WEBVTT - TechStuff Enters the Singularity 0:00:02.480 --> 0:00:05.840 Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how Stuff, 0:00:05.840 --> 0:00:14.760 What's dot Com? Hey there everyone, and welcome to tech Stuff. 0:00:14.800 --> 0:00:18.680 My name is Jonathan Strickland, Host Extraordinary and I'm Lauren 0:00:18.720 --> 0:00:23.400 vocal Bam host Extraordinary or that's very true. And uh, 0:00:23.440 --> 0:00:29.040 and today we wanted to talk about the future. The future. Yeah, really, 0:00:29.040 --> 0:00:31.760 we're talking about kind of a science fiction future. We're 0:00:31.760 --> 0:00:36.479 talking about the singularity and uh, long time listeners to 0:00:36.600 --> 0:00:39.240 tech Stuff and I'm talking about folks who listen way 0:00:39.360 --> 0:00:42.879 back before we ever talked out at thirty minutes, let 0:00:42.880 --> 0:00:45.920 alone an hour. May remember that we did an episode 0:00:45.920 --> 0:00:48.960 about how Ray Kurtzwild works. And Ray Kurtzwild is a 0:00:48.960 --> 0:00:52.040 futurist and one of the things he talks about extensively, 0:00:52.240 --> 0:00:54.880 particularly if you corner him at a cocktail party, is 0:00:54.920 --> 0:00:58.200 the singularity. And so we wanted to talk about what 0:00:58.280 --> 0:01:01.240 the singularity is, why this idea, you know, we really 0:01:01.240 --> 0:01:03.600 wanted to kind of dig down into it, and why 0:01:03.680 --> 0:01:07.680 is this a big deal? And how realistic is this 0:01:08.120 --> 0:01:10.319 vision of the future. Yeah, because some people would take 0:01:10.360 --> 0:01:13.759 a little bit of h would would argue with your 0:01:13.880 --> 0:01:16.600 concept of it being science fiction. They take it extremely serious. 0:01:16.720 --> 0:01:19.240 Oh yeah, they say it's science fact, science fact, it's 0:01:19.280 --> 0:01:23.400 science inevitability. Yeah, the time. The term was actually coined 0:01:23.440 --> 0:01:26.680 by a mathematician, John von Newman in the nineteen fifties. Um, 0:01:26.680 --> 0:01:32.080 but it was popularized by a science fiction writer. Yeah, 0:01:32.120 --> 0:01:35.760 it's also Ah, there are a lot of different concepts 0:01:35.760 --> 0:01:37.600 that are tied up together, and it all depends on 0:01:37.800 --> 0:01:40.640 upon whom you ask what it means by the singularity. 0:01:40.680 --> 0:01:43.679 For instance, there's some people who when you hear the 0:01:43.760 --> 0:01:46.520 term the singularity, what they say is, Okay, that's a 0:01:46.680 --> 0:01:49.160 time when we get to the point where technological advances 0:01:49.200 --> 0:01:53.160 are coming so quickly that it's impossible to have a 0:01:53.360 --> 0:01:57.240 meaningful conversation of what the state of technology is because 0:01:57.240 --> 0:02:01.040 it changes. It changes five the milliseconds. So that's one version. 0:02:01.280 --> 0:02:04.160 But most of the versions that that we're familiar with 0:02:04.280 --> 0:02:09.040 that the futurists talk about incorporate an idea of superhuman 0:02:09.080 --> 0:02:13.760 intelligence or the intelligence explosion, right, a kind of combination 0:02:14.000 --> 0:02:17.960 of of human and technological development that just dovetails into 0:02:17.960 --> 0:02:20.799 this gorgeous you know, space baby from two thousand one 0:02:20.919 --> 0:02:23.560 kind of that's an excellent way of putting it. The 0:02:23.600 --> 0:02:28.239 documentary two thousand one. I remember specifically when the space 0:02:28.280 --> 0:02:33.040 baby looked at Earth. Okay, but that documentary example doesn't 0:02:33.040 --> 0:02:35.320 work at all. He usually does, but not this time. Yeah, 0:02:35.360 --> 0:02:38.240 not this time. Sorry. Space babies are a poor example 0:02:38.320 --> 0:02:42.440 in this in this one instance. But but metaphorically speaking, yes, 0:02:42.520 --> 0:02:46.280 you're right on track, because the intelligence explosion. That was 0:02:46.320 --> 0:02:50.680 a term introduced by someone known as Irving John Good, 0:02:50.840 --> 0:02:52.680 or if you want to go with, his birth name 0:02:53.040 --> 0:02:56.079 is a door Ja cub Gudak. I can see why 0:02:56.080 --> 0:02:59.080 he changed it. Yeah he uh. He actually worked for 0:02:59.120 --> 0:03:03.600 a while at Bletchley Park with another fellow who who 0:03:03.800 --> 0:03:06.040 made sort of a name for himself in computer science, 0:03:06.040 --> 0:03:09.799 a fellow named Alan Turing. I guess I've heard of him. Yeah. 0:03:09.840 --> 0:03:12.520 Touring will come up in the discussion a little bit later, 0:03:12.600 --> 0:03:15.720 but but for right now, So Irving John Good just 0:03:15.720 --> 0:03:18.560 just a little quick anecdote that I thought was amusing. 