Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works, and I heart radio and I love
Speaker 1: all things tech. And in my last episode, I advocated
Speaker 1: a critical thinking approach to the subject of driverless cars.
Speaker 1: Today we're gonna do sort of the same thing, but
Speaker 1: with a different subject. This time it's the singularity, specifically
Speaker 1: the technological singularity. I've done an episode about the singularity before,
Speaker 1: but I think the last time I really talked about
Speaker 1: it was in and I think attitudes have changed a
Speaker 1: bit in the five years since I did that episode.
Speaker 1: So I have argued and will continue to do so,
Speaker 1: that the technological singularity is still a very vague term.
Speaker 1: It means different things to different people. It can even
Speaker 1: mean different things to the same person depending upon the situation.
Speaker 1: In fact, if you'll allow me a little allusion to literature,
Speaker 1: since I do have a background in scholarship and English
Speaker 1: lit that I rarely get to use. This actually reminds
Speaker 1: me of Humpty Dumpty and Alice through the Looking Glass
Speaker 1: Humpty Dumpty in that talks about how words only mean
Speaker 1: whatever he wants them to mean, and all it takes
Speaker 1: is the will to use a word however you want,
Speaker 1: and the word has to obey. That seems to be
Speaker 1: the general feeling around the technological singularity. But if we're
Speaker 1: to explore this concept, we're going to have to define
Speaker 1: it at least a little bit. So here goes my attempt. First,
Speaker 1: let's go with the singularity in cosmology, right, what does
Speaker 1: it mean in outer space? What is it in physics?
Speaker 1: In physics? In outer space, it refers to the one
Speaker 1: dimensional point that is at the very center of a
Speaker 1: black hole. This is the point where density and gravity
Speaker 1: are infinite. It's the point where spacetime curves infinitely, and
Speaker 1: most importantly for the concept of the technological singularity, this
Speaker 1: is the point where the laws of physics no longer apply.
Speaker 1: They break down. So the technological singularity is ultimately a
Speaker 1: metaphor based off this cosmological notion. So with the technological singularity,
Speaker 1: the idea is that we arrive at a moment where
Speaker 1: technology is able to iterate and evolve at a rate
Speaker 1: so fast that it is impossible for us to envision
Speaker 1: or predict what happens next. Or it's about superhuman intelligence.
Speaker 1: Those tend to be the two big ones. So generally
Speaker 1: we imagine that superhuman intelligence actually brings about this era
Speaker 1: of rapid technological iteration and evolution, and the nature of
Speaker 1: that intelligence is still a matter of conjecture, because as
Speaker 1: far as we can tell, it hasn't happened yet. Some
Speaker 1: days we struggle for normal human intelligence. But there are
Speaker 1: some big, broad categories that we can talk about as
Speaker 1: a possibility for this superhuman intelligence scenario. There's the artificial
Speaker 1: intelligence version, in which computer scientists design a system of
Speaker 1: such sophistication that it operates on a human like level
Speaker 1: of intelligence. This AI, in turn begins to design its successor,
Speaker 1: which is an attempt to improve upon the previous generation.
Speaker 1: This next AI ends up being smarter, faster, stronger than
Speaker 1: its creator was, and it goes on to create the
Speaker 1: next generation of artificial intelligence, which by definition is going
Speaker 1: to be better designed than anything we humans could accomplish,
Speaker 1: because generation two is already better than human level intelligence,
Speaker 1: and bam, at that point you have the intelligence explosion.
Speaker 1: You have a superhuman intelligence beyond any capability of human
Speaker 1: thought here and because it's operating at a level beyond
Speaker 1: human capability. We cannot possibly guess at what will come
Speaker 1: next because we are only human. We can't conceive of
Speaker 1: what will happen with superhuman intelligence because we don't possess that.
