Singularity

Last week I posted an article about computers taking over the world and some of you commented to me and told me I was freaking insane. That computers would never take over the world. I sort of started to feel better because one of the people to comment knows computers really well. I know a lot of the references I was making were movie references and book references and we can’t always believe what we see and hear, but last night I saw and read something that proved my theories to be true and I wanted to share it with those who think I’m bat shit.

My parents subscribe to Time Magazine and they leave a few back issues sitting on the kitchen counter. Last night, I went over there for dinner and I saw an issue from February and the cover read, “2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal.” My first thought was “holy shit, perfect timing.” Sure, the article could have been about new medical advances, but it wasn’t! The article was about computers taking over the freaking world and how human kind will cease to exist when that happens!

“…[W]e're approaching a moment when computers will become intelligent, and not just intelligent but more intelligent than humans. When that happens, humanity — our bodies, our minds, our civilization — will be completely and irreversibly transformed. …[T]his moment is not only inevitable but imminent. According to […] calculations, the end of human civilization as we know it is about 35 years away.”

I’m not making this shit up. I was talking to my mom about the article and she said that my generation fucked everything up. We created this crazy social networking and always needing computers and phones to live our lives. She’s right and I hate it.

“So if computers are getting so much faster, so incredibly fast, there might conceivably come a moment when they are capable of something comparable to human intelligence. Artificial intelligence. All that horsepower could be put in the service of emulating whatever it is our brains are doing when they create consciousness — not just doing arithmetic very quickly or composing piano music but also driving cars, writing books, making ethical decisions, appreciating fancy paintings, making witty observations at cocktail parties.”

Some of you may argue that a computer can’t feel passion and I agree with that. Only humans can feel passion for something so for the sake of this, forget that the article mentions computers being able to appreciate a piece of art or music. I know that probably won’t happen, but the rest is scary. They say it’s only 35 years away. In 35 years, I’ll be 61 and hopefully the Earth won’t have exploded by then. I’m scared for my kids more than anything because at least at 61 I will have lead a long life. My kids might only be 30 by this time.

This article talks about something called Singularity and they define it as a transformation our species will make into something no longer recognizable as humanity.

“The difficult thing to keep sight of when you're talking about the Singularity is that even though it sounds like science fiction, it isn't, no more than a weather forecast is science fiction. It's not a fringe idea; it's a serious hypothesis about the future of life on Earth. There's an intellectual gag reflex that kicks in anytime you try to swallow an idea that involves super-intelligent immortal cyborgs, but suppress it if you can, because while the Singularity appears to be, on the face of it, preposterous, it's an idea that rewards sober, careful evaluation. People are spending a lot of money trying to understand it. The three-year-old Singularity University, which offers inter-disciplinary courses of study for graduate students and executives, is hosted by NASA. Google was a founding sponsor; its CEO and co-founder Larry Page spoke there last year. People are attracted to the Singularity for the shock value, like an intellectual freak show, but they stay because there's more to it than they expected. And of course, in the event that it turns out to be real, it will be the most important thing to happen to human beings since the invention of language.”

To me, this isn’t a good thing. I understand people experimenting with it because it might seem cool or insane and people are trying to prove it, but the more and more we prove that computers can act as humans, the more computers we have acting like humans.

I’ve seen ASIMO at Disneyland a million times and I never thought anything of it. I didn’t think anyone actually had a robot that could perform human function. Sure, in retrospect it’s a great robot for someone who is disabled, but humans can do that job too. Why build a computer to climb stairs for you when a perfectly good human can climb stairs for you? If I need to be taken care of for whatever reason, I want it to be a person who can talk to me and comfort me. Not a robot with no feelings or emotions. That robot won’t give a shit if I die. That robot won’t care that I’m in pain.

I know there are people who “live off the grid’ because they don’t want technology taking over, but a hand full of people living this way won’t change the way NASA operates. It won’t change the way people feel about computers. Yes, I love my computer and my iPhone. They allow me to do a lot, but I want to be in control of it. I want to be the one pushing the buttons and when I’m not pushing buttons, I want it to sit idly by until I come back to it. I don’t want it to talk to me or perform tasks for me, but I guess I’m alone here.