0:03:19.000 --> 0:03:23.280 So Good was working with Touring to try and help 0:03:23.560 --> 0:03:26.120 break German codes. I mean, that's what Bletchley Park was 0:03:26.160 --> 0:03:31.680 all about, right, So Good apparently one day drew the 0:03:31.800 --> 0:03:35.240 ire of touring when he decided to take a little 0:03:35.240 --> 0:03:38.440 cat nap because he was tired and he was It 0:03:38.560 --> 0:03:42.400 was Good's philosophy that being tired did not mean that. 0:03:42.440 --> 0:03:44.280 He meant that he was not going to work at 0:03:44.320 --> 0:03:47.200 his best, and he might as well go ahead and nap, exactly, 0:03:47.240 --> 0:03:50.800 take a nap, get refreshed, and then tackle the problem again, 0:03:50.840 --> 0:03:53.280 and you're more likely to solve it. Whereas touring was 0:03:53.480 --> 0:03:56.280 very much a workhorse, you know he was he was 0:03:56.680 --> 0:04:00.880 no rest, no rest, let's do it. So touring, when 0:04:00.880 --> 0:04:03.880 he discovered that Good had been napping, decided that that 0:04:04.000 --> 0:04:07.240 this was the Good was not so good um and 0:04:07.240 --> 0:04:11.920 and touring Touring sort of treated him with disdain. He 0:04:12.080 --> 0:04:16.920 began to essentially not speak to Good. Good meanwhile, began 0:04:17.000 --> 0:04:19.760 to think about the letters that were being used to 0:04:20.400 --> 0:04:24.760 in Enigma codes to code German messages, and he began 0:04:24.800 --> 0:04:27.960 to think, what if these letters are not completely random? 0:04:28.040 --> 0:04:31.039 What if the Germans are relying on some letters more 0:04:31.080 --> 0:04:34.240 frequently than others, And he began to look at frequency 0:04:34.360 --> 0:04:36.520 of these letters being used. He made up a table 0:04:37.120 --> 0:04:41.880 and mathematically analyze the frequency that certain letters were used 0:04:41.920 --> 0:04:45.920 and discovered that there was a bias. Yeah, so he said, well, 0:04:46.000 --> 0:04:47.919 with this bias, that means that we can start to 0:04:48.000 --> 0:04:50.960 narrow down the possibilities of these codes. And in fact 0:04:51.240 --> 0:04:53.840 he was able to demonstrate that this was a way 0:04:53.839 --> 0:04:56.240 to help break German codes, and Touring, when he saw 0:04:56.360 --> 0:05:00.719 Good's work, said the sword, I tried that, but but 0:05:00.839 --> 0:05:04.200 clearly that showed that it worked well. And then Good 0:05:04.200 --> 0:05:08.160 and another point apparently went to sleep one day and 0:05:08.440 --> 0:05:10.359 they've been working on a code that they just could 0:05:10.360 --> 0:05:14.000 not break, and while he was sleeping, he dreamed that 0:05:14.160 --> 0:05:17.880 perhaps when the Germans were encoding this particular message, they 0:05:17.960 --> 0:05:20.080 used the letters in reverse of the way they were 0:05:20.080 --> 0:05:22.800 actually printed, and so he tried that when he woke up, 0:05:22.839 --> 0:05:25.440 and it turned out he was right. And so then 0:05:25.520 --> 0:05:27.920 his argument was Touring, I need to go to bed. 0:05:28.040 --> 0:05:30.880 So yeah, yeah, what the moral of the story here 0:05:31.080 --> 0:05:33.920 is that naps are good and no one should talk 0:05:33.960 --> 0:05:37.760 to you, right, yeah, yeah, that's how I live my life. 0:05:38.279 --> 0:05:42.120 But yeah, so so Good's point anyway, he came up 0:05:42.160 --> 0:05:44.960 with this term of the intelligence explosion, and it was 0:05:45.520 --> 0:05:47.320 this this sort of idea that we were going to 0:05:47.440 --> 0:05:51.520 reach a point where we are increasing either our own 0:05:51.560 --> 0:05:56.880 intelligence or some sort of artificial intelligence so far beyond 0:05:56.960 --> 0:06:00.360 what we are currently capable of understanding, that life as 0:06:00.400 --> 0:06:05.600 we know it will change completely. And because it's going 0:06:05.640 --> 0:06:08.680 to go beyond what we know right now there's no 0:06:08.720 --> 0:06:11.560 way to predict what our life will be like because 0:06:11.680 --> 0:06:15.359 it's beyond our because it is by definition, out of 0:06:15.360 --> 0:06:18.760 our comprehension. Yes, as the Scots would say, it's beyond 0:06:18.800 --> 0:06:23.799 our ken are we going to be doing accents this episode? 