Speaker 1: The vision of the future is sometimes but not always,
Speaker 1: accompanied by the notion that these machines are going to
Speaker 1: gain sentience, that they will have some form of consciousness,
Speaker 1: and therefore they are consciously making these improvements so they'll
Speaker 1: have some sort of sense of self. That also suggests
Speaker 1: that there's the possibility that they might develop motivations and
Speaker 1: wants and needs. So this leads us to some scenarios
Speaker 1: where this all develops into a terminator or matrix like dystopia,
Speaker 1: in which these machines have come to the conclusion that
Speaker 1: we human beings are a blight upon the earth and
Speaker 1: that we have to be wiped out. Or it could
Speaker 1: lead to machines subjugating humans in some way, that we
Speaker 1: are the ants to its colossus, and we can either
Speaker 1: be ignored or we can be put to work in
Speaker 1: some menial task. Or maybe the machines would just be
Speaker 1: super nice, high tech guardian angels that are granting us
Speaker 1: wishes whatever we want it they make it possible because
Speaker 1: they're intelligent enough to do it. But the point is
Speaker 1: the machines are the ones making the decisions, and they
Speaker 1: would be doing so beyond what we could do ourselves,
Speaker 1: and therefore we have no way of predicting what would
Speaker 1: come next or what the future would be like, because
Speaker 1: it's by definition, outside of our own experience. Another version
Speaker 1: of this superhuman intelligence that will bring on the technological
Speaker 1: singularity comes about due to biological or technological boosting of
Speaker 1: our own intelligence. So instead of making computer super smart,
Speaker 1: we make ourselves super smart. Possibly with the use of computers,
Speaker 1: we've discovered a way to augment our intelligence beyond what
Speaker 1: was previously thought possible. Now, in a way, you could
Speaker 1: argue that the history of humanity has been one of
Speaker 1: using technology to augment our intelligence, though the ancient philosophers
Speaker 1: like Socrates would disagree. Socrates would say, don't write anything down,
Speaker 1: because if you write things down, you don't have to
Speaker 1: keep that information in your head, and if you let
Speaker 1: information out of your head, then you're less intelligent as
Speaker 1: a result, you didn't have to keep it of there
Speaker 1: in your noggain. Similar arguments were made in the wake
Speaker 1: of the Guttenberg printing press when that was invented, and
Speaker 1: more recently, much more recently, Nicholas Carr wrote about the
Speaker 1: same idea, only his target wasn't the book or the
Speaker 1: printed word, it was Google. He wrote, is Google making
Speaker 1: us stupid? So since we started writing things down, there
Speaker 1: have been people who have said this technology is going
Speaker 1: to make us all dumb, because you don't have to
Speaker 1: think if you have this stuff to rely upon. But
Speaker 1: the counter argument is that the technology can augment our intelligence.
Speaker 1: We can offload some of the cognition onto the tech
Speaker 1: or that we're carrying or that we're depending upon, and
Speaker 1: that frees up more of our capacity to reflect or
Speaker 1: to do free association of seemingly separate and distinct ideas
Speaker 1: to bring them together there and come up with innovative
Speaker 1: solutions to hard problems. So I think it all just
Speaker 1: depends upon your point of view and your approach to
Speaker 1: using technology. Anyway, in this vision of the singularity, human
Speaker 1: beings become endowed with superhuman intelligence, which might very well
Speaker 1: mean we would no longer really be what you and
Speaker 1: I would consider human at this point. This is the
Speaker 1: trans human vision of the future. So the end result
Speaker 1: would again, be that we're talking about reaching a point
Speaker 1: where we, as humans, flawed, limited in our intelligence, are
Speaker 1: incapable of imagining what would come next because we cannot
Speaker 1: put ourselves in the place of a superhuman intelligence. We
Speaker 1: lack that intelligence, whether it's machines or us, or some
Speaker 1: combination of the two. The basic idea of the technological
Speaker 1: singularity hinges upon the emergence of this superhuman intelligence in
Speaker 1: almost every case. So where did that idea even come from? Well,
Speaker 1: back in seven there was a publisher named the Reverend
Speaker 1: Richard Thornton who wrote a piece about a mechanical calculator
Speaker 1: that illustrates my earlier point about how people have talked
Speaker 1: about how technology can make us dumb or it can
Speaker 1: be a hindrance for thinking. He wrote that such a device,
Speaker 1: if placed in a school, would do quote incalculable injury
Speaker 1: end quote. Don't think he was necessarily intending to make
Speaker 1: a pun about a calculator, but he did go on
Speaker 1: to say that these machines might get better and better,
Speaker 1: and what might happen next? He said, maybe they would
Speaker 1: be able to calculate ways to improve their own design
Speaker 1: and quote grind out ideas beyond the Ken of mortal
Speaker 1: Mind end quote. So he's saying, these machines themselves might
Speaker 1: even come up with the method of making a better machine,
Speaker 1: which in turn might make even better ones, and eventually
Speaker 1: get to a point where they could produce information that
Speaker 1: we humans can't even dream of. This is back in
Speaker 1: eighty seven, before the electronic computer. Alan Turing, whom we
Speaker 1: all often associate with this idea of machine intelligence, wrote
Speaker 1: a paper in nineteen fifty one at which a hypothesized
Speaker 1: that once machines do level enter a level of like
Speaker 1: human like thinking, or at least appear to think like
Speaker 1: humans do, it wouldn't take long before they would outpace
Speaker 1: our own capabilities. And he cited the nineteenth century writer
Speaker 1: Samuel Butler in this Butler himself had said there is
Speaker 1: no security against the ultimate development of mechanical consciousness in
Speaker 1: the fact of machines possessing little consciousness now, essentially saying,
Speaker 1: just because machines are dumb right now doesn't mean we
Speaker 1: can discount the possibility that they will one day be intelligent.
