Will. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Wegner

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part to compounding advances in computational technologies, will overtake biological humans in general intelligence. See, for instance, The Singularity is Near (Kurzweil 2005); see also “Technological Singularity?” (Vinge 1993), reprinted in Whole Earth (Spring 2003), an issue featuring several articles on the topic. 9 Hughes 2004. 10 See for instance, the President

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. Montemagno, eds., The Coevolution of Human Potential and Converging Technologies. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1013, pp. 221–228. Vinge, Vernor (1993) “Technological Singularity?” Reprinted in Whole Earth (Spring 2003). Part VIII Future Trajectories Singularity How does the concept of the singularity relate to that of transhumanism? In science

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a mathematical point where an object is not defined, or to a cosmological event where measure of the gravitational field becomes infinite. In theory, the technological singularity is a conjecture about the emergence of super-intelligent minds. Transhumanism is a worldview that seeks to understand the unknown, anticipate risks, and ­create an

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for humanity, including the nonbiological superintelligences we may become or create. However, too often, observers conflate the two concepts, assuming that all transhumanists anticipate a technological singularity. The considerable overlap of interests and expectations represented by both views feeds that confusion. After all, both transhumanists and proponents of the

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its trajectory into the future. To clearly separate specific singularitarian expectations from the philosophy of transhumanism requires first defining the former. The original meaning of “technological singularity”, as coined by Vernor Vinge in his 1993 essay (the first in this section) is the Event Horizon view. This view links to Alan Turing

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, the concept of the “singularity” is not itself singular. In his essay, Anders Sandberg delves in great detail into a range of differing models of technological singularity. A less complex map of this territory captures the three primary models on which most people seem to agree. These are the Event Horizon, Accelerating

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Change, and Intelligence Explosion. The Accelerating Change conception of the technological singularity has become strongly associated with inventor and visionary Ray Kurzweil. According to this view, technological change is a positive feedback loop and so is exponential

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no shortage of those who are much less favorable to the singularity and see more stagnation than acceleration. It is entirely possible to expect a technological singularity of one of these types and yet not to be a transhumanist. The advent of superhuman intelligence might involve augmenting human intelligence to superhuman levels

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any singular event. Part VIII clarifies and critically examines thinking about the singularity, starting with Vernor Vinge’s seminal essay. Anders Sandberg analyzes models of technological singularity in detail, looking for their commonalities and differences. The final essay in Part VIII collects the 1998 deliberations of a number of transhumanist thinkers to

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critically discuss the singularity, as ­initially defined by Vinge, in its technological and economic aspects. 35 Technological Singularity Vernor Vinge I. What is the Singularity? The acceleration of technological progress has been the central feature of this century. We are on the edge

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intelligence as a sufficient condition to break his projections. The preceding paragraph misses what I think is the strongest argument against the possibility of the technological Singularity: even if we can make computers that have the raw hardware power, we may not be able to organize the parts to behave in a

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watch are our progress with large software projects and our progress in applying biological paradigms to massively networked and massively parallel systems. But if the technological Singularity can happen, it will. Even if all the governments of the world were to understand the “threat” and be in deadly fear of it, progress

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make things happen in ways that are less inimical than others. Whether foresight and good planning can make any difference may depend on whether the technological Singularity comes as a “hard takeoff” or a “soft takeoff.” A hard takeoff is one in which the transition to superhuman control takes just a few

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(1981) “True Names.” In Binary Star 5. New York: Dell. Vinge, Vernor (1983) “First Word.” Omni 10 (January). Earlier essay on “the Singularity.” “The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era,” by Vernor Vinge, was presented at the VISION-21 Symposium sponsored by NASA Lewis Center and the

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. Copyright © Vernor Vinge 1993. http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/faculty/vinge/misc/singularity.html 36 An Overview of Models of Technological Singularity Anders Sandberg This essay reviews different definitions and models of technological singularity. The models range from conceptual sketches to detailed endogenous growth models, as well as attempts to fit empirical data to

