WEBVTT - TechStuff Classic: TechStuff Enters the Singularity 0:00:04.519 --> 0:00:12.959 Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Say hey there, 0:00:12.960 --> 0:00:16.239 and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, jonvan Strickland. 0:00:16.280 --> 0:00:19.439 I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and how the 0:00:19.520 --> 0:00:24.440 tech are you. So it's January second, twenty twenty four. 0:00:24.840 --> 0:00:26.960 As you listen to this, it's actually back in the 0:00:27.000 --> 0:00:30.840 past in twenty twenty three when I record it and 0:00:30.880 --> 0:00:33.000 we are on vacation. You know, I brought you a 0:00:33.040 --> 0:00:36.839 whole bunch of new episodes over the holidays, but I 0:00:36.880 --> 0:00:40.680 feared it's about time for Jonathan to maybe rest a 0:00:40.720 --> 0:00:43.440 little bit, So we're going to listen to a classic 0:00:43.720 --> 0:00:48.800 episode today. This episode is called tech Stuff Enters the Singularity. 0:00:48.880 --> 0:00:50.960 I mean, after all, we're in a new year, so 0:00:51.000 --> 0:00:53.960 why not talk about the future a little bit. This 0:00:54.200 --> 0:00:59.160 was recorded way back in February eleventh, twenty thirteen. Lauren 0:00:59.240 --> 0:01:03.320 Vogelbaumb now host of brain Stuff and Savor along with 0:01:03.400 --> 0:01:06.479 other Things, was my co host at the time, and 0:01:06.520 --> 0:01:10.000 we sat down to talk about this vision of the future, 0:01:10.440 --> 0:01:14.319 the singularity. What does it mean that when we're talking 0:01:14.360 --> 0:01:18.360 about the technological singularity? That is So sit back, relax 0:01:18.800 --> 0:01:22.120 and enjoy this classic episode from twenty thirteen called tech 0:01:22.160 --> 0:01:29.240 Stuff Enters the Singularity. Get in touch with technologies with 0:01:29.400 --> 0:01:38.319 tex Stuff from HowStuffWorks dot com. Hey there, everyone, and 0:01:38.400 --> 0:01:43.640 welcome to tech Stuff. My name is Jonathan Strickland, Host Extraordinaire. 0:01:43.120 --> 0:01:45.400 And I'm Lauren vocal Bam, host Extraordinarier. 0:01:46.200 --> 0:01:50.200 That's very true, and today we wanted to talk about 0:01:50.600 --> 0:01:54.840 the future. The future. Yeah, really, we're talking about kind 0:01:54.840 --> 0:01:58.200 of a science fiction future. We're talking about the singularity. 0:01:58.280 --> 0:02:02.559 And long time listeners to tech Stuff and I'm talking 0:02:02.560 --> 0:02:06.240 about folks who listened way back before we ever talked 0:02:06.280 --> 0:02:10.040 out at thirty minutes, let alone an hour. May remember 0:02:10.040 --> 0:02:12.560 that we did an episode about how Ray Kurtzwel works 0:02:12.960 --> 0:02:15.080 and Ray Kurtzwell is a futurist and one of the 0:02:15.120 --> 0:02:18.800 things he talks about extensively, particularly if you corner him 0:02:18.800 --> 0:02:22.160 at a cocktail party, is the singularity. And so we 0:02:22.200 --> 0:02:25.560 wanted to talk about what the singularity is, what this idea, 0:02:25.639 --> 0:02:27.839 you know, we really wanted to kind of dig down 0:02:27.880 --> 0:02:30.360 into it and why is this a big deal and 0:02:30.440 --> 0:02:33.960 how realistic is this vision of the future. 0:02:34.120 --> 0:02:35.920 Yeah, because some people would take a little bit of 0:02:36.000 --> 0:02:39.600 a would would argue with your concept of it being 0:02:39.680 --> 0:02:41.680 science fiction. They take it extremely seriously. 0:02:41.720 --> 0:02:44.280 Oh yeah, they say it's science fact, science fact, it's 0:02:44.320 --> 0:02:45.639 science inevitability. 0:02:46.280 --> 0:02:49.720 Yeah. The term was actually coined by a mathematician, Jean 0:02:49.800 --> 0:02:53.280 von Newman in the nineteen fifties, but it was popularized 0:02:53.360 --> 0:02:56.680 by a science fiction writere. 0:02:56.800 --> 0:03:00.360 Yeah, it's also a There are a lot of different 0:03:00.360 --> 0:03:02.520 concepts that are tied up together, and it all depends 0:03:02.520 --> 0:03:05.640 on upon whom you ask what it means by the singularity. 