Speaker 1: He was making an observation about how quickly machines were advancing,
Speaker 1: and he was comparing that against the very slow process
Speaker 1: of evolution in biology. He was saying, you know, it
Speaker 1: took millions of years for lower organisms to evolve two
Speaker 1: higher thinking organisms. But look how quickly technology is developing.
Speaker 1: It won't be long at all before those are thinking
Speaker 1: before machines can think. That seems like a somewhat faulty
Speaker 1: reasoning to me, but we'll move on. John von Neumann,
Speaker 1: who I talked about in episodes in Tech Stuff this year,
Speaker 1: reportedly talked about a singularity that would happen once technological
Speaker 1: process a progress, rather would occur so quickly and become
Speaker 1: so complicated as to become incomprehensible. So this is more
Speaker 1: in that technology is rapidly iterating and evolving, but not
Speaker 1: necessarily related to a superhuman intel aligence. Uh. He told
Speaker 1: his buddy Stanislav Ulam about this, and it was Ulam
Speaker 1: who reported the conversation, so it's more from a secondhand information.
Speaker 1: Then there's I. J. Good, who was one of tourings
Speaker 1: peers at Bletchley Park when they were working on cryptography
Speaker 1: during the World War, and he wrote about a future
Speaker 1: intelligence explosion. He described the scenario that I mentioned earlier
Speaker 1: of machines designing ever more capable successors and leaving human
Speaker 1: ingenuity in the dust in the process. His work would
Speaker 1: inspire a science fiction author named Verner Venge, who presented
Speaker 1: the earliest recorded version of the phrase technological singularity. He
Speaker 1: wrote it in a piece that was published in Omni
Speaker 1: magazine in nineteen eighty three. A decade later, Venge predicted, quote,
Speaker 1: within thirty years, we will have the technological means to
Speaker 1: create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after the human era will be ended.
Speaker 1: End quote sounds pretty ominous, but honestly, it could just
Speaker 1: mean that we humans would be evolving into something new. Now,
Speaker 1: that was a prediction he made in and he said
Speaker 1: it was thirty years in the future, which means we're
Speaker 1: coming up on that deadline awful soon. It would mean
Speaker 1: that we would be there and let's see a two
Speaker 1: thousand twenty three by my math. Venge also suggested four
Speaker 1: ways this singularity could emerge. Computers could reach a certain
Speaker 1: level of sophistication and become awake and you know, therefore
Speaker 1: conscious and they would be superhumanly intelligent. Or computer networks
Speaker 1: would become suitably complex enough for intelligence and consciousness to
Speaker 1: emerge from that complexity, so the network itself and the
Speaker 1: associated users would become kind of a collective superhuman intelligence.
Speaker 1: There could be a computer human inter face future where
Speaker 1: these interfaces are so sophisticated that we can augment our
Speaker 1: intelligence seamlessly with machines, and together we are superhumanly intelligent.
Speaker 1: And finally, he said, we might figure out a way
Speaker 1: to biologically boost our own intelligence. Now, I would argue
Speaker 1: that Venge is one of the two really famous champions
Speaker 1: of this concept of the technological singularity. The other one
Speaker 1: I will cover in just a moment, But first let's
Speaker 1: take a quick break to thank our sponsor. I think
Speaker 1: the person who we most readily associate with the concept
Speaker 1: of the technological singularity, he has written numerous books on it,
Speaker 1: and has given lots of talks on the subject, and
Speaker 1: has promoted the idea extensively, would be Ray Kurtzwild. Kurtswilds
Speaker 1: definition is a little different from Vinge's definition, and the
Speaker 1: singularity is near. He talks about the era of rapid
Speaker 1: technological development that will make defining the future or even
Speaker 1: the present at that point impossible. And I think this
Speaker 1: is closer to what Stennis law Oolam said John von
Speaker 1: Neumann had told him. Kurt Swell, I should point out
Speaker 1: has made numerous contributions to technological development. I don't want
Speaker 1: anyone to think that I think Kurt Swills a crackpot.