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be the case for AI or brain emulation) extremely rapid growth would also become likely. Introduction The set of concepts today commonly referred to as “technological singularity” has a long ­history in the computer science community, with early examples such as: One conversation centered on the ever accelerating progress of technology and

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theme of these two examples is accelerated technological change leading to a rapid transition to a state where the current human condition would be challenged. Technological singularity is of increasing interest among futurists both as a predicted possibility in the mid-term future and as subject for methodological debate. The concept is

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critics argue that the term should be avoided altogether (Tyler 2009). At the very least the term “singularity” has led to many unfortunate assumptions that technological singularity involves some form of mathematical singularity and can hence be ignored as unphysical. This essay is attempting a simple taxonomy of models of

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technological singularity, hopefully helping to disambiguate the different meanings of the word. It also aims at a brief review of ­formal quantitative models of singularity-like phenomena,

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in the hope of promoting a more stringent discussion of these possibilities. Definitions of Technological Singularity A brief list of meanings of the term “technological singularity” found in the literature and some of their proponents: A. [Accelerating change] Exponential or superexponential technological growth (with linked economic growth

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claims are actually made and for considering the implications of such a process, if it takes place. As noted in Heylighen 1997, models for the technological singularity, whether qualitative or quantitative, should not be taken too literally. Models include what are considered to be the important and relevant features of a system

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humans, future transitions might involve parts or the whole of the human species becoming a super-organism (Turchin and Joslyn 1989). As a model for technological singularity the metasystem transition is largely qualitative rather than quantitative. Without a detailed model of the subsystem dynamics the transition is undefined. However, the biological and

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seems applicable to economic systems with increasing returns. Hanson (type A) Robin Hanson has examined the economics of technological singularity using standard economic tools. He analyzed a simple model of investment in the context of technological singularity (Hanson 1998a). He found that the curve of supply of capital has two distinct parts, producing two

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occur somewhere “near the year 2150”). However, this mode requires fine-tuning the savings rate and the fraction of investment return. In most senses of technological singularity the amount of available “mental capital” (humans or machines able to do skilled work) increases significantly. Hanson models this in an exogenous growth model that

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cost and availability of the hardware necessary to run the emulations, producing a high growth rate but diminishing individual wages. Empirical estimates Empirical estimates of technological singularity consist of attempts to collate historical (sometimes even paleontological and cosmological) data to estimate whether the “rate of change” is increasing exponentially or superexponentially. This

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and to last 20–25 years, he argued that there has been a plateau in transition lengths for the last century that would preclude a technological singularity (Aunger 2007).8 Discussion Generically, mathematical models that exhibit growth tend to exhibit at least exponential growth since this is the signature of linear self

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many not too implausible endogenous growth models can produce radical growth appears to support some forms of the singularity concept. A common criticism is that technological singularity assumes technological determinism. This appears untrue: several if not all of the singularity concepts in the introduction could apply even if technology just exhibited trends

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contingency and ­statistical spread are merely part of the normal modeling process, and further models may if needed include such subtle details. Future models of technological singularity may very well include the multiform microscale or cultural details that shape large-scale progress, but ­understanding the major structure of the phenomenon needs to

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Singularity.” IEEE Spectrum (June), pp. 37–42. Hawkins, Gerald S. (2002) Mindsteps to the Cosmos. River Edge, NJ: World Scientific. Heylighen, Francis (1997) “The Socio-Technological Singularity.” http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/SINGULAR.html. Heylighen, Francis (2007) “Accelerating Socio-Technological Evolution: From Ephemeralization and Stigmergy to the Global Brain.” In George Modelski

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, pp. 377–404. Modis, Theodore (2006) “Discussion.” Technological Forecasting and Social Change 73/2, pp. 104–112. Moravec, Hans (1999) “Simple Equations for Vinge’s Technological Singularity.” http://www.frc.ri.cmu.edu/~hpm/project.archive/robot.papers/1999/singularity.html Moravec, Hans (2003) “Simpler Equations for Vinge’s