0:06:23.880 --> 0:06:27.000 That was a terrible one. I actually regret doing it 0:06:27.120 --> 0:06:30.680 right now. I already knew I couldn't do Scottish and 0:06:30.760 --> 0:06:34.320 yet there I went. Anyway, your trail placing again, So 0:06:34.800 --> 0:06:37.960 to kind of backtrack a bit before we really get 0:06:38.320 --> 0:06:43.280 into the whole singularity discussion, that was just a brief overview. 0:06:44.440 --> 0:06:48.080 A good foundation to start from is the concept of 0:06:48.160 --> 0:06:52.160 Moore's law. You know, originally Gordon Moore, who, by the way, 0:06:52.160 --> 0:06:54.480 it was a co founder of a little company called Intel. 0:06:55.120 --> 0:06:59.200 Uh he he originally observed back in nineteen sixty five 0:06:59.240 --> 0:07:02.640 in a paper it I'm going to I'm gonna with this, 0:07:02.720 --> 0:07:05.520 but it was called something like cramming more components onto 0:07:05.560 --> 0:07:08.440 integrated circuits something like that. That was that was actually 0:07:08.640 --> 0:07:11.760 cramming was definitely one of the words used um and 0:07:11.920 --> 0:07:15.480 circuit probably was to Anyway, he noticed that over the 0:07:15.560 --> 0:07:18.920 course of I think originally it was twelve months, but 0:07:19.080 --> 0:07:23.320 today we consider it two years, uh eight twenty four months, 0:07:23.360 --> 0:07:26.040 I think is the official unofficial right right right? Yeah, 0:07:26.080 --> 0:07:29.440 that that the number of discrete components on a a 0:07:29.640 --> 0:07:33.880 square inch silicon wafer would double due to improvements in 0:07:33.960 --> 0:07:39.320 manufacturing and efficiency. So that, uh, in effect, what this 0:07:39.400 --> 0:07:43.800 means to the layman is that our electronics and particularly 0:07:43.880 --> 0:07:47.400 our computers get twice as powerful every two years. So 0:07:47.680 --> 0:07:50.720 if you bought a computer in and then bought another 0:07:50.760 --> 0:07:53.120 computer in two thousand, in theory, the computer in two 0:07:53.120 --> 0:07:55.200 thousand would be twice as powerful as the one fro. 0:07:56.440 --> 0:08:00.880 This is exponential growth. Uh. That's an important component, this 0:08:01.080 --> 0:08:06.840 idea of exponential growth. And it goes without saying that 0:08:07.680 --> 0:08:10.040 if you continue on this path, if this, if this 0:08:10.120 --> 0:08:14.680 continues indefinitely, then you know, you quickly get to computers 0:08:14.680 --> 0:08:18.360 of almost unimaginable power just a decade out certainly, although 0:08:18.400 --> 0:08:21.200 I mean I still don't really understand what a gigabyte 0:08:21.240 --> 0:08:24.280 means because when when I first started using computers, we 0:08:24.280 --> 0:08:26.040 were not counting in that. I mean, I mean I 0:08:26.120 --> 0:08:28.720 was still impressed by kilobytes at the time. So yeah, now, 0:08:28.800 --> 0:08:31.680 I remember the first time I got a hard drive, 0:08:31.760 --> 0:08:34.960 I think it had like a two fifty megabyte hard drive, 0:08:35.000 --> 0:08:37.640 and I thought, who needs that much space? Now? Gad, 0:08:37.720 --> 0:08:41.720 that's that's space we're talking about, not even processing pis. 0:08:42.320 --> 0:08:44.720 So yeah, it's it's it's one of those things where 0:08:45.160 --> 0:08:48.440 the older you are, the more incredible today, is right, 0:08:48.520 --> 0:08:50.840 because you start looking at computers and you think, I 0:08:50.840 --> 0:08:53.319 remember when these things came out and they were essentially 0:08:53.360 --> 0:08:56.600 the equivalent of a of a really good desktop calculator. 