I.J. Good gave one of the first articulations of the Singularity concept in 1960 in his essay “Speculations Concerning the First Ultraintelligent Machine”. He said:

“Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an ‘intelligence explosion,’ and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make.”

Then, in 1990, Vinge defined the Singularity as:

“the imminent creation by technology of entities with greater than human intelligence”

Nothing about genetics. Nothing about life extension. Nothing about nanotechnology. Nothing about robotics. Nothing about wearable computing. Only smarter than human intelligence. Nothing else. Technology only enters into the picture because it’s the only thing that could actually lead to the creation of smarter than human intelligence, and the assumed means by which this intelligence would influence the world. The involvement of technology is secondary, not primary.

The Wikipedia article on the Singularity has already been updated to articulate the clear division that I’ve always argued for here on this blog: the difference between an intelligence explosion and accelerating change. Notice how the first two paragraphs on the page focus on the concept as introduced by I.J. Good and Vernor Vinge. Ray Kurzweil is not mentioned until the third paragraph. The Intelligence Explosion concept is where it belongs — in the first section. The Accelerating Change concept comes after the discussion of the Intelligence Explosion. When your advocacy of making the ideas distinct appears to be winning, it’s hard to give up.

Vinge’s definition of the Singularity as greater than human intelligence has been around since at least 1993, or about 16 years. In contrast, Ray Kurzweil’s definition of the Singularity, which takes him about three pages to expound and is more of a general description of emerging technologies and transhumanism, didn’t come about until 2001, making it about eight years old. The original, precise definition is about twice as old as the newer, vaguer definition.

What is astonishing is how the latter definition seems to be so ubiquitous that intelligent people can actually read the former definition and it passes right through them without registering, like a neutrino. It’s like they never even read it. For instance, on VentureBeat, Anthony Ha writes,

“The Singularity, for those of you with only a fuzzy idea what the trendy term actually means, was coined by Vernor Vinge, a computer scientist and (excellent) science fiction writer, back in 1993 to describe the point at which rapidly accelerating technology makes the future literally impossible to predict.”

This is false. Vinge described the Singularity as the point at which superhuman intelligence makes the future impossible to predict. Accelerating technology and superhuman intelligence are not the same thing. The former is not necessary for the latter, nor the latter for the former. Superhuman intelligence might decide to invent a bunch of technologies and then just stop, for the radical reason that maybe some people would be better off without unlimited technology. Superhuman intelligence would hopefully be reasonable and moral as well as superintelligent (if we do our jobs right), so why would it necessary keep inventing technologies endlessly and mindlessly, like some sort of unstoppable deranged machine?

The Singularity is not necessarily when we transcend our biological limitations. It could be when a single entity or small group of entities transcends their limitations (biological or otherwise), and then decides that the world would be more interesting if we were all dead and replaced by beings of their design, or nothing at all. The Singularity could be the moment that a group of entities becomes superintelligent and decides that the world is best if the status quo is preserved literally forever. The group that becomes superintelligent potentially rules over all of us. Superintelligence does not necessarily entail supermorality. It could be more of the same. No happy techno-fantasy la-la land. The future may end up looking more like the past than our facile imaginings of The Future(tm).

I think people are inclined to talk more about accelerating technology than superhuman intelligence because the former is easier to imagine while the latter is not. Still, why not try to imagine the latter? Consider working on an incredibly difficult engineering or math problem for years on end, when a universal genius comes along, offers to help you out, and suddenly all the pieces fall into place. You suddenly view all your past efforts, sleepless nights, and brainstorming sessions as transient pieces in a larger vision that was beheld and articulated on sight by the genius. You wonder how many others around the planet are clawing at the darkness of solution space, just waiting to have their search illuminated by the light of intelligence.

The shock of this experience might seem amazing, but it can be instilled by differences in intelligence only within the human normal distribution. Now imagine the same experience, but the universal genius being above you in an inter-species fashion, the way a human is above a chimp, rather than a genius is above an average human. Typically, the thought process of this genius is entirely inscrutable. It only becomes understandable when the genius makes a point of explaining the pieces to you in terms you understand. If the genius is sufficiently smarter than you, it might take them decades to connect all the dots in a way you comprehend, so you only get the salient parts.

There are many reasons why discussing these concepts is somewhat unpopular. First, we like to pretend that intelligence doesn’t matter, or that it can’t be measured. These are fictions. Many academics have political motives to denigrate intelligence research — they consider it necessary for the morale of humanity that everyone be seen as having equal potential, lest the very philosophical underpinnings of democracy be put at risk. Intelligence research is associated with racism (The Bell Curve) and eugenics. If someone is talking about quantifying intelligence, they must only be talking about it because they think they’re smarter than you and want to step on you.

This might be true in some cases, but here, in 2009, understanding intelligence is important, whether or not people put that understanding to unscrupulous ends. The reality of intelligence differentials must not be denied. If there is any magic in the universe, it’s intelligence, and if denying that people are born with more or less of it gets in the way of our responsibly handling the creation of a new intelligent species, then these ideas must be discarded. Our species is on the cusp of an event that’s never been seen before: intelligence building intelligence. If we focus on the shiny glittering toys of technology, we get entirely distracted by the true task ahead of us.