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, Stanislaw (1968) “Tribute to John von Neumann.” Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society 64(3–2) (May), pp. 1–49. Vinge, Vernor (1993) The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era. NASA CP-10129. Vinge, Vernor (2008) “Signs of the Singularity.” IEEE Spectrum (June). von Foerster, Heinz, Mora

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intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended. (Vinge 1993) Around 2050, or maybe as early as 2020, is when Dr. Vernor Vinge’s technological Singularity is expected to erupt, in the considered opinion of a number of scientists. Call such an event “the Spike,” because technology’s exponential curve resembles

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(1994) The Physics of Immortality. New York: Doubleday. Vinge, Vernor (1992) A Fire Upon the Deep. New York: Tor Books. Vinge, Vernor (1993) “The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era.” NASA VISION-21 Symposium. Originally published in Extropy Online (2000). Copyright © Max More. Part IX The World

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-organization Sententia, Wrye Shapiro, Michael Silver, Lee simulation singularity Stelarc Sterling, Bruce Stock, Gregory substrate independent minds superhuman superintelligence superlongevity symbiogenesis synthetic biology techno-organic Technological Singularity, see singularity technoprogressive Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre telematic therapeutic, see therapy therapy Tipler, Frank tradeoffs transcend transcendence transcendent transgender transgenderism, see transgender transhuman Transhuman Manifesto

In Our Own Image: Savior or Destroyer? The History and Future of Artificial Intelligence

by George Zarkadakis  · 7 Mar 2016  · 405pp  · 117,219 words

’s architecture were rediscovered nearly a century later. And so was the separation between hardware and software. In this sense, the Analytical Engine was a technological singularity that happened in a world not ready yet to make something useful of it. Similarly to Hellenistic innovations such as the Hero’s Steam Engine

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Peace War (1984) and in Marooned in Realtime (1986), Vinge was the first to explore a fictitious time in the future that he called ‘the technological singularity’. This is when the human race has transcended into a different form of existence with the assistance of exponentially improving sentient technology. He expressed these

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), ‘Transcendence looks at the implications of artificial intelligence – but are we taking AI seriously enough?’, in: Independent, 1 May 2014. 23Vinge, V. (1993), ‘The coming technological singularity: how to survive in the post-human era’, presented at: the VISION-21 Symposium sponsored by NASA Lewis Research Center and the Ohio Aerospace Institute

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, 30–31 March, 1993. 24Vinge, V. (1993), ‘The coming technological singularity: how to survive in the post-human era’, presented at: the VISION-21 Symposium sponsored by NASA Lewis Research Center and the Ohio Aerospace Institute

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in an ‘intelligent’ way through constant adaptation and self-regulation, a concept explored by James Lovelock in his Gaia hypothesis. 28Vinge, V. (1993), ‘The coming technological singularity: how to survive in the post-human era’, presented at: the VISION-21 Symposium sponsored by NASA Lewis Research Center and the Ohio Aerospace Institute

The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology

by Ray Kurzweil  · 14 Jul 2005  · 761pp  · 231,902 words

throwing away of all the previous rules, perhaps in the blink of an eye, an exponential runaway beyond any hope of control. —VERNOR VINGE, "THE TECHNOLOGICAL SINGULARITY," 1993 Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the

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machines' designing their next generation without human intervention. Vernor Vinge, a mathematician and computer scientist at San Diego State University, wrote about a rapidly approaching "technological singularity" in an article for Omni magazine in 1983 and in a science-fiction novel, Marooned in Realtime, in 1986.19 My 1989 book, The Age

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Press, 1989). 21. Hans Moravec, Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988). 22. Vernor Vinge, "The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era," VISION-21 Symposium, sponsored by the NASA Lewis Research Center and the Ohio Aerospace Institute, March 1993

Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era

by James Barrat  · 30 Sep 2013  · 294pp  · 81,292 words

way, so there’d be no surprises. Let’s go back to one common definition of the Singularity for a moment, what’s called the “technological Singularity.” It refers to the time in history when we humans share the planet with smarter-than-human intelligence. Ray Kurzweil proposes that we’ll merge

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it’s not just the future of the earth that’s on the block. As Vassar told me, “MIRI’s mission is to cause the technological singularity to happen in the best possible way, to bring about the best possible future for the universe.” What would a good outcome for the universe

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something important in common now. We both believed the intelligence explosion wouldn’t end well. Chapter Eight The Point of No Return But if the technological Singularity can happen, it will. Even if all the governments of the world were to understand the “threat” and be in deadly fear of it, progress

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in automation is so compelling that passing laws, or having customs, that forbid such things merely assures that someone else will. —Vernor Vinge, The Coming Technological Singularity, 1993 This quotation sounds like a fleshed-out version of I. J. Good’s biographical aside, doesn’t it? Like Good, two-time Hugo Award

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first person to formally use the word “singularity” when describing the technological future—he did it in a 1993 address to NASA, entitled “The Coming Technological Singularity.” Mathematician Stanislaw Ulam reported that he and polymath John von Neumann had used “singularity” in a conversation about technological change thirty-five years earlier, in

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wall across the future. AI researcher Ben Goertzel told me, “Vernor Vinge saw its inherent unknowability very clearly when he posited the notion of the technological singularity. It’s because of that that he doesn’t go around giving speeches about it because he doesn’t know what to say. What’s

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a few decades, we’ll be getting transformations that are, by analogy, of biologically large significance.” Two important ideas are packed into this. First, the technological singularity will bring about a change in intelligence itself, the solely human superpower that creates technology to begin with. That’s why it’s different from

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“Computer Pioneer Award” of the IEEE Computer Society, Biography and Acceptance Speech (1998), 8. 8: THE POINT OF NO RETURN But if the technological Singularity: Vinge, Vernor, “The Coming Technological Singularity,” 1993, http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/faculty/vinge/misc/WER2.html. This quotation sounds a lot: Could Good have read Vinge’s essay

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we face every time: Vinge, Vernor, True Names and Other Dangers (Wake Forest: Baen Books, 1987), 47. Through the sixties and seventies: Vinge, “The Coming Technological Singularity.” Good has captured the essence of the runaway: Ibid. Technology thinkers including: Kelly, Kevin, “Q&A: Hacker Historian George Dyson Sits Down With Wired’s

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/03/hawking-warns-of-ai-world-takeover-2094424/ (accessed September 5, 2011). Within thirty years, we will have the technological means: Vinge, Vernor, “The Coming Technological Singularity,” 2003, http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/faculty/vinge/misc/WER2.html (accessed September 5, 2011). If the consequences of an action: Kurzweil, Ray, The Singularity

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Churchill, Winston Church-Turing hypothesis Clarke, Arthur C. climate change cloud computing cognitive architectures OpenCog cognitive bias Cognitive Computing Coherent Extrapolated Volition (CEV) Colossus “Coming Technological Singularity, The” (Vinge) computational neuroscience computers, computing cloud detrimental effects from exponential growth in power of see also programming; software computer science consciousness creativity cybercrime Cyc

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Systems self-improvement self-preservation September 11 attacks serial processing SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Shostak, Seth Silicon Valley Singularitarians Singularity definitions of Kurzweil and technological Singularity Is Near, The (Kurzweil) Singularity Summit Singularity University Sir Groovy Siri 60 Minutes Skilling, Jeffrey Smart Action smart phones see also iPhone software complexity of

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this is true (or for that matter, if the Penrose or Searle critique is valid), we might never see the singularity [438]. But if the technological singularity can happen, it will. Vinge argues that we cannot prevent the singularity, that its coming is an inevitable consequence of humans’ natural competitiveness and the