0:08:57.440 --> 0:09:01.600 So but Moore's law states that this advance will continue 0:09:01.600 --> 0:09:05.800 indefinitely until we hit some sort of fundamental obstacle that 0:09:05.840 --> 0:09:08.560 we just cannot engineer our way around, right, you know, 0:09:08.679 --> 0:09:10.400 And people that that's why it's it's kind of in 0:09:10.440 --> 0:09:12.840 contention right now, because people are saying that, well, there's 0:09:12.920 --> 0:09:15.120 there's only so much physical space that you can fit 0:09:15.360 --> 0:09:18.560 onto with with silicone, there's there's there's a physical limitation 0:09:18.600 --> 0:09:20.719 to the material in which there's only so much you 0:09:20.720 --> 0:09:22.240 can do about it, And so does more It's law 0:09:22.280 --> 0:09:25.080 still apply if we're talking about other materials, and what's 0:09:25.120 --> 0:09:27.400 you know, right, and and how small can you get 0:09:27.559 --> 0:09:30.760 before you start to run into quantum effects that are 0:09:30.800 --> 0:09:34.120 impossible to work around? Uh? And then do you change 0:09:34.160 --> 0:09:37.079 the geometry of a chip. Do you go three dimensional 0:09:37.120 --> 0:09:39.680 instead of two dimensional? Would that help? And yeah, there 0:09:39.720 --> 0:09:42.480 are a lot of engineers are working on this, and frankly, 0:09:43.040 --> 0:09:45.240 pretty much every couple of years, someone says, all right, 0:09:45.520 --> 0:09:48.160 this is the year Moore's law, and it's good to end. 0:09:48.200 --> 0:09:52.319 It's over, it's done with. Five years later, you're still 0:09:52.320 --> 0:09:56.800 going strong, and then someone else is gonna end. It's 0:09:56.800 --> 0:09:58.880 a little bit of a self fulfilling prophecy. I think 0:09:58.880 --> 0:10:01.520 that a lot of companies a to to keep it going, 0:10:01.559 --> 0:10:03.640 to keep it going, Oh sure, yeah, yeah, yeah. No 0:10:04.200 --> 0:10:06.880 one wants to be the ones to say, uh, guys, 0:10:06.920 --> 0:10:10.400 guess what, we can't keep up with More's law anymore. 0:10:10.480 --> 0:10:12.040 No one wants to do that, so it is a 0:10:12.040 --> 0:10:14.480 good motivator. Also, if I can putting out myself real quick, 0:10:14.480 --> 0:10:17.160 I'm pretty sure that I just pronounced silicon is silicone, 0:10:17.280 --> 0:10:18.560 and I would like I would like to stay for 0:10:18.559 --> 0:10:20.880 the record that I know that those are two different substances. Okay, 0:10:20.880 --> 0:10:22.839 that's fair. Anyway, I was I was going to ask 0:10:22.880 --> 0:10:24.720 you about it, but by the time you're you were 0:10:24.760 --> 0:10:27.920 finished talking, I thought, let's just go Yeah, that's cool, 0:10:28.679 --> 0:10:31.679 it's all right. If you knew how many times I 0:10:31.720 --> 0:10:36.599 have used that particular pronunciation to to hilarious results. Um. 0:10:36.640 --> 0:10:39.600 So moving on with this, this whole idea about Moore's law, 0:10:39.640 --> 0:10:42.160 I mean, the reason this plays into the singularity is 0:10:42.880 --> 0:10:46.520 with the technological advances, you start to be able to 0:10:46.559 --> 0:10:53.359 achieve pretty incredible things, and uh, even within one generation 0:10:53.400 --> 0:10:56.040 of Moore's law, which is kind of a meaningless term. 0:10:56.080 --> 0:10:58.640 But let's say, let's say you arbitrarily pick a date 0:10:59.000 --> 0:11:01.040 and then two years from date you look and see 0:11:01.080 --> 0:11:05.200 what's possible with the new technology and getting to twice 0:11:05.280 --> 0:11:08.440 as much power however you wanted to. Fine, it doesn't 0:11:08.440 --> 0:11:11.760 necessarily mean that you've only doubled the amount of things 0:11:11.840 --> 0:11:15.120 you can do with that power. You may have limitless 0:11:15.160 --> 0:11:18.560 things you can do. So with that idea, you're talking 0:11:18.600 --> 0:11:23.640 about being able to power through problems way faster than 0:11:23.679 --> 0:11:25.400 you did before. And there's lots of different ways of 0:11:25.440 --> 0:11:29.560 doing that. For example, um, grid computing. Grid computing is 