0:03:05.639 --> 0:03:08.639 For instance, there's some people who when you hear the 0:03:08.720 --> 0:03:11.560 term the singularity, what they say is, Okay, that's a 0:03:11.680 --> 0:03:14.160 time when we get to the point where technological advances 0:03:14.200 --> 0:03:18.200 are coming so quickly that it's impossible to have a 0:03:18.360 --> 0:03:22.239 meaningful conversation of what the state of technology is because 0:03:22.240 --> 0:03:26.000 it changes changes by the milliseconds. Right. So that's one version, 0:03:26.280 --> 0:03:29.480 But most of the versions that we're familiar with that 0:03:29.600 --> 0:03:34.840 the futurists talk about incorporate an idea of superhuman intelligence 0:03:35.160 --> 0:03:37.880 or the intelligence explosion, right. 0:03:37.760 --> 0:03:41.760 A kind of combination of human and technological development that 0:03:41.960 --> 0:03:45.080 just dovetails into this gorgeous you know, space baby from 0:03:45.080 --> 0:03:46.800 two thousand and one kind of that's. 0:03:46.640 --> 0:03:49.640 An excellent way of putting it. The documentary two thousand 0:03:49.640 --> 0:03:54.480 and one. I remember specifically when the space baby looked 0:03:54.680 --> 0:03:58.520 at Earth. Okay, that documentary example doesn't work at all. 0:03:58.680 --> 0:04:00.760 It usually does, but not this Yeah, not this time. 0:04:00.800 --> 0:04:04.720 Sorry, space babies are a poor example in this one instance. 0:04:04.800 --> 0:04:09.440 But metaphorically speaking, yes, you're right on track because the 0:04:09.440 --> 0:04:14.160 intelligence explosion. That was a term introduced by someone known 0:04:14.200 --> 0:04:17.039 as Irving John Good or if you want to go with, 0:04:17.080 --> 0:04:20.880 his birth name is Adore Jakub Gudak. I can see 0:04:20.920 --> 0:04:24.200 why he changed it. Yeah. He actually worked for a 0:04:24.240 --> 0:04:29.080 while at bletch Lee Park with another fellow who made 0:04:29.120 --> 0:04:31.120 sort of a name for himself in computer science, a 0:04:31.120 --> 0:04:34.240 fellow named Alan Turing. Oh oh, I guess I've heard 0:04:34.240 --> 0:04:36.560 of him. Yeah. Touring will come up in the discussion 0:04:36.600 --> 0:04:39.960 a little bit later, but for right now, So, Irving 0:04:40.040 --> 0:04:42.760 John Good just just a little quick anecdote that I 0:04:42.760 --> 0:04:47.440 thought was amusing. So Good was working with touring to 0:04:47.520 --> 0:04:50.280 try and help break German codes. I mean that's what 0:04:50.279 --> 0:04:54.360 Bletchley Park was all about, right right, So Good apparently 0:04:54.920 --> 0:04:59.600 one day drew the ire of touring when he decided 0:04:59.600 --> 0:05:02.039 to take a little cat nap because he was tired 0:05:02.480 --> 0:05:06.440 and he was it was Goods philosophy that being tired 0:05:06.480 --> 0:05:08.440 did not mean that he meant that he was not 0:05:08.480 --> 0:05:10.800 going to work at his best, and he might as 0:05:10.839 --> 0:05:13.960 well go ahead and nap, exactly, take a nap, get refreshed, 0:05:14.080 --> 0:05:16.640 and then tackle the problem again, and you're more likely 0:05:16.800 --> 0:05:19.640 to solve it. Whereas touring was very much a workhorse, 0:05:20.160 --> 0:05:22.800 you know he was he was no rest, no rest, 0:05:22.839 --> 0:05:23.480 We have to. 0:05:23.400 --> 0:05:25.640 Do so touring. 0:05:25.680 --> 0:05:28.520 When he discovered that Good had been napping, decided that 0:05:29.000 --> 0:05:32.400 this was the Good was not so good and and 0:05:32.480 --> 0:05:37.400 touring touring sort of treated him with disdain. He began 0:05:37.480 --> 0:05:42.080 to essentially not speak to Good. Good meanwhile, began to 0:05:42.200 --> 0:05:46.080 think about the letters that were being used in Enigma 0:05:46.360 --> 0:05:50.080 codes to code German messages, and he began to think, 0:05:50.120 --> 0:05:53.440 what if these letters are not completely random? What if 0:05:53.480 --> 0:05:57.080 the Germans are relying on some letters more frequently than others. 