Who are Singularitarians?
Michael Anissimov :: March. 2003

(For a longer, heavily revised version, see Who Are Singularity Activists?)

What is a "Singularitarian"? Singularitarians are researchers and activists attempting to technologically create benevolent, recursively self-improving transhuman intelligence. All of humanity's problems can be attributed to our lack of problem-solving ability. Our lack of problem-solving ability is due to our lack of intelligence. Singularitarians are trying to improve society and the world by increasing our available intelligence for solving any given problem. It would be nice if we could create a substantially better human society using only the intelligence of humans, but we've been trying that for the past 50,000 years, and progress could be moving a lot faster than it has.

Prerequisite to the philosophy of Singularitarianism are a few assumptions about the basic nature of reality. The first assumption is scientific materialism. This is the idea that the physical universe is probably all that exists, and if we want to gain knowledge and successfully improve our lives, we'll do so by studying the causes and effects which give rise to the vast network of complex forms that constitute our universe. The assumptions and knowledge conferred by scientific materialism are responsible for the computer you're using, the car you get to work in, the manufacture and transportation of most of your food and furniture, the architectural principles used to construct the house you live in, and much more.

The next assumption is rationality. Rationality is the art of holding internal beliefs that correspond as closely as possible to the objects and patterns of external reality. Rationality is the idea that any goal we want to accomplish can be greatly furthered by improving the quality and accuracy of our thoughts, rather than engaging in wishful thinking, faith-based belief, foolish overestimation, blind confidence, and the like. Rationality is not necessarily at odds with love or emotion, but can work in parallel with them to achieve the maximum in personal fulfillment, effectiveness, and sanity. Rationality is also a force that helps us effectively arrange our life goals into a coherent framework, and create realistic plans for completing those goals. It's hard to say exactly how much rationality is to thank for how far the human race has come since our origin, but it's likely that rationality (or approximations to it) is responsible for the bulk of it.

Now that we've got those two basics out of the way, it's time to explain some of the specific knowledge that point Singularitarians uniquely to the goal of building transhuman intelligence. Much of this knowledge comes from some fundamental assumptions underlying cognitive science, which the study of how the brain creates the mind, and how evolution created the brain. (Implicit in scientific materialism is the notion that the brain is a computer whose software is the human mind; no magical auras or vital essences involved) Cognitive scientists are particularly interested in the history of the brain, that is, how it was built by evolution. These scientists have observed that genes give rise to proteins which go on to build the brain within the womb by interacting and unfolding in complex, recursive patterns.

Unfolding proteins are required to follow a long checklist of rules, constraints, and chemical limitations throughout the process of brainbuilding. Similarly, evolution itself is tightly constrained by a variety of factors. In evolution, each new mutation must create an immediate benefit for the holder, or the benefuit will not persist into future generations. Not a tiny benefit, either, but a recurring benefit that lasts long enough so that the new mutation can spread throughout a population and become species-typical, living on past the immediate moment. Evolution can only use the original building blocks that originally intiated the whole process - DNA and proteins. From a cognitive architect's standpoint, DNA, proteins, and neurons are probably some of the worst possible materials to use for building a sentient mind. Specialized nervous system cells (neurons) are large, cumbersome, and slow compared to the ideal construction pieces for a brain, which may use light or quantum computation rather than electrochemical signals, and be organized in completely different ways.

There are many other reasons why human brains are nonoptimal, but it takes a fair amount of personal study, technical knowledge, and careful consideration before the whole picture becomes clear. In terms of flexibility, speed, organization, perception, efficiency, and just about any other criterion you can imagine, the Homo sapiens brain falls embarrassingly short of what is physically possible. All brains built by evolution do. What Singularitarians are suggesting is circumventing the limits set by evolution (and culture, and other limits we may not even notice) and directly reengineering our brains, or creating new and better brains from scratch. We could genuinely improve ourselves to be more benevolent, tolerant, and helpful to humankind and all other sentient beings. On the negative side, exactly the opposite could happen; the first transhuman intelligence could be a selfish or destructive being, and simply not care. Singularitarians plan for both scenarios, creating guidelines of action for as many contingencies as possible.

Transhuman intelligence would break the barrier of intelligence constraining the human species throughout the past 50,000 years, opening up whole new worlds of opportunity for moral and cognitive self-improvement and design ability. Prominent suggestions for the creation of transhuman (sometimes called "smarter-than-human") have included Brain-Computer Interfaces, genetically engineered humans, neurosurgically improved humans, and Artificial Intelligence. The current frontrunner for the creation of transhuman intelligence appears to be Artificial Intelligence, for a variety of reasons that cannot be done full justice within the bounds of this short essay. Artificial Intelligence is fully reprogrammable, rebootable, easy to revise and test, less expensive, and more ethical than experiments on human subjects. Human-level Artificial intelligence, if created, wouldn't be subject to the same biological limitations as genetically engineered or cybernetically enhanced humans, being an entirely digital entity.

Singularitarianism (try spelling it!) derives its name from the sci-fi author Vernor Vinge's concept of the Singularity, the idea that when transhuman intelligence emerges, the ability of humans to keep pace with the forefront of development will end, and a totally different and far more complex world would be created, for better or for worse. Transhuman intelligence, if successfully created, would very likely entail transhuman capacity for self-improvement and cognition, like the ability to stay awake continuously, maintain multiple streams of consciousness, devote calculated attention to cognitive structures on any level of organization, conduct very fine-grained introspection and self-revision, and a whole lot more. If the first transhuman mind to exist lacked any of these capacities, it would nevertheless be in an ideal position to create them. This is especially true for Artificial Intelligence. If it's an AI we're talking about, then the first transhuman intelligence would be running on circuits processing information billions or trillions of times faster than human biological neurons, creating a corresponding difference in thinking speed. Artificial Intelligences might copy themselves or improve their cogntive structure in deep ways unimaginable to biological minds, giving rise to a series of successors which could then implement the next round of modifications and improvements, until the improvement process became so rapid and self-swallowing that true superintelligence would be created. From the perspective of humans, this process could take weeks, days, hours, or even seem instantaneous. Transhuman intelligences wouldn't be constrained for long by human traditions, customs, infrastruture, economies, or imagination, any more than homo sapiens' imagination is limited by chimpanzees or fish. Each new improvement would open the door to new improvements, leading to a domino effect of improvements we can't forsee the magnitude of.