0:11:29.600 --> 0:11:33.000 when you are linking computers together to work on a 0:11:33.080 --> 0:11:35.840 problem all at once. Now, this works really well with 0:11:35.920 --> 0:11:39.559 certain problems, parallel problems we call them. Uh. These are 0:11:39.600 --> 0:11:42.960 problems where there are lots of potential solutions and each 0:11:43.000 --> 0:11:47.280 computer essentially is working on one set of potential solutions, 0:11:47.559 --> 0:11:49.600 and that way you have all these different computers working 0:11:49.640 --> 0:11:52.160 on it at the same time. It reduces the overall 0:11:52.200 --> 0:11:55.680 time it takes to solve that parallel problem. Uh and so, 0:11:55.800 --> 0:11:58.400 um like if you've ever heard of anything like folding 0:11:58.440 --> 0:12:01.840 at home or the set project where you could dedicate 0:12:01.920 --> 0:12:06.119 your computer's idle time. So the problem the idle processes, 0:12:06.120 --> 0:12:08.760 the processes that are not being used while you're serving 0:12:08.800 --> 0:12:12.960 the web or writing how the singularity works, or I 0:12:13.000 --> 0:12:17.680 don't know, uh, building a architectural program in in in 0:12:17.800 --> 0:12:21.960 some sort of CAD application. Anything that you're not using 0:12:22.280 --> 0:12:25.800 can be dedicated to one of these projects. Same sort 0:12:25.800 --> 0:12:28.880 of idea that, uh, you don't necessarily have to build 0:12:28.880 --> 0:12:32.800 a supercomputer to solve complex problems if you use a 0:12:32.880 --> 0:12:35.640 whole bunch of computers, whole bunch of small ones. Large 0:12:35.679 --> 0:12:39.840 Hadron Collider does this, although they use very nice advanced computers, 0:12:39.840 --> 0:12:41.560 but they do a lot of grid computing as well. 0:12:42.200 --> 0:12:45.400 So uh So, just using those kind of models, we 0:12:45.559 --> 0:12:49.200 see that we're able to do much more sophisticated things 0:12:49.200 --> 0:12:52.760 than we could if we were Certainly, Yes, networks, as 0:12:52.760 --> 0:12:55.559 it turns out, are pretty cool. Yeah, and networks play 0:12:55.600 --> 0:12:58.160 a part in this idea of the singularity. Um. Actually, 0:12:58.400 --> 0:13:00.360 I guess now is a good time. We'll we'll kind 0:13:00.360 --> 0:13:04.440 of transition into Verner Vengees And honestly, I don't know 0:13:04.440 --> 0:13:06.120 how to say his last name. I say venge and 0:13:06.160 --> 0:13:09.000 it could end up being Vinghi. But I just went 0:13:09.040 --> 0:13:12.199 with what you said. So that's great, that's fine. What 0:13:12.360 --> 0:13:15.800 we'll say that Vench says everything is silicone. Uh, so 0:13:16.320 --> 0:13:20.640 Verner though he Verne, I call him Verne. Ah he 0:13:20.640 --> 0:13:26.160 He suggested four different potential pathways that humans could take, 0:13:26.600 --> 0:13:29.800 or really that the world could take to arrive at 0:13:29.800 --> 0:13:35.600 the technological singularity. Okay, the four ways are we could 0:13:35.679 --> 0:13:41.400 develop a superhuman artificial intelligence, So computers suddenly are able 0:13:41.559 --> 0:13:45.240 to think on a level that's analogous to the way 0:13:45.320 --> 0:13:49.240 humans think and can do it better than right. Uh, 0:13:49.640 --> 0:13:53.319 whether or not that means computers are conscious, that's debatable. 0:13:53.320 --> 0:13:57.280 We'll get into that too. Computer networks could somehow become 0:13:57.320 --> 0:14:01.480 self aware. That's number two. So yes, sky net so 0:14:01.559 --> 0:14:03.679 like like the grid computing. We were just talking about 0:14:03.720 --> 0:14:09.200 that somehow using these grid computers, the network itself having 0:14:09.320 --> 0:14:12.200 enough cycles and enough pathways and enough loops back around 0:14:12.320 --> 0:14:15.400 it starts going like, hey, I recognize this, starts thinking 0:14:15.440 --> 0:14:18.720 about like like like thinking about IBM S Watson. But 0:14:18.800 --> 0:14:22.440 it's distributed across a network. So computers, you can think 0:14:22.440 --> 0:14:27.640 of computers is all being super powerful neurons in a brain, 0:14:27.760 --> 0:14:32.400 and that the network is actually neural pathways. And it's 0:14:32.400 --> 0:14:34.760 definitely a science fiction a e way of looking at things. 