0:05:57.279 --> 0:06:00.000 And he began to look at frequency of these letters 0:06:00.160 --> 0:06:04.919 being used. He made up a table and mathematically analyzed 0:06:04.960 --> 0:06:07.600 the frequency that certain letters were used and discovered that 0:06:07.800 --> 0:06:10.040 there was a bias. There was a pattern. Yeah, so 0:06:10.120 --> 0:06:12.360 he said, well, with this bias, that means that we 0:06:12.400 --> 0:06:15.040 can start to narrow down the possibilities of these codes, 0:06:15.279 --> 0:06:18.240 and in fact he was able to demonstrate that this 0:06:18.400 --> 0:06:20.680 was a way to help break German codes, and Touring, 0:06:20.720 --> 0:06:23.640 when he saw Goods work, said, I could have sworn 0:06:23.680 --> 0:06:28.400 I tried that, but clearly that showed that it worked well. 0:06:28.440 --> 0:06:31.799 And then good and another point apparently went to sleep 0:06:31.839 --> 0:06:34.680 one day and they've been working on a code that 0:06:34.720 --> 0:06:37.479 they just could not break, and while he was sleeping, 0:06:37.560 --> 0:06:41.440 he dreamed that perhaps when the Germans were encoding this 0:06:41.480 --> 0:06:44.680 particular message, they used the letters in reverse of the 0:06:44.680 --> 0:06:47.039 way they were actually printed, and so he tried that 0:06:47.120 --> 0:06:49.240 when he woke up, and it turned out he was right. 0:06:49.839 --> 0:06:52.479 And so then his argument was Touring, I need to 0:06:52.480 --> 0:06:52.920 go to bed. 0:06:53.080 --> 0:06:55.880 So yeah, yeah, what the moral of the story here 0:06:56.040 --> 0:06:57.479 is that naps are good? 0:06:57.640 --> 0:07:01.239 Yes, and no one should talk to you, right, yeah, yeah, 0:07:01.279 --> 0:07:04.919 that's how I live my life. But yeah, so so 0:07:05.040 --> 0:07:07.839 Goods point. Anyway, he came up with this term of 0:07:07.880 --> 0:07:11.400 the intelligence explosion, and it was this this sort of 0:07:11.440 --> 0:07:14.360 idea that we're going to reach a point where we 0:07:14.560 --> 0:07:18.320 are increasing either our own intelligence or some sort of 0:07:18.400 --> 0:07:23.239 artificial intelligence so far beyond what we are currently capable 0:07:23.240 --> 0:07:28.520 of understanding, that life as we know it will change. Completely, 0:07:28.720 --> 0:07:32.080 and because it's going to go beyond what we know 0:07:32.240 --> 0:07:34.880 right now, there's no way to predict what our life 0:07:34.920 --> 0:07:38.160 will be like, right because it's beyond our because it 0:07:38.240 --> 0:07:38.560 is it. 0:07:38.520 --> 0:07:41.200 Is Yeah, by definition out of our comprehension. 0:07:41.280 --> 0:07:44.760 Yes, as the Scots would say, it's beyond our ken. 0:07:46.720 --> 0:07:48.720 Are we going to be doing accents of this episode? 0:07:48.720 --> 0:07:51.840 So that was a terrible one. I actually regret doing 0:07:51.880 --> 0:07:55.520 it right now. I already knew I couldn't do Scottish 0:07:55.560 --> 0:07:58.840 and yet there I went. Anyway, you're trail placing again. Yeah, 0:07:59.000 --> 0:08:01.960 So to to kind of backtrack a bit before we 0:08:02.080 --> 0:08:06.840 really get into the whole singularity discussion, that was just 0:08:07.200 --> 0:08:12.040 a brief overview. A good foundation to start from is 0:08:12.160 --> 0:08:16.000 the concept of Moore's law. You know, Originally Gordon Moore, 0:08:16.320 --> 0:08:18.280 who by the way, was a co founder of a 0:08:18.280 --> 0:08:23.400 little company called Intel, he originally observed back in nineteen 0:08:23.520 --> 0:08:26.520 sixty five in a paper that I'm going to I'm 0:08:26.520 --> 0:08:28.760 going to with this, but it was called something like 0:08:28.840 --> 0:08:32.559 cramming more components onto integrated circuits something like that. That 0:08:33.000 --> 0:08:35.680 was actually cramming was definitely one of the words used, 0:08:36.600 --> 0:08:40.120 and circuit probably was too. Anyway, he noticed that over 0:08:40.400 --> 0:08:43.800 the course of I think originally it was twelve months, 0:08:43.840 --> 0:08:48.360 but today we consider it two years. 