IEEE Spectrum’s special issue on the Singularity is out — and all the articles are online. Most of the articles are critical, but fascinating. (I explicitly reject EY’s view of the issue as a “sad little attempt at Singularity coverage”. To quote Patri Friedman, “It’s got a piece by Robin Hanson, so it can’t be all bad.”)
Singularity critics rejoice — this is the most unified and coherent set of critical arguments against “singularitarians” that has yet been assembled. At the same time, there are responses to most if not all of these critical arguments that seem even more reasonable, some of which I will address in subsequent posts.
One of the funny parallels between many of the articles is that they acknowledge how popular Singularity-oriented thinking has become in the last few years. This is in no small part due to the efforts of individuals within the transhumanist community, especially Ray Kurzweil (whose deterministic graph-based predictions, confusing definitions, and spiritual view of the Singularity draws the ire of the majority of self-described singularitarians, including myself), but also the Singularity Institute, which has organized the highly-publicized Singularity Summit conferences.
Let me begin by pointing out that “Singularity”, in its messy and reckless common usage nowadays, contains at least 22 distinct, but loosely interrelated ideas (and probably far more):
1. Can robots be conscious?
2. Is technological change accelerating? (Core claim of Accelerating Change school.)
3. Does technological change follow smooth exponential curves? (Strong claim of AC school, by Kurzweil.)
4. Will smarter-than-human intelligence lead to a predictability horizon? (Core claim of Event Horizon school.)
5. Is smarter-than-human intelligence absolutely unpredictable? (Strong claim of EH school.)
6. Is intelligence enhancement a tipping point? (Core claim of Intelligence Explosion school.)
7. Could intelligence enhancement lead to a hard takeoff? (Strong claim of IE school.)
8. Is mind uploading possible?
9. Is mind uploading desirable?
10. Is mind uploading possible in the next few decades?
11. Is the human mind a finite-state machine?
12. Is Turing Test passing AI possible?
13. Is superhuman intelligence desirable?
14. Is superhuman intelligence feasible?
15. Is superhuman intelligence possible in the next few decades?
16. Is human enhancement desirable?
17. Is human enhancement feasible?
18. Is human enhancement possible in the next few decades?
19. Is molecular nanotechnology feasible?
20. Is it appropriate for engineering goals to parallel age-old human ambitions, like flight or eternal youth?
21. Is it possible for us to achieve anti-aging therapies that clean up damage faster than it accumulates?
22. There have been big changes in history and another one is coming soon. (Robin Hanson)
With just two minutes of writing, I have added a large amount of clarity to the discussion that this special issue could have benefited from: simply splitting various concepts associated with “Singularity” into independent parts, so we can examine them one by one, instead of refuting or supporting a incoherent blur of different positions, and pretending they’re all the same package. Often, one approaches the Singularity by asking, “do I support or reject this blur of positions?” If they reject, they reject them all (often unnecessarily), if they support, they may support many of them unnecessarily (as I did as a teenager).
Why couldn’t any of the nine authors of the contributed articles do this? These questions are so complex, new, and confusing, they demand to split this shit up. I ask all writers on the topic, including journalists and academics, to consider taking my advice on this.
Anyway, here are the links to the eight pieces:
“Introduction: Waiting for the Rapture†by Glenn Zorpette
“Economics of the Singularity” by Robin Hanson
“Reverse Engineering the Brain” by Sally Adee
“Can Machines Be Conscious?†by Christof Koch and Giulio Tononi
“Singular Simplicity” by Alfred Nordmann
“Rupturing the Nanotech Rapture†by Richard A. L. Jones
“I, Rodney Brooks, Am a Robot†by Rodney Brooks
“Signs of the Singularity†by Vernor Vinge
If you visit the site, there are some videos, graphs, interviews, and other web-exclusive stuff.
In the coming days, I’ll respond to as many of these articles as I feel like.
Excellent set of posts Michael.
The 22 questions are a good way to clarify the discussions.
That isn’t going to happen unless the Singularity is moved out of the realm of politics and into the realm of science. In fact, it’s very easy to do worse- just look at the current mishmash of definitions surrounding “capitalist”, “Democrat”, “divisive”, etc., etc.
I would add
1. a. Would real consciousness in robots be different for society versus simulated behaviors that to an outside observer seem functionally equivalent
===
in terms of some of my answers
I think technological change can be seen to be accelerating in many segments and by many metrics. However, there are important segments that are slower changing or constant. It is like the chinese economy has the fast growing private part and the nearly constant government and slower growing rural parts. For the developed countries it is the slower changing infrastructure and relatively constant usage and functionality of certain major things – cars, houses/buildings, water and energy infrastructure. And the way certain media never die but shift aside when new media arrives. radio does not kill newspapers but both co-exist. TV gets added. Internet gets added. More channels and choices are created. It is easy to opt out of what is new.
Because people can point to what Hanson refers to as past Singularities (the shifts to higher growth in the Industrial Revolution) 1730 and 1900 in relatively recent history they can perceive that more relative change occurred crossing those boundaries.
The key changes that people determine as being shocking are where the transportation that they use every day is radically improved in speed and capability. Foot – horse – bike / rail – car / plane – _______[spaceship]
If daily work lives are clearly transformed. farming – factory – white collar – _______.
In your face change to the major daily processes.
Substantial human enhancement has the potential to be a daily in your face thing.
Something clearly moving from “science fiction” to the being possible is not sufficient. There has to be widespread adoption so that it is encountered everyday. How much change do I encounter every day ? Cloning is now possible and 12 years ago it was only science fiction, but do I meet cloned people and animals or products of such things everyday ?
THANKS for the links. Have already read most of ‘em and commented on one (will be commenting on Robin’s and others as I get more time later this week…)
As always, Michael, you’re doing a *splendid* job with this blog. This is my “go-to” blog. Brian Wang’s, of course, is superb, as are many, many others (hooray!!). But yours is “blog-central”—the “hub” blog, so to speak—for me, anyway. Thanks again, Kid-O!! ;)
Why couldn’t any of the nine authors of the contributed articles do this?
The obvious answer is that it didn’t fit into scope given any one of us, and any extras were edited out by space limitations.
If we’re going to get away from using a messy word like “singularity,” maybe we need a lexicon with quick an easy definitions for replacement terms. Thinking tends to follow language, so if we can split the various definitions for “singularity” into more granular and graspable terms, then we can guide the discussion in that direction.
Of course, the word won’t go away as long as Kurzweil and his disciples are around.
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