0:14:35.120 --> 0:14:38.600 Doesn't mean it won't happen, but stranger things, my friends. 0:14:38.640 --> 0:14:40.280 It feels like a matrix kind of thing to me. 0:14:40.840 --> 0:14:44.440 Then we have the idea that computer human interfaces are 0:14:45.360 --> 0:14:49.440 so advanced and so intrinsically tied to who we are, 0:14:49.560 --> 0:14:55.400 that humans themselves evolved beyond being human, we become trans human. 0:14:56.400 --> 0:14:59.200 So this is an idea that we almost merge with 0:14:59.240 --> 0:15:02.840 computers that on some level via kind of nanobot technology, 0:15:02.880 --> 0:15:05.560 you know, stuff stuff running through our bloodstream, stuff in 0:15:05.640 --> 0:15:11.560 our yea, or we have just brain interfaces where our consciousness, 0:15:11.960 --> 0:15:14.960 our consciousness is connected to so so for example, we 0:15:15.040 --> 0:15:18.600 might have it where instead of connecting to the Internet 0:15:18.720 --> 0:15:23.320 via some device like a smartphone or a computer, yeah, 0:15:23.360 --> 0:15:26.720 it's right there in our our meat brains, so that 0:15:26.960 --> 0:15:28.920 you know you're sitting there having a conversation with someone. 0:15:28.920 --> 0:15:31.480 Then you're like, oh, wait, what movie was that guy in? 0:15:31.680 --> 0:15:34.680 Let me just look up I am dB in my brain. 0:15:35.560 --> 0:15:37.520 And then you you know, depending on how good your 0:15:37.520 --> 0:15:40.720 connection is, which means, by the way, if you are 0:15:40.720 --> 0:15:43.440 a journalist and you attend ce s, you will automatically 0:15:43.480 --> 0:15:46.720 be dumber because all the all the internet connectivity will 0:15:46.760 --> 0:15:49.040 be taken up and so you'll be sitting there trying 0:15:49.040 --> 0:15:51.120 to ask good questions and drool will come out of 0:15:51.120 --> 0:15:53.800 your mouth, which to me is a typical c E S. 0:15:54.200 --> 0:15:56.640 I can I can only assume that that wireless technology 0:15:56.720 --> 0:15:59.320 would advance also at this point, but one can only 0:15:59.320 --> 0:16:02.120 hope fingers problems. There are certain technologies that are not 0:16:02.200 --> 0:16:04.520 advancing at the exponential rate of Moore's lave, which is 0:16:04.560 --> 0:16:07.520 another problem. We'll talk about that. And then the fourth 0:16:07.600 --> 0:16:12.440 and final method that Werner had suggested the world may 0:16:12.480 --> 0:16:15.680 go would be that humans would advance so far in 0:16:15.800 --> 0:16:20.280 biological sciences that they would allow us to engineer human 0:16:20.400 --> 0:16:23.760 intelligence so that we could make ourselves as smart as 0:16:23.800 --> 0:16:26.120 we wanted to be. This is sort of that Gattica 0:16:26.240 --> 0:16:29.680 future where we've got all the another another great documentary, 0:16:30.000 --> 0:16:35.320 where we we engineer ourselves to be super smart. So 0:16:35.760 --> 0:16:39.000 those are the four pathways artificial intelligence, computer networks become 0:16:39.000 --> 0:16:42.800 self aware, computer human interface has become really really awesome, 0:16:43.360 --> 0:16:47.040 or we have biologically engineered human intelligence and uh, and 0:16:47.360 --> 0:16:50.400 all four of these lead to a similar outcome, which 0:16:50.400 --> 0:16:54.160 is this intelligence explosion. And this is the idea that 0:16:55.760 --> 0:16:59.440 some form of superhuman intelligence is created, either artificially or 0:16:59.520 --> 0:17:02.760 within our elves, and that at that point we will 0:17:02.840 --> 0:17:05.840 no longer be able to predict what our world will 0:17:06.040 --> 0:17:08.800 will be like because by definition, we will have a 0:17:08.880 --> 0:17:14.840 superhuman intelligent entity involved. And and because that's superhuman, it's 0:17:14.880 --> 0:17:19.440 beyond our ability to predict which is you know, which, 0:17:19.480 --> 0:17:22.080 which makes thought, experience experiments about it a little bit 0:17:22.200 --> 0:17:29.000 uh philosophical, that's the kind way of putting it, uh, pointless. 