0:08:47.240 --> 0:08:50.400 Eighteen to twenty four months, I think is the official, unofficial. 0:08:50.000 --> 0:08:53.760 Right, right, right, Yeah, that the number of discrete components 0:08:53.800 --> 0:08:58.000 on a square inch silicon wafer would double due to 0:08:58.200 --> 0:09:04.120 improvements in manufacturing and efficiency, so that in effect, what 0:09:04.200 --> 0:09:08.040 this means to the layman is that our electronics and 0:09:08.080 --> 0:09:12.160 particularly our computers get twice as powerful every two years. 0:09:12.240 --> 0:09:14.720 So if you bought a computer in nineteen ninety eight 0:09:15.040 --> 0:09:17.280 and then bought another computer in two thousand, in theory, 0:09:17.360 --> 0:09:19.800 the computer in two thousand would be twice as powerful 0:09:19.800 --> 0:09:22.800 as the one from nineteen ninety eight. This is exponential growth. 0:09:23.920 --> 0:09:28.600 That's an important component, this idea of exponential growth, right, 0:09:29.240 --> 0:09:33.520 And it goes without saying that if you continue on 0:09:33.559 --> 0:09:37.840 this path, if this, if this continues indefinitely, then you know, 0:09:37.920 --> 0:09:41.480 you quickly get to computers of almost unimaginable power just 0:09:41.559 --> 0:09:42.440 a decade. 0:09:42.120 --> 0:09:45.439 Out certainly, although I mean I still don't really understand 0:09:45.440 --> 0:09:49.120 what a gigabyte means, because when I first started using computers, 0:09:49.120 --> 0:09:50.960 we were not counting in that. I mean, I mean, 0:09:51.000 --> 0:09:52.840 I was still impressed by kilobytes at the time. 0:09:52.920 --> 0:09:55.520 So yeah, Now, I remember the first time I got 0:09:56.080 --> 0:09:58.000 a hard drive, I think it had like a two 0:09:58.120 --> 0:10:00.720 hundred and fifty megabyte hard drive. I thought, you're like, 0:10:00.960 --> 0:10:03.840 who needs that much space? Now? Grat that's that's space 0:10:03.880 --> 0:10:07.760 we're talking about, not even processing pay right, absolutely, So, yeah, 0:10:07.800 --> 0:10:11.240 it's it's it's one of those things where the older 0:10:11.280 --> 0:10:13.880 you are, the more incredible today, is right, because you 0:10:13.920 --> 0:10:16.360 start looking at computers and you think, I remember when 0:10:16.360 --> 0:10:19.479 these things came out, and they were essentially the equivalent 0:10:19.520 --> 0:10:22.559 of a of a really good desktop calculator. Right. So, 0:10:23.320 --> 0:10:27.320 but Moore's law states that this advance will continue indefinitely 0:10:27.520 --> 0:10:30.920 until we hit some sort of fundamental obstacle that we 0:10:31.080 --> 0:10:32.880 just cannot engineer our way around. 0:10:32.960 --> 0:10:35.080 Oh right, you know, and people that's why it's it's 0:10:35.120 --> 0:10:37.600 kind of in contention right now, because people are saying that, well, 0:10:37.640 --> 0:10:39.880 there's there's only so much physical space that you can 0:10:39.880 --> 0:10:43.520 fit onto with silicone. There there's there's a physical limitation 0:10:43.600 --> 0:10:45.720 to the material in which there's only so much it 0:10:45.720 --> 0:10:47.480 can do about it. And so does More's law still 0:10:47.520 --> 0:10:50.280 apply if we're talking about other materials and what's you. 0:10:50.240 --> 0:10:52.880 Know, right, and and how small can you get before 0:10:53.000 --> 0:10:56.319 you start to run into quantum effects that are impossible 0:10:56.320 --> 0:10:59.240 to work around. Uh, and then do you change the 0:10:59.320 --> 0:11:02.440 geometry of a chip? Do you go three dimensional instead 0:11:02.440 --> 0:11:04.800 of two dimensional? Would that help? And yeah, there are 0:11:04.800 --> 0:11:07.440 a lot of engineers are working on this, and frankly, 0:11:08.040 --> 0:11:10.160 pretty much every couple of years, someone says, all right, 0:11:10.520 --> 0:11:14.240 this is the year Moore's Law ends to end. It's over, 0:11:14.320 --> 0:11:17.319 it's gone, it's done with. Five years later, you're still 0:11:17.320 --> 0:11:19.880 going strong. Yeah, And then on the six years someone 0:11:19.880 --> 0:11:21.680 else says More's Law is gonna end. 0:11:21.679 --> 0:11:23.679 It's a little bit of a self fulfilling prophecy. I 0:11:23.679 --> 0:11:26.680 think that a lot of companies attempt to. 0:11:26.040 --> 0:11:28.520 Keep it going. To keep it going, oh sure, yeah, yeah, yeah. 0:11:28.600 --> 0:11:31.880 I mean, no one wants to be the ones to say, uh, guys, 0:11:31.920 --> 0:11:35.439 guess what, we can't keep up with More's law anymore. 