Speaker 1: I don't. He was a pioneer in computer pattern recognition
Speaker 1: and speech recognition. He did a lot of development and
Speaker 1: other areas, including electronic music. So kurts wells a really
Speaker 1: smart guy. His view of the singularity tends to include
Speaker 1: some pretty far out ideas, however, including the possibility that
Speaker 1: through this process we will discover some means of extending
Speaker 1: our lives indefinitely, including the possibility of porting our consciousness
Speaker 1: into technologies somehow, in other words, finding a way to
Speaker 1: take what makes us us and put that us in
Speaker 1: some sort of machine, and that would effectively allow us
Speaker 1: to live forever, though I don't know what sort of
Speaker 1: experience that would be, like, would you just be a
Speaker 1: consciousness inside a computer? And if so, would that be
Speaker 1: a satisfying existence? Also, there's no way to even guess
Speaker 1: how this would be achieved. Uh, I'm not entirely clear
Speaker 1: what he's basing these ideas upon in the first place.
Speaker 1: It seems to me, and this is just my own
Speaker 1: opinion that some of Kurt Swill's notions are based upon
Speaker 1: a general fear of death, and that the singularity is
Speaker 1: viewed as a sort of escape mechanism from death. It's
Speaker 1: almost wishful thinking, in other words, that maybe once we
Speaker 1: hit this point, will have conquered death itself and we
Speaker 1: will never have to worry about facing our own mortality.
Speaker 1: I still don't understand how this sporting of consciousness would work.
Speaker 1: Or maybe you would just make a copy of yourself,
Speaker 1: in which case you would have a digital version of you,
Speaker 1: and in the meat version of you, but the meat
Speaker 1: version of you was still gonna die, which means, yeah,
Speaker 1: there'll still be a version of you hanging around, but
Speaker 1: it's not the you that's experiencing this podcast right now,
Speaker 1: unless you're hearing this post singularity and you are the
Speaker 1: digital version. Where did you get this show? Okay, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: I was losing my mind there. Again. While I think
Speaker 1: that his ideas are far fetched from a personal standpoint,
Speaker 1: there is no doubt he is a billion times smarter
Speaker 1: than I am, so I acknowledge I could very well
Speaker 1: be in the wrong here. It just my my critical
Speaker 1: thinking and skeptical nature are really starting to raise some
Speaker 1: red flags. Now. There are a lot of other people
Speaker 1: who are also important in this field. I don't mean
Speaker 1: to suggest that I have covered them all. There are
Speaker 1: proponents and there are skeptics. For example, there's Hans more Effect,
Speaker 1: who's a computer scientist and a roboticist famously working with
Speaker 1: Carnegie Mellon University. He generalized Moore's law to a broader
Speaker 1: application of artificial intelligence and the arrival of a super intelligence.
Speaker 1: And one of his predictions was that by twenty forty
Speaker 1: or so, robots will become so sophisticated at that point
Speaker 1: and so complex that they will effectively emerge as their
Speaker 1: own species. In he penned the paper titled the Age
Speaker 1: of Robots, and this is a quote from that piece.
Speaker 1: Computer less industrial machinery exhibits the behavioral flexibility of single
Speaker 1: celled organisms. Today's best computer controlled robots are like these
Speaker 1: simpler invertebrates. A thousandfold increase in computer power in this
Speaker 1: decade should make possible machines with reptile like sensory and
Speaker 1: motor competence. Properly configured, such robots could do in the
Speaker 1: physical world what personal computers now do in the world
Speaker 1: of data. Act on our behalf as literal minded slaves
Speaker 1: growing computer power over the next half century will allow
Speaker 1: this reptile stage will be surpassed in stages, producing robots
Speaker 1: that learned like mammals, modeled their world like primates, and
Speaker 1: eventually reason like humans. Depending on your point of view,
Speaker 1: humanity will then have produced a worthy successor, or transcended
Speaker 1: inherited limitations and transformed itself into something quite new. No
Speaker 1: longer limited by the slow pace of human learning and
Speaker 1: even slower biological evolution, intelligent machinery will conduct its affairs
Speaker 1: on an ever faster, ever smaller scale, until coarse physical
Speaker 1: nature has been converted to fine grained, purposeful thought. Now,
Speaker 1: his ideas are predicated upon the assertion that consciousness, which
Speaker 1: is a quality that's devilishly difficult to define. In fact,
Speaker 1: I would argue it's just as difficult to define as
Speaker 1: the term intelligence. He argues, this arises from the material
Speaker 1: that is, the mind is totally the product of our
Speaker 1: nervous system, or, if you want to be a little
Speaker 1: more generous, the combination of our nervous system and our
Speaker 1: interactions with our environments. So, in other words, consciousness emerges
Speaker 1: from a system if that system meets the physical criteria.