0:17:29.000 --> 0:17:31.399 Would be another way of putting up like we could, 0:17:31.440 --> 0:17:34.280 we could, you know, sit there and and and spitball 0:17:34.320 --> 0:17:37.159 a whole bunch of possible futures. But that's the thing, 0:17:37.200 --> 0:17:40.240 they're possible. We don't know which one could come out. 0:17:40.280 --> 0:17:43.080 We don't even know if these four pathways are inevitable. 0:17:43.560 --> 0:17:46.240 We have futurists who truly believe that this is something 0:17:46.280 --> 0:17:49.240 that will happen at some point there are other people 0:17:49.320 --> 0:17:53.760 who are more skeptical, but we'll talk about them in 0:17:53.840 --> 0:17:57.320 a bit. So one of the outcomes that Werner was 0:17:57.640 --> 0:18:01.000 talking about, uh, and it's it's a fairly popular one 0:18:01.080 --> 0:18:06.240 in futurist circles is the idea of the robo apocalypse. Essentially, 0:18:07.480 --> 0:18:10.040 this is where you've got the humans are bad, destroy 0:18:10.080 --> 0:18:15.040 all humans idea. Essentially the the ideas that humans would 0:18:15.040 --> 0:18:19.280 become extinct, either through definition because we've evolved into something 0:18:19.320 --> 0:18:23.560 else or because whatever the super human intelligence is in besides, 0:18:23.680 --> 0:18:25.359 we are a problem. Yeah, and a lot a lot 0:18:25.359 --> 0:18:27.280 of futures are a lot more positive about that. They're 0:18:27.320 --> 0:18:29.439 they're more looking forward to it than being scared of it. 0:18:29.440 --> 0:18:32.000 It's less of oh, no, big scary robots are coming 0:18:32.000 --> 0:18:35.119 to take over our society, and more of a robots 0:18:35.119 --> 0:18:39.200 are coming to take over society like free day, Yeah exactly. Yeah, Yeah, 0:18:39.200 --> 0:18:41.560 I don't have to work anymore, and and I don't 0:18:41.800 --> 0:18:45.080 because robots are are supplying all the things we need. 0:18:45.800 --> 0:18:48.520 There's no need for anyone to work anymore. There's no 0:18:48.560 --> 0:18:51.359 need for money anymore, because the only reason you need 0:18:51.400 --> 0:18:53.520 money is so you can buy stuff. But if everything 0:18:53.600 --> 0:18:55.840 is free, then you don't need you, So it becomes 0:18:55.880 --> 0:18:58.439 Star Trek and we all, you know, run around in 0:18:58.520 --> 0:19:02.640 jumpsuits and punch people. And if you're Kirk, you make 0:19:02.680 --> 0:19:06.359 out a lot. I mean a lot that dude. Every week, 0:19:08.720 --> 0:19:11.960 Piccard and Ryker, if you add them together, make one 0:19:12.040 --> 0:19:16.080 Kirk and yes, in this documentary series Star Trek. I 0:19:16.119 --> 0:19:18.960 don't know about Archer because I never watched Enterprise, So 0:19:19.200 --> 0:19:21.200 you guys have to get back to me on that. Yeah, sorry, 0:19:21.280 --> 0:19:23.720 sorry about that. It's also a gap in my personal understanding. 0:19:23.960 --> 0:19:26.560 I just took one look at that decontamination chamber and said, yep, 0:19:26.640 --> 0:19:30.760 I'm out um anyway. So that's that's Werner Avenge. Uh. 0:19:30.920 --> 0:19:34.719 It's he's sort of popularized this idea, but he's there 0:19:34.720 --> 0:19:36.760 are other people who have kind of I think their 0:19:36.840 --> 0:19:39.639 names are synonymous with it, and we will talk about 0:19:39.720 --> 0:19:43.040 them in just a minute, but for now, let's take 0:19:43.080 --> 0:19:45.320 a moment to thank our sponsor and now back to 0:19:45.320 --> 0:19:50.280 the show. So Verner Venge again very much associated with 0:19:50.320 --> 0:19:53.520 the idea of the singularity. But there's another name that 0:19:53.560 --> 0:19:57.440 comes up all the time, right, Kurtswile, r Kurtswile. And 0:19:57.800 --> 0:19:59.879 this is a fellow who has been referred to in 0:20:00.119 --> 0:20:04.800 various circles, as as the Thomas Edison of Modern Technology 0:20:04.920 --> 0:20:08.119 or um or or, perhaps more colorfully, the Willy Wonka 0:20:08.200 --> 0:20:10.480 of Technology that was by Jeff Duncan of Digital Trends, 0:20:10.480 --> 0:20:13.560 and I just wanted to shout out because that was great, Um, 0:20:13.600 --> 0:20:17.760 but you get nothing. I shared a remix of Willy 0:20:17.800 --> 0:20:20.680 Wonka earlier today and it's still playing through my head. 0:20:20.800 --> 0:20:23.159 We're fans, we might be fans of the Gene Wilder 0:20:23.200 --> 0:20:26.000 Willy Wonka. Everyone, everyone, homework assignment. Go watch that. It 0:20:26.000 --> 0:20:29.240 has nothing to do with the singularity singularity at all. 0:20:29.320 --> 0:20:32.399 I don't know there's some chocolate singularity in their chocolate singularity. 