0:11:35.480 --> 0:11:37.040 No one wants to do that, so it is a 0:11:37.040 --> 0:11:37.760 good motivator. 0:11:37.840 --> 0:11:39.880 Also, if I can footnote myself real quick, I'm pretty 0:11:39.920 --> 0:11:42.240 sure that I just pronounced silicon is still a cone, 0:11:42.240 --> 0:11:43.560 and I would like I would like to stay for 0:11:43.559 --> 0:11:45.480 the record that I know that those are two different substances. 0:11:45.559 --> 0:11:47.680 Okay, that's fair. Anyway, I was I was going to 0:11:47.679 --> 0:11:49.720 ask you about it, but by the time you were 0:11:49.720 --> 0:11:52.920 finished talking, I thought, let's just go Yeah, that's cool. 0:11:53.679 --> 0:11:56.640 It's all right. If you knew how many times I 0:11:56.720 --> 0:12:01.760 have used that particular pronunciation to hilarious results, excellent. So 0:12:01.920 --> 0:12:04.880 moving on with this whole idea about Moore's law, I mean, 0:12:04.920 --> 0:12:08.200 the reason this plays into the singularity is with the 0:12:08.280 --> 0:12:12.880 technological advances, you start to be able to achieve pretty 0:12:12.880 --> 0:12:19.080 incredible things, and even within one generation of Moore's law, 0:12:19.120 --> 0:12:22.240 which kind of a meaningless term. But let's say you 0:12:22.360 --> 0:12:25.040 arbitrarily pick a date and then two years from that 0:12:25.120 --> 0:12:28.000 date you look and see what's possible with the new technology, 0:12:28.440 --> 0:12:32.000 and getting to twice as much power however you want 0:12:32.000 --> 0:12:35.440 to define it doesn't necessarily mean that you've only doubled 0:12:35.640 --> 0:12:37.920 the amount of things you can do with that power. 0:12:37.960 --> 0:12:42.440 You may have limitless things you can do. So with 0:12:42.520 --> 0:12:46.360 that idea, you're talking about being able to power through 0:12:46.440 --> 0:12:49.760 problems way faster than you did before. And there's lots 0:12:49.760 --> 0:12:53.280 of different ways of doing that. For example, grid computing. 0:12:53.559 --> 0:12:57.400 Grid computing is when you are linking computers together to 0:12:57.480 --> 0:13:00.560 work on a problem all at once. Now works really 0:13:00.559 --> 0:13:04.360 well with certain problems parallel problems we call them. These 0:13:04.400 --> 0:13:07.679 are problems where there are lots of potential solutions and 0:13:07.760 --> 0:13:12.239 each computer essentially is working on one set of potential solutions. 0:13:12.559 --> 0:13:14.560 And that way you have all these different computers working 0:13:14.600 --> 0:13:17.120 on it at the same time. It reduces the overall 0:13:17.200 --> 0:13:20.560 time it takes to solve that parallel problem. And so 0:13:21.400 --> 0:13:23.600 like if you've ever heard of anything like folding at 0:13:23.600 --> 0:13:27.079 Home or the SETI project, where you could dedicate your 0:13:27.120 --> 0:13:31.760 computer's idle time, So the idle processes, the processes that 0:13:31.880 --> 0:13:34.440 are not being used while you're serving the web or 0:13:34.720 --> 0:13:40.240 writing how the singularity works, or I don't know, building 0:13:40.320 --> 0:13:46.000 an architectural program in some sort of CAD application. Anything 0:13:46.000 --> 0:13:48.840 that you're not using can be dedicated to one of 0:13:48.840 --> 0:13:53.400 these projects. Same sort of idea that you don't necessarily 0:13:53.400 --> 0:13:57.199 have to build a supercomputer to solve complex problems if 0:13:57.200 --> 0:13:59.559 you use a whole bunch of computers, whole bunch of 0:13:59.559 --> 0:14:02.679 small ones. Large Hadron Collider does this, although they use 0:14:02.840 --> 0:14:05.439 very nice advanced computers, but they do a lot of 0:14:05.480 --> 0:14:10.280 grid computing as well. So just using those kind of models, 0:14:10.320 --> 0:14:13.960 we see that we're able to do much more sophisticated 0:14:13.960 --> 0:14:15.160 things than we could. 