Speaker 1: If true and I happen to believe that this is true.
Speaker 1: That it then stands to reason that if you have
Speaker 1: a sufficiently complex system with powerful enough machines, we should
Speaker 1: be able to create an artificial entity that possesses consciousness. If, however,
Speaker 1: consciousness arises from some other scientifically undiscovered or even undiscoverable quality,
Speaker 1: then it wouldn't matter how complicated we build our toys,
Speaker 1: they would never become conscious. So, in other words, if
Speaker 1: consciousness were the emergence from some other thing that science
Speaker 1: cannot address, like a soul, for example, then there's no
Speaker 1: way that we could create a conscious artificial being. We
Speaker 1: can't create the soul. If that is in fact how
Speaker 1: it works. I personally feel that that's not the case.
Speaker 1: That our consciousness does arise from the material that it
Speaker 1: does come from our nervous system, the complexity and the
Speaker 1: electrochemical processes of our nervous system. The question I have
Speaker 1: is whether or not we will ever be able to
Speaker 1: replicate that in an artificial system. Not saying that it
Speaker 1: would be impossible, just wondering if we will ever figure
Speaker 1: it out. It remains an open question. Nick Bostrom, who
Speaker 1: served as the director of the Future of Humanity, Institute
Speaker 1: has written extensively about trans humanism. I talked about that
Speaker 1: second ago. That idea that we transcend being just humans
Speaker 1: through some process. Whether that means a computer augmented person
Speaker 1: or a biologically augmented person isn't really important, at least
Speaker 1: from this perspective. It's very important from an ethical perspective.
Speaker 1: But he's using trans human to indicate that this describes
Speaker 1: someone who has moved away from what we would define
Speaker 1: as being a human being today. And like kurtswhile he
Speaker 1: has hypothesized that the Singularity will bring along with it
Speaker 1: some means of extending our lifespans indefinitely, but he feels
Speaker 1: that some of the more aggressive predictions are a little
Speaker 1: too optimistic. He has said that he felt that there
Speaker 1: was a less than fifty chance that we will have
Speaker 1: developed any sort of superhuman intelligence by the year twenty three.
Speaker 1: He thinks it's going to happen, but it might take
Speaker 1: a bit longer than that. Some of the people who
Speaker 1: believe or have formerly believed the Singularity to be around
Speaker 1: the corner aren't convinced it's necessarily going to be good
Speaker 1: for us. Venture capitalist Bill Joy, who co founded Sun Microsystems,
Speaker 1: has expressed concerns about it, and it wouldn't necessarily take
Speaker 1: a superhuman AI to do damage to us. Joy has
Speaker 1: pointed out that technology tends to advance our capabilities in
Speaker 1: all sorts of areas, including destructive ones. In other words,
Speaker 1: it gets easy you're and easier for smaller and smaller
Speaker 1: groups to do more and more harm. And that's not
Speaker 1: true of all technologies, obviously, but that technology does enable this.
Speaker 1: So as technology gets more sophisticated, the potential for a
Speaker 1: person or even a small group of people to exploit
Speaker 1: it in order to do a lot of damage also increases.
Speaker 1: We certainly see the potential for this in some technologies.
Speaker 1: For example, we've already seen three D printers that can
Speaker 1: be used to create untraceable firearms. But Joy's concern is
Speaker 1: that we could have a much more critical existential threat
Speaker 1: as a result of these technological developments, specifically in things
Speaker 1: like bleeding edge technologies like nanotech or biotechnology, and he
Speaker 1: feels that we need to build in the systems or
Speaker 1: create social pressures to prevent those things from happening. Similarly,
Speaker 1: Alizer Yakowski has advocated for the development of standards and
Speaker 1: algorithms to guide AI towards a benevolent mindset. Now I
Speaker 1: imagine he's an advocate for computer scientists to include ways
Speaker 1: for humans to see how machines are arriving at answers
Speaker 1: or calculations, which I agree with. I think that is
Speaker 1: very important. Transparency is incredibly important with these machines and systems.
Speaker 1: One of the dangers I see with machine learning is
Speaker 1: an approach that would block off this process from view.
Speaker 1: We wouldn't know how a machine got to the result
Speaker 1: it got, and we would just be taking it on faith.