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Eleventh Annual Economic Policy Conference of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, Courtenay C. Stone, editor (Kluwer, Boston). 438. Vinge, V. (1993). The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era, available at http://www.aleph.se/Trans/Global/Singularity/ sing.html, presented at the VISION-21 Symposium

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the prospect of our species’ annihilation by an artificial superintelligence, not to mention in Google’s instatement of Ray Kurzweil, the high priest of the Technological Singularity, as its director of engineering. I saw the imprint of transhumanism in claims like that of Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who suggested that “Eventually, you

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uploading. The conversation had turned to Ray Kurzweil, the inventor and entrepreneur and director of engineering at Google who had popularized the idea of the Technological Singularity, an eschatological prophecy about how the advent of AI will usher in a new human dispensation, a merger of people and machines, and a final

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dragged myself, my animal body, out of bed to join them. A Short Note on the Singularity THERE IS NO one accepted version of the Technological Singularity. It is a light gleaming above Silicon Valley’s horizon, appearing now as religious prophecy, now as technological fate. There is no end to the

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, as we know them, could not continue.” The first substantial statement of the concept of a Technological Singularity is usually attributed to the mathematician and science fiction writer Vernor Vinge. In an essay called “The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-human Era,” first delivered as a paper at a 1993

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of writing, no minds have been uploaded, no patients awakened from cryonic suspension and returned to life. No artificial intelligence explosion has taken place, no Technological Singularity. At time of writing, I regret to say, we are all of us still going to die. Among the transhumanists, among their ideas and their

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1984 Reith Lectures. London: Penguin, 1989. Seung, Sebastian. Connectome: How the Brain’s Wiring Makes Us Who We Are. London: Penguin, 2013. Shanahan, Murray. The Technological Singularity. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2015. Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. London: Penguin, 2007. Solnit, Rebecca. The Encyclopedia of Trouble and Spaciousness. San Antonio: Trinity University Press, 2014

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the normal laws of physics break down). But it is important to remember that I use the term as a metaphor. My prediction of the technological Singularity does not suggest that rates of change will actually become infinite, as exponential growth does not imply infinity, nor does a physical singularity. A black

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immortal humans of the future will live before the prophesied catastrophe strikes. In 1993 the mathematician Vernor Vinge wrote an influential essay entitled ‘The Coming Technological Singularity’, in which he estimated that, within about thirty years, predicting the future of technology would become impossible – an event that is now known simply as

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(Basic Books, 2001) Alan Turing, ‘Computing Machinery and Intelligence’, Mind, 59, 236 (October 1950) Jenny Uglow, The Lunar Men (Faber, 2002) Vernor Vinge, ‘The Coming Technological Singularity’, Whole Earth Review, winter 1993 *The term was coined by the philosopher Norwood Russell Hanson. *This terminology differs slightly from that of Dawkins. Anything that

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Land, “the effect of singularity—the causal origin—is futural and not historical.” 348 The unorthodox idea that hyperstitions of the future such as the technological singularity, messianic resurrection, or the advent of hyperbitcoinization might causally affect the present gives new meaning to the famous (and possibly apocryphal) statement of cyberpunk writer

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Review of Transcendent Man,” Scientific American, February 15, 2011, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-immortal-ambitions-of-ray-kurzweil/. 387 Vernor Vinge, “The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era,” VISION-21 Symposium, March 30–31, 1993, https://edoras.sdsu.edu/~vinge/misc/singularity.html; Kurzweil, The

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, 2014. Tipler, Frank J. The Physics of Immortality: Modern Cosmology, God, and the Resurrection of the Dead. New York: Doubleday, 1994. Vinge, Vernor. “The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era.” Article for the VISION-21 Symposium sponsored by NASA Lewis Research Center and the Ohio Aerospace Institute

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