0:14:15.240 --> 0:14:18.400 Otherwise if we were certainly, Yes, networks, as it turns out, 0:14:18.440 --> 0:14:19.160 are pretty cool. 0:14:19.360 --> 0:14:21.640 Yeah, and networks play a part in this idea of 0:14:21.640 --> 0:14:24.560 the singularity. Actually, I guess now is a good time 0:14:24.600 --> 0:14:28.960 we'll kind of transition into Werner Venge's and I honestly, 0:14:29.040 --> 0:14:30.400 I don't know how to say his last name. I 0:14:30.400 --> 0:14:33.080 say Vinge, and it could end up being ringy. But 0:14:33.560 --> 0:14:35.680 I just went with what you said. So that's great, 0:14:35.800 --> 0:14:38.160 that's fine. Let's do it. What we'll say that Venge 0:14:38.160 --> 0:14:43.160 says everything is silicone. So Werner though he vern, I 0:14:43.200 --> 0:14:50.040 call him Vern. He suggested four different potential pathways that 0:14:50.160 --> 0:14:53.840 humans could take, or really that the world could take, yes, 0:14:54.080 --> 0:14:57.800 to arrive at the technological singularity. Okay, what are they? 0:14:58.080 --> 0:15:03.120 The four ways are we could develop a superhuman artificial intelligence, 0:15:03.920 --> 0:15:08.800 So computers suddenly are able to think on a level 0:15:08.840 --> 0:15:11.760 that's analogous to the way humans think and can do 0:15:11.800 --> 0:15:15.560 it better than better. Right whether or not that means 0:15:15.680 --> 0:15:19.600 computers are conscious, that's debatable. We'll get into that too. 0:15:20.480 --> 0:15:24.000 Computer networks could somehow become self aware. That's number two. Okay, 0:15:24.480 --> 0:15:27.960 So yes, skynet, so like the grid computing we were 0:15:28.000 --> 0:15:32.520 just talking about that. Somehow using these grid computers. The 0:15:32.560 --> 0:15:34.360 network itself. 0:15:34.000 --> 0:15:37.200 Having enough cycles and enough pathways and enough loops back around, 0:15:37.320 --> 0:15:39.560 it starts going like, hey, I recognize this, yeah, and 0:15:39.840 --> 0:15:40.840 starts thinking about. 0:15:41.560 --> 0:15:45.720 Like thinking about IBM's Watson. But it's distributed across a network. 0:15:45.880 --> 0:15:48.560 So computers. You can think of computers as all being 0:15:48.840 --> 0:15:53.880 super powerful neurons in a brain, and that the network 0:15:53.920 --> 0:15:58.440 is actually neural pathways. And it's definitely a science fiction 0:15:58.560 --> 0:16:01.360 ye way of looking at things. Doesn't mean it won't happen, 0:16:02.200 --> 0:16:04.840 but strangers, my friends, it feels like a matrix kind 0:16:04.840 --> 0:16:07.280 of thing to me. Then we have the idea that 0:16:07.480 --> 0:16:13.560 computer human interfaces are so advanced and so intrinsically tied 0:16:13.640 --> 0:16:18.800 to who we are, that humans themselves evolve beyond being human, 0:16:18.840 --> 0:16:22.200 we become trans human. Okay, So this is an idea 0:16:22.240 --> 0:16:25.440 that we almost merge with computers at least on some. 0:16:25.560 --> 0:16:29.040 Level via kind of nanobot technology, you know, stuff stuff 0:16:29.080 --> 0:16:32.280 running through our bloodstreams, stuff in our selves yep. 0:16:32.440 --> 0:16:36.480 Or we have just brain in our faces where our consciousness, 0:16:37.000 --> 0:16:40.200 our consciousness is connected to So for example, we might 0:16:40.240 --> 0:16:43.880 have it where instead of connecting to the internet via 0:16:44.120 --> 0:16:48.320 some device like a smartphone or a computer device. Yeah, 0:16:48.320 --> 0:16:52.160 it's right there in our meat brains, so that you know, 0:16:52.160 --> 0:16:54.760 you're sitting there having a conversation with someone. Then you're like, oh, wait, 0:16:55.120 --> 0:16:57.240 what movie was that guy in? Let me just look 0:16:57.320 --> 0:17:01.440 up IMDb in my brain. And then you you know, 