Speaker 1: This would turn machines computers into black boxes. They produce results,
Speaker 1: but we don't know how or why. Such a thing
Speaker 1: would be more of an oracle than a computer, and
Speaker 1: that's not terribly healthy. I think it would be better
Speaker 1: if we build machines that are capable of showing their
Speaker 1: work as it were, to explain how they arrived at
Speaker 1: a particular conclusion and based upon the input that they received,
Speaker 1: and that way humans could verify that the decisions the
Speaker 1: computers were making were actually sound and appropriate and not mistakes. Next,
Speaker 1: I'll talk about some of the objections to the concept
Speaker 1: of the technological singularity itself. But first let's take another
Speaker 1: quick break to thank our sponsor. So what do people
Speaker 1: who think the technological singularity isn't going to be a thing,
Speaker 1: or at least not a thing that's going to happen
Speaker 1: anytime soon. What did they have to say? Well, one
Speaker 1: counter argument is that futurists and singularity enthusiasts are far
Speaker 1: too quick to apply the results of Moore's law across
Speaker 1: the board to all sciences and technologies that would be
Speaker 1: necessary in order to bring about some sort of superhuman intelligence.
Speaker 1: And this to me seems like a pretty solid count
Speaker 1: her argument. So, first of all, Moore's law is not
Speaker 1: really a law, right, It's an observation. It's an observation
Speaker 1: and a prediction that Gordon Moore made in the early
Speaker 1: days of silicon based transistors. Namely, more stated the due
Speaker 1: to economic demand for electronics, the semiconductor companies would invest
Speaker 1: the resources needed to create more complicated chips. And now,
Speaker 1: at the time he was making this prediction, he was
Speaker 1: specifically talking about how many discrete components you could fit
Speaker 1: on a square inch silicon wafer. Essentially, this was really
Speaker 1: about how many transistors can you cram into that space.
Speaker 1: Demand would create the need to innovate. The economic incentive
Speaker 1: to innovate, so companies would spend money in research and development,
Speaker 1: and as a result, they would shrink those components down
Speaker 1: so that you could fit more of them on the
Speaker 1: same amount of space and have more powerful electronics, which
Speaker 1: would continue to create more demand. He traced this pattern back,
Speaker 1: and he saw that it seemed pretty steady, and he
Speaker 1: predicted that it would continue. Now these days, we tend
Speaker 1: to say that every eighteen twenty four months you see
Speaker 1: the processing power of microchips double. But keep in mind
Speaker 1: that's a modern interpretation that is an evolution of the
Speaker 1: original observation about transistors. So Moore's law has changed over
Speaker 1: the years. Anyway, there are lots of reasons to reject
Speaker 1: any predictions that are predicated upon applying Moore's law to
Speaker 1: all technology across the board. First, even for transistors, Moore's
Speaker 1: law has largely been something of a self fulfilling prophecy.
Speaker 1: Companies have acknowledged the prediction, and then they've worked really,
Speaker 1: really hard to keep up with it. So in a way,
Speaker 1: the reason we see such rapid progress in microprocessor technology
Speaker 1: over the course of the last several decades is because
Speaker 1: these companies have a sort of sense of obligation to
Speaker 1: keep up with Moore's law. If they didn't, it would
Speaker 1: see it would be like a failure, right, It would
Speaker 1: seem like they were the ones who broke More's laws.
Speaker 1: So they keep working super hard to keep that going.
Speaker 1: And that has meant that we have reinterpreted Moore's law.
Speaker 1: That's why we think of it more as processing power
Speaker 1: these days and not in the number of transistors. But
Speaker 1: we know this is not sustainable indefinitely not based on
Speaker 1: our current microprocessor architecture. At least, we will hit physical
Speaker 1: limits based on those designs that eventually we will not
Speaker 1: be able to engineer around if we stick to that architecture. Now,
Speaker 1: that does not mean we won't find alternative approaches. We
Speaker 1: might find alternatives. However, that might also mean we won't
Speaker 1: see progress continue at that same rapid pace. We might
Speaker 1: see improvements, but it might be on a slower scale,
Speaker 1: which means we don't advance as quickly. As it stands,
Speaker 1: we've seen more advances in processing by changing up the
Speaker 1: way we do the work than we do with the
Speaker 1: hardware over the last couple of years. In some cases,
Speaker 1: that's by going through parallel processing either by having multi
Speaker 1: core processors or even leveraging graphics processing units g p
Speaker 1: us to do some of this work. Now, that's one
Speaker 1: objection to Moore's law, but another is just because of
Speaker 1: general observation applies to one part of technology, doesn't mean
Speaker 1: it applies to all parts of technology. That would be crazy.