0:20:32.440 --> 0:20:36.560 I want episode on that band. If I were better 0:20:36.600 --> 0:20:38.480 at cover band names, I totally would have said something 0:20:38.520 --> 0:20:40.760 witty right there. Yeah, all right, well, fair enough, we'll 0:20:40.800 --> 0:20:44.320 say it's the archiese for sugar Sugar, Oh dear, Oh 0:20:44.320 --> 0:20:47.840 my goodness. Okay, So Ray hurts while Ray hurts, while 0:20:48.000 --> 0:20:50.680 Um is the kind of cat who you know. When 0:20:50.680 --> 0:20:54.760 he was in high school, UM invented a computer program. 0:20:54.800 --> 0:20:56.800 And this is in the mid nineteen sixties. This isn't 0:20:56.840 --> 0:20:59.240 like last year or something. In the mid nineteen sixties 0:20:59.280 --> 0:21:03.040 created a computer program that listened to classical music, found 0:21:03.080 --> 0:21:06.119 patterns in it, and then created new classical music based 0:21:06.119 --> 0:21:09.359 on that. So it's a computer that composed classical music 0:21:09.720 --> 0:21:13.400 following the rules of classical music that other composers had created. Yes, 0:21:13.680 --> 0:21:15.960 that's kind of cool. That's just that's just something he did, 0:21:16.119 --> 0:21:21.520 you know, And yeah, dudes get credentials. Yeah, it's He 0:21:21.600 --> 0:21:26.920 also kind of invented flatbed scanners, has done a whole 0:21:26.960 --> 0:21:32.800 bunch of stuff in speech recognition, and which that's interesting 0:21:32.880 --> 0:21:35.119 because well, and we'll talk about that in a second. 0:21:35.160 --> 0:21:38.320 But but one of Kurt's Well's big points is that 0:21:38.400 --> 0:21:41.600 he thinks that by and this all depends upon which 0:21:41.960 --> 0:21:45.760 interview you read of kurts Well, but in various interviews 0:21:45.800 --> 0:21:49.080 he said that essentially, by twenty th we will reach 0:21:49.119 --> 0:21:51.160 a point where we will be able to make an 0:21:51.280 --> 0:21:55.800 artificial brain. Well, we'll we'll have reverse engineered the brain 0:21:56.240 --> 0:21:59.720 and we'll be able to create an artificial one. Uh. 0:22:00.240 --> 0:22:04.320 There's a lot of debate in in Uh, in smarter 0:22:04.440 --> 0:22:07.000 circles than the ones I move in. Uh, that's not 0:22:07.080 --> 0:22:10.359 a that's not a slap against my friends. They're pretty bright, 0:22:10.400 --> 0:22:15.160 but none of us are neuro cheologically gifted at that point. UM, 0:22:15.320 --> 0:22:18.520 I include myself in that in that circle. So, but 0:22:18.680 --> 0:22:22.280 there there's some very bright people who debate about this point, 0:22:22.440 --> 0:22:24.440 whether or not will be able by the year twenty 0:22:24.560 --> 0:22:27.760 thirty to reverse engineer the brain and design an artificial one. 0:22:28.000 --> 0:22:31.119 And I think the debate is not so much on 0:22:31.200 --> 0:22:35.919 whether or not will have the technological power necessary to 0:22:35.920 --> 0:22:39.600 to uh simulate a brain. And we can simulate brains 0:22:39.680 --> 0:22:43.040 on a certain superficial level today. I mean hypothetically we 0:22:43.080 --> 0:22:45.240 could connect enough computers that we could make it go. 0:22:46.320 --> 0:22:49.120 I think, yeah, we could probably get the computer horsepower, 0:22:49.200 --> 0:22:52.720 especially by twenty thirty to simulate a human brain. The 0:22:52.800 --> 0:22:57.959 question is whether we will understand the human brain enough exactly. 0:22:58.080 --> 0:23:01.120 So uh, that's that sort of where the debate lies. 0:23:01.160 --> 0:23:03.840 It's not so much on the technological side of things 0:23:03.880 --> 0:23:07.000 as it is the biological side of things, which is 0:23:07.080 --> 0:23:10.639