0:17:01.520 --> 0:17:04.840 depending on how good your connection is, which means, by 0:17:04.840 --> 0:17:07.520 the way, if you are a journalist and you attend CEES, 0:17:07.680 --> 0:17:10.560 you will automatically be dumber because all the all the 0:17:10.560 --> 0:17:12.920 internet connectivity will be taken up, and so you'll be 0:17:12.960 --> 0:17:15.760 sitting there trying to ask good questions and druel will 0:17:15.760 --> 0:17:17.840 come out of your mouth, which to me is a 0:17:17.840 --> 0:17:18.680 typical CEES. 0:17:19.200 --> 0:17:21.680 I can I can only assume that that wireless technology 0:17:21.680 --> 0:17:24.320 would advance also at this point, but one can only 0:17:24.320 --> 0:17:25.320 hope fingers crossed. 0:17:25.480 --> 0:17:27.879 There are certain technologies that are not advancing at the 0:17:27.880 --> 0:17:30.440 exponential rate of Moore's law, which is another problem. We'll 0:17:30.440 --> 0:17:33.320 talk about that. Yeah. And then the fourth and final 0:17:33.800 --> 0:17:38.120 method that Werner had suggested the world may go would 0:17:38.119 --> 0:17:42.080 be that humans would advance so far in biological sciences 0:17:42.400 --> 0:17:46.199 that they would allow us to engineer human intelligence so 0:17:46.240 --> 0:17:49.200 that we could make ourselves as smart as we wanted 0:17:49.240 --> 0:17:51.840 to be. This is sort of that Gattica future where 0:17:52.040 --> 0:17:55.320 we've got all the another another great documentary where we 0:17:55.920 --> 0:18:01.120 engineer ourselves to be super smart. Right, So those are 0:18:01.119 --> 0:18:04.560 the four pathways artificial intelligence, computer networks become self aware, 0:18:04.960 --> 0:18:08.919 computer human interfaces become really really awesome, or we have 0:18:09.000 --> 0:18:14.080 biologically engineered human intelligence, and all four of these lead 0:18:14.160 --> 0:18:18.239 to a similar outcome, which is this intelligence explosion. And 0:18:18.280 --> 0:18:22.760 this is the idea that some form of superhuman intelligence 0:18:22.840 --> 0:18:26.480 is created, either artificially or within ourselves, and that at 0:18:26.520 --> 0:18:29.680 that point we will no longer be able to predict 0:18:29.720 --> 0:18:33.320 what our world will will be like, because by definition, 0:18:33.359 --> 0:18:38.080 we will have a superhuman intelligent entity involved. And because 0:18:38.080 --> 0:18:42.720 that's superhuman, it's beyond our ability to predict. Right, which 0:18:42.760 --> 0:18:44.680 is you know which. 0:18:44.440 --> 0:18:47.359 Which makes that experience experiments about it a little bit uh. 0:18:49.280 --> 0:18:53.960 Philosophical. Yeah, that's the kind way of putting it pointless, 0:18:54.000 --> 0:18:56.399 would be another way of putting it, like we could 0:18:56.440 --> 0:18:59.359 we could, you know, sit there and and spitball a 0:18:59.400 --> 0:19:02.920 whole bunch of possible futures. But that's the thing, they're possible. 0:19:02.960 --> 0:19:05.600 We don't know which one could come out. We don't 0:19:05.600 --> 0:19:08.800 even know if these four pathways are inevitable. We have 0:19:08.880 --> 0:19:11.760 futurists who truly believe that this is something that will 0:19:11.840 --> 0:19:14.920 happen at some point. There are other people who are 0:19:15.680 --> 0:19:19.160 more skeptical, but we'll talk about them in a bit. 0:19:19.280 --> 0:19:23.399 So one of the outcomes that Werner was talking about, 0:19:24.160 --> 0:19:27.919 and it's a fairly popular one in futurist circles, is 0:19:27.960 --> 0:19:32.679 the idea of the robo apocalypse. Essentially, right, this is 0:19:32.680 --> 0:19:36.439 where you've got the humans are bad, destroy all humans idea, 0:19:38.119 --> 0:19:42.359 Essentially the ideas that humans would become extinct, either through 0:19:42.400 --> 0:19:46.199 definition because we've evolved into something else or because whatever 0:19:46.240 --> 0:19:49.520 the superhuman intelligence is it besides, we are a problem. 