Speaker 1: Let's say I took More's law and I tried to
Speaker 1: apply it to cars, and I said, the top speed
Speaker 1: of the model of this car, model this car that
Speaker 1: I just bought, this top speedies a hundred twenty miles
Speaker 1: per hour. I'm gonna buy one in two years. I'll
Speaker 1: buy a brand new one in two years because Moore's
Speaker 1: law states it's gonna be twice as powerful. In two years,
Speaker 1: it's gonna go two hundred forty miles per hour. Two
Speaker 1: years after that, it's gonna go four hundred eighty miles
Speaker 1: per hour. Well, if I told you that, you would
Speaker 1: say you're nuts. That's not how it works, and you
Speaker 1: would be right. That isn't how it works. The mechanical
Speaker 1: performance of engines does not follow the progress of Moore's law.
Speaker 1: Moore's law does not apply to all technologies, evenly across
Speaker 1: the board, So we can't say that the rule, and
Speaker 1: keep in mind More's law isn't really a rule. The
Speaker 1: rule for microprocessor progress doesn't necessarily apply to other sciences
Speaker 1: and technologies, and a technological singularity dependent upon the emergence
Speaker 1: of a superhuman intelligence is going to depend upon a
Speaker 1: lot of different technologies, not just raw computing power. So
Speaker 1: that's one big objection. There are others as well. So
Speaker 1: many of these predictions assume that we're going to see
Speaker 1: computer scientists develop software that can leverage the hardware allowing
Speaker 1: a superhuman intelligence to emerge. Jared Lanier, who is a
Speaker 1: pioneer in many fields of technology like virtual reality, has
Speaker 1: said that there's been no evidence so far that any
Speaker 1: human programmer is capable of building something like that, and
Speaker 1: ultimately a human programmer is going to have to build
Speaker 1: the software that will enable hardware to get to the
Speaker 1: point where consciousness will emerge. I mean, if I make
Speaker 1: a super powerful transistor but there's no software running on it,
Speaker 1: nothing happens, right. Consciousness doesn't just magically occur, So we
Speaker 1: have to figure out the software side and the code
Speaker 1: side in order to make this happen. And Lanier argues,
Speaker 1: and I happen to kind of agree with him that
Speaker 1: there's no things that we could even do that, So
Speaker 1: the hardware is only part of the problem. Meanwhile, you
Speaker 1: have a lot of people in neuroscience brain experts who
Speaker 1: roll their eyes at the notion of an artificial intelligence
Speaker 1: that has superhuman capabilities, because they point out we have
Speaker 1: a very primitive understanding of our own brains and the
Speaker 1: concept of intelligence as it applies to human beings, let
Speaker 1: alone to machines. There are enormous gaps in our knowledge
Speaker 1: when it comes to how our brains work and how
Speaker 1: we process information. We have really good solid foundation in
Speaker 1: that area, but they're an awful lot of details we
Speaker 1: just don't understand yet, and there's an enormous void when
Speaker 1: it comes to the topic of consciousness. We can draw
Speaker 1: some very broad conclusions about consciousness based off of medical experience.
Speaker 1: For example, in the medical record, there are plenty of
Speaker 1: case of people who have experienced various types of trauma
Speaker 1: to the brain who have also experienced changes in their consciousness.
Speaker 1: This reinforces the idea that consciousness arises from the physical
Speaker 1: matter and the electrochemical processes that are in the brain.
Speaker 1: But beyond those very broad conclusions, and even these ideas
Speaker 1: don't have universal adoption. They broadly do in the medical field,
Speaker 1: but they're plenty of people who disagree with this kind
Speaker 1: of concept. We just don't know very much about it.
Speaker 1: Like consciousness, is one of those things we tend to
Speaker 1: define by what it isn't rather than what it is,
Speaker 1: just like intelligence, so many experts in that field say
Speaker 1: it's premature, to say the least, that we even speculate
Speaker 1: about creating, at least purposefully, any sort of artificial intelligence,
Speaker 1: especially one that possesses consciousness. So even if you do
Speaker 1: allow for his superhuman intelligence to arrive, making other leaps
Speaker 1: such as the idea that we're going to find a
Speaker 1: way to extend our lifespans indefinitely, is a step beyond that, right.