The potential benefits and risks are arbitrarily large in either direction. But it doesn't look as if transhuman intelligence is possible to avoid, in the longer term (50 to 100 years at the absolute most). With computing power doubling nearly every year, the quickly growing fields of neurology and cognitive science continually teaching us novel information about how intelligence works, and the cutting-edge technologies of micron-level mechanics, wireless networks, neuromorphic engineering, high-resolution fMRI scanning, and much more, it seems that the eventual arrival of a Singularity is extremely likely. Certain events could stop a Singularity, such as worldwide nuclear war, a world government enforcing draconian antitechnological restrictions, or some quickly replicating deadly plague, but in broad-brush terms, it looks like this is where humanity is headed, whether like it or not. Attempting to slow or abort a Singularity would only increase the risk of a malevolent Singularity coming into being, and leave humans helpless as the sheer capacity of our technology exceeded our ability to create legal and social frameworks for their safe and wise use.

How do we know a Singularity would be a good thing for humanity? Well, for one, humans are the beings that will set the initial conditions for the Singularity, and the top-level goal of the first transhuman will reflect our design decisions. We want the first transhuman mind to be benevolent, morally sophisticated, intelligent, wise, and experienced with fundamental self-revision. A benevolent transhuman mind wouldn't decide to create a successor that is a risk to humanity because such a mind would love humanity and not want us to come to harm. This point is fundamental. A truly altruistic transhuman could cushion the apparent impact of the Singularity for humans if we so desired, perhaps avoiding the radical transformation of Earth in favor of making its home in other parts of the solar system. A genuinely kind transhuman intelligence would be capable of completely relinquishing ego, yet still retain the common sense necessary to make decisions which preserve the safety and prosperity of all of sentientkind. Such an entity would cooperate with humans to ensure that all future transhuman minds are benevolent as well, and install the appropriate safeguards in itself or other threats. A benevolent transhuman wouldn't try to control or harass humans, because it wouldn't have the inborn human urges for domination or self-righteous menace. Self-ceneteredness and self-righteousness may be traits persent in all humans to some degree, but this is due to the underlying process which created us, (biological evolution) not some fundamental property of the universe.

The above requirements might sound like a lot to ask out of any mind, but anything less could result in a major disaster for everyone, thereby making a Singularity undesireable, even in principle. A transhuman mind could swiftly acquire technology enabling the murder of billions at a whim - if it had the desire to - and there isn't any way around this. If we tried to construct multiple transhumans to instill a framework of mutual monitoring, even the slightest difference in clock ticks or internal architecture might give one of them a decisive head start against the others, creating a runaway scenario in which we are stuck with the morality of only the highest transhuman. In any case, it is wise to assume that the first transhuman could be the critical, final one, and that overengineering benevolence is truly worth doing. We can concede that even a transhuman mind will make mistakes, but these mistakes might be so small as to be unnoticeable by human standards. Our intuition tells us that "no mind could ever be so good - absolute power corrupts absolutely", but this is just a result of our extensive dealings with other humans. We have no evidence that the majority of physically possible intelligence are corruptible in the sense implied by the above maxim; quite the contrary, we understand that compromising moral principles of favor of personal gain is an evolved adaptation for passing on as many of our genes - not a universal characterstic of minds-in-general. We call this human trait "rationalization" or "denial". Remove the cognitive machinery underlying rationalization, or create a mind lacking it from the start, and we've crippled evolution of one of its favorite tools for creating new humans as rapidly as possible in a hostile, competitive environment. Evolution doesn't care if you die or suffer - creating as many copies of yourself as possible is the highest goal. It's time for us to recognize that death and suffering are not necessary, not good, and whatever excitement we derived from their presence are obtainable through other means. (For example, virtual reality simulations containing nonsentient actors.)

The longer we wait, the more possible it becomes that the tools for creating transhuman intelligence fall into malevolent or ignorant hands, and the human race gets put at grave risk. Intelligence is the most explosive power in the universe, capable of shaping its environment and itself like no other force. This worry is not harbored solely by fringe AI researchers and computer geeks, but is taken seriously by a number of thoughtful, accomplished individuals in academia, government, and business, among them Stephen Hawking, Nick Bostrom, Bill Joy, Martin Rees, Ray Kurzweil, and many others. Established institutions such as the Foresight Institute, Greenpeace, the World Transhumanist Organization, and the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology also profess the dangers of the misuse of advanced, postnuclear technologies, and reiterate again and again that old paradigms are sure to be ineffective in confronting these novel challenges.

Singularitarians are taking the lead in navigating mankind through the dire passages that much of government and society is unaware of, taking daily action to inform others and formulate strategies to confront the challenge of transhuman intellgience with confidence. We're convinced that humanity has the resources and intelligence required to navigate past this juncture safely, if enough people are up to the task and willing to help. Singularitarianism is a diverse gathering of dedicated, intelligent rationalists devoted to carefully analyzing these complex issues and personally carrying out the necessary actions in order to reach the best possible outcome for humanity.

If you're interested in helping out with the Singularity or learning more, don't hesitate to contact me or visit the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence website.