0:19:49.600 --> 0:19:51.320 Yeah, and a lot of futurists are a lot more 0:19:51.359 --> 0:19:53.679 positive about that. They're more looking forward to it than 0:19:53.720 --> 0:19:55.520 being scared of it. It's less of a oh no, 0:19:55.640 --> 0:19:58.120 big scary robots are coming to take over our society 0:19:58.240 --> 0:20:00.679 and more of a robot it's are coming to take 0:20:00.720 --> 0:20:02.439 over our society like free day. 0:20:02.600 --> 0:20:05.480 Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, I don't have to work anymore, 0:20:05.680 --> 0:20:09.320 and and I don't because robots are supplying all the 0:20:09.320 --> 0:20:13.120 things we need. There's no need for anyone to work anymore. 0:20:13.160 --> 0:20:16.120 There's no need for money anymore because the only reason 0:20:16.119 --> 0:20:18.000 you need money is so you can buy stuff. But 0:20:18.040 --> 0:20:20.520 if everything's free, then you don't need you. So it 0:20:20.520 --> 0:20:23.359 becomes Star Trek and we all, you know, run around 0:20:23.400 --> 0:20:27.240 in jumpsuits and right punch people. And if you're Kirk, 0:20:27.280 --> 0:20:30.080 you make out a lot. I mean a lot. That 0:20:30.240 --> 0:20:35.960 dude every week Becrden Riiker. If you add them together, 0:20:36.520 --> 0:20:37.160 make one. 0:20:37.040 --> 0:20:39.399 Kirk and yes in this documentary series. 0:20:39.440 --> 0:20:41.960 Yeah, Star Trek. Yeah, I don't know about our trick 0:20:41.960 --> 0:20:44.720 because I never watched Enterprise, So you guys have to 0:20:44.720 --> 0:20:46.840 get back to me on that. Yeah, sorry, sorry about that. That. 0:20:46.840 --> 0:20:48.720 It's also a gap in my personal understanding. 0:20:48.960 --> 0:20:51.119 I just took one look at that decontamination chamber and 0:20:51.119 --> 0:20:55.480 I said, yep, I'm out anyway. So that's that's Werner Revenge. 0:20:55.880 --> 0:20:59.679 It's he's sort of popularized this idea, but he's there 0:20:59.720 --> 0:21:02.080 are other people have kind of I think their names 0:21:02.119 --> 0:21:04.920 are synonymous with it, and we will talk about them 0:21:05.480 --> 0:21:08.240 in just a minute and now back to the show. 0:21:09.040 --> 0:21:13.240 So Werner Venge again very much associated with the idea 0:21:13.320 --> 0:21:16.399 of the singularity. But there's another name that comes up 0:21:16.440 --> 0:21:18.280 all the time, Ray Kurtsweile. 0:21:18.720 --> 0:21:21.640 Ray Kurtsweil, and this is a fellow who has been 0:21:21.720 --> 0:21:25.520 referred to in various circles as the Thomas Edison of 0:21:25.640 --> 0:21:30.639 modern technology, or or, perhaps more colorfully, the Willy Wonka 0:21:30.680 --> 0:21:33.000 of technology. That was by Jef Duncan of Digital Trends, 0:21:33.000 --> 0:21:35.800 and I just wanted to shout out because that was great, nice. 0:21:36.119 --> 0:21:40.280 But you get nothing. I shared a remix of Willy 0:21:40.280 --> 0:21:43.240 Wonka earlier today and it's still playing through my head. 0:21:43.320 --> 0:21:45.679 We're fans, we might be fans of the Gene Wilder 0:21:45.720 --> 0:21:48.639 Willy Wonka. Everyone, homework assignment, go watch that. It has 0:21:48.720 --> 0:21:51.720 nothing to do with the singularity, the singularity at all. 0:21:51.800 --> 0:21:54.919 I don't know there's some chocolate singularity in there, Chocolate Singularity. 0:21:54.960 --> 0:21:56.000 I want to do an episode on. 0:21:58.480 --> 0:22:00.320 If I were better at cover band names, I totally 0:22:00.320 --> 0:22:01.680 would have said something whitty right there. 0:22:01.760 --> 0:22:03.639 Yeah, all right, well, fair enough, we'll say it's the 0:22:03.720 --> 0:22:07.480 Archies for Sugar Sugar, Oh dear, Oh my goodness. 0:22:07.720 --> 0:22:12.120 Okay, So Ray Kurtzweil, Yeah, Ray Kurtzweil is the kind 0:22:12.119 --> 0:22:14.080 of cat who you know, when he was in high 0:22:14.080 --> 0:22:17.760 school invented a computer program. And this is in the 0:22:17.840 --> 0:22:20.479 mid nineteen sixties. This isn't like last year or something 0:22:20.680 --> 0:22:23.480 in the mid nineteen sixties, created a computer program that 0:22:24.000 --> 0:22:26.800