Speaker 1: It means that you're building an unsubstantiated idea on top
Speaker 1: of another as yet unsubstantiated idea, which is not the
Speaker 1: best way to build an argument typically. Now that does
Speaker 1: not necessarily mean it won't come to pass in might,
Speaker 1: but it's not something you can easily support logically, because
Speaker 1: you're already starting with an assertion that you can't actually
Speaker 1: back up yet. If this other thing happens, that hasn't
Speaker 1: happened yet, then this additional thing will happen. That seems
Speaker 1: like that's a pretty enormous jump in logic. Now, I
Speaker 1: get the feeling that the singularity was really a topic
Speaker 1: of excited debate and discussion about a decade ago. More recently,
Speaker 1: as we have seen how devilishly hard the problem of
Speaker 1: AI really is, not to mention how incredibly huge that
Speaker 1: interdisciplinary field is. Since AI is more nuanced than creating
Speaker 1: a computer that thinks like a person, that's a very
Speaker 1: narrow view of AI. I think we've backed off a
Speaker 1: little bit on the singularity talk. That's not to say
Speaker 1: there aren't some things associated with the technological singularity that
Speaker 1: we should ignore or that we shouldn't tackle. I think
Speaker 1: it is good to talk about the ethics of artificial
Speaker 1: intelligence and robotics, for example, including things like whether or
Speaker 1: not it's a good idea to pursue the development of
Speaker 1: autonomous weapons, or to allow artificial intelligence to guide economic
Speaker 1: factors like stock purchases. It's also important to address things
Speaker 1: like bias in these artificial intelligence systems. These are all
Speaker 1: things that are important right now, and they will become
Speaker 1: even more important if we were ever, to approach the
Speaker 1: point where we could create a superhuman intelligence, those problems
Speaker 1: would be magnified a thousand times over if we don't
Speaker 1: look into them and address them today. It's also important
Speaker 1: to recognize many of the visions of the singularity come
Speaker 1: across to me as somewhat exclusionary. I think a lot
Speaker 1: of the arguments and the presentations that are all about
Speaker 1: the technological singularity tend towards the egotistical. Not that the
Speaker 1: person who expounded the theory is suggesting that he or
Speaker 1: she is better than anyone else, but rather that somehow
Speaker 1: that person and perhaps the audience they are addressing, will,
Speaker 1: for some reason, by default be included in this science
Speaker 1: fiction vision of the future. In reality, I suspect if
Speaker 1: we were to reach any point, especially any point that
Speaker 1: involves improving quote unquote humanity through biological or technological means,
Speaker 1: we would see a very exclusive approach to that, meaning
Speaker 1: you would have a new gap between the halves and
Speaker 1: the have nots. There would be a disparity so great
Speaker 1: that it would create instability, or and in some places
Speaker 1: of the world, arguably everywhere in the world, make instability
Speaker 1: way worse than it already is. There are many sciences
Speaker 1: and technologies that very smart people continue to advance that
Speaker 1: would presumably be important elements of the technological singularity, and
Speaker 1: maybe for some of the people in those fields, the
Speaker 1: idea of contributing toward such a future, striving to get
Speaker 1: to a technological singularity, that might be part of their drive.
Speaker 1: But whether it's a factor or not, many of those
Speaker 1: areas of study are really important and could end up
Speaker 1: benefiting us in lots of ways, including many we probably
Speaker 1: haven't anticipated, even if they don't lead to superhuman intelligence
Speaker 1: with consciousness us. So, personally, if you haven't figured it
Speaker 1: out by now, I'm skeptical that any sort of technological
Speaker 1: singularity is going to happen reasonably soon. I certainly don't
Speaker 1: think it will happen within my own lifetime. Now I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna say it's never gonna happen at all, But
Speaker 1: if it does happen, I think it's going to be
Speaker 1: some distant point in the future, and I'm not sure
Speaker 1: when that will be, but probably long after I'm gone. Also,
Speaker 1: while I'm at it, I should mention that's actually really
Speaker 1: hard to predict the future already. We don't need a
Speaker 1: technological singularity to make it difficult to see into the future,
Speaker 1: as you will hear pretty soon when I go back
Speaker 1: over what my predictions for two thousand eighteen were and
Speaker 1: we see how incredibly wrong I was. I haven't even
Speaker 1: listened to that old episode yet, but this is just
Speaker 1: the way it is every year. And yet, yes, I
Speaker 1: will be making a predictions episode for twenty nineteen because
Speaker 1: I never learned my lesson. But if if anything, it'll
Speaker 1: be good for a laugh. Right. Well, that wraps up
Speaker 1: this discussion about the singularity, and while I am skeptical,
Speaker 1: I also could very well be wrong. That's an important
Speaker 1: thing to remember. And maybe it will turn out that
Speaker 1: in twenty nineteen the technological singularity will arrive a little
Speaker 1: early and I'll be the most shocked out of everybody,
Speaker 1: but I doubt it. If you guys have any suggestions
Speaker 1: for future topics of tech stuff, whether it's a technology,
Speaker 1: a concept in tech like the singularity, Maybe there's someone
Speaker 1: you would like me to interview, maybe there's a company
Speaker 1: you would like me to talk about. Send me an email.
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