This week we discussed the Singularity, the tipping point in our future where machines will overtake humans as the most intelligent species on the planet.
Paul Allen argued that the Singularity will not happen in the year 2045 (or, for that matter, any other time in the near future) – and he provides us with a counter-argument to the idea that the computer is a living entity similar to the human brain. We’ve looked at Licklider’s man-machine symbiosis hypothesis and also explored the Internet of Things’ ability to create a “living network” amongst multiple devices. However, this seems to be one of the first times in our readings that we’ve encountered a view that attempts to identify why the brain and the computer are not quite comparable:
“The complexity of the brain is simply awesome. Every structure has been precisely shaped by millions of years of evolution to do a particular thing, whatever it might be. It is not like a computer, with billions of identical transistors in regular memory arrays that are controlled by a CPU with a few different elements. In the brain every individual structure and neural circuit has been individually refined by evolution and environmental factors. The closer we look at the brain, the greater the degree of neural variation we find. Understanding the neural structure of the human brain is getting harder as we learn more.”
He does go on to say that the complexity will eventually end, as the brain is made up of finite amount of neurons and a set number of neural connections – but for the foreseeable future, the deep interworkings of our brains will continue to mystify us. I found Allen’s comparison – of computers as somewhat rigid and repetitive in their composition vs. our brain as a distinctly refined organ that is unique to each individual – to be an interesting divergence from some of the thoughts we’ve read in previous weeks.
Assuming the Singularity does happen, when will we know that it has hit us? Will it be a hard-and-fast day in the year 2045 or a slow decline over a prolonged period? I would argue for the slow decline method. Humans have evolved gradually over millions of years. If we view computers as the successor to humans, then we will slowly be phased out as the computers take over the role of superior “species” (if we can even call computers a species.) If we take the Law of Accelerating Returns to be true, then the rate of evolution amongst machines is much greater than the human rate of evolution.
We’ll still be chugging along at our gradual evolutionary pace, but machines will create more and more rapid and noticeable change with each successive generation. Until, perhaps, the machines will be able to evolve not only from generation to generation, but within a generation itself (i.e., a machine that evolves during its own lifespan, if that would even be possible.) It’s fascinating to think about whether the human model of evolution and change would even be applicable to machines and computers, or if they will evolve in some way we can’t even predict (or comprehend).
Hey Samuel! You raise a really great question – we can’t know whether there will be a single point where the machines will “take over”. It likely won’t be a single “date that will live in infamy”, rather, it’ll likely be as you say: a phase out of humans across thousands of days.
Great post 🙂