The Heart of The Singularity Question
Emily pointed out in her previous post. That one of the most important issues brought up at the Singularity Summit was the notion that the Singularity is the future of all human progress.
Essentially, all fields of study, all of human progress is leading up to the Singularity…In recent years I believe we have seen a shift from a divergence of specialized technologies, to a convergence of those parts into greater, cumulative technologies. Laser eye surgery is a great example of seemingly different fields, combining to great success. The Singularity will be the ultimate convergence of human progress.
While I’m a bit skeptical of this point, I do think it’s an interesting thought experiment to consider where the future of human progress lies. I found several speakers at the summit who had postulated futures that were surprisingly in-line with the ideas of one of the more bizarre and fringe philosophers I enjoy reading: Rudolf Steiner.
Steiner is one of the founders of Anthroposophy, his works outline the nature of the universe, other dimensions and other beings (rather broad, I know). However where I found many speakers, such as Wendell Wallach, converging with Steinerian ideals was on the issue of the evolution of human consciousness. Steiner believes the development of a:
…distinctively modern clairvoyant capability… [let us] contemplate this thought picture and recognize the present need to deepen and purify the scientific impulse by applying the kind of spiritual seeing of which the ancient world was capable, but which has not yet been applied to the external or natural world studied by contemporary scientific consciousness.
Steiner, and many singularity experts were pointing to this convergence of mystical and scientific as the direction human progress needs to take (although I grant you that just about no one at the Summit said this explicitly). How else can we begin to resolve issues of creating artificial general intelligence, especially “self improving” intelligence? It cannot be done without deeply contemplating the nature of our reality. The very heart of the issue plaguing the Singularity is how to do this.
Of course I am currently reading Steiner, so his ideas are fresh in my mind. Perhaps my conclusions are just another example for our much heralded view that thoughts create reality. I am interested in Steinerian thought and I found it in the Singularity Summit.
*From the Essential Steiner pg. 170
The other day when I was thinking about the Singularity, I realized that knowing the Singularity is coming is not equivalent to a free pass beyond it.
Did anyone talk about the possibility that knowing the Singularity is coming doesn’t help one get past it? Even crazier, what if expecting the Singularity causes you to forever be behind it?
Just some food for thought. ;)
To me there is hidden a bit of a deeper thought. “The” singularity will not fall unto “us” like Santa on a nice relaxed evening. It will be the result of technology years before. And this will all happen in a concrete society under concrete human beings with concrete and veeery different moral levels. (Sorry for my english, native german)
Siggi- I think you’ve hit on a key issue. It is perhaps inherently flawed to try to speculate on the issues the Singularity will create when we don’t have information on the groundwork that leads up to its creation (the technology before, the society it arises from etc). Perhaps this is all just an intriguing thought experiment.
P.S. Willkommen in unserem Blog
Grant- In fact quite a few speakers talked about your first point-Knowing the Singularity is coming doesn’t help one get past it. However (Emily correct me if I’m wrong), no one talked about the second thought. Which is odd because it seems a logical next step of your first thought.
Basically the whole point of the Singularity Institute, which hosted the Summit, is to figure out how to make a positive Singularity. They didn’t talk about the consequences of a bad one very much, but they didn’t really talk about the future after a perfectly wonderful Singularity either. The focus was on the how and when of getting to the Singularity, not so much about any post-Singularity issues.
If the Singularity is an intelligence far greater than our own, I don’t even know how we’d begin to speculate on what kind of world it would make.