What Is the Singularity? And Should You Be Worried? – Electronics (2024)

Vernor Vinge proposes an interesting and potentially terrifying prediction in his essay titled "The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era." He asserts that mankind will develop a superhuman intelligence before 2030.

The essay specifies four ways in which this could happen:

Out of those four possibilities, the first three could lead to machines taking over. While Vinge addresses all the possibilities in his essay, he spends the most time discussing the first one.

Computer technology advances at a faster rate than many other technologies. Computers tend to double in power every two years or so. This trend is related to Moore's Law, which states that transistors double in power every 18 months.

Vinge says that at this rate, it's only a matter of time before humans build a machine that can "think" like a human.

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But hardware is only part of the equation. Before artificial intelligence becomes a reality, someone will have to develop software that will allow a machine to analyze data, make decisions and act autonomously.

If that happens, we can expect to see machines begin to design and build even better machines. These new machines could build faster, more powerful models.

Yoshikazu Tsuno/AFP/Getty Images

Robots like this might look cute, but could they be plotting your downfall?

Technological advances would move at a blistering pace. Machines would know how to improve themselves. Humans would become obsolete in the computer world. We would have created a superhuman intelligence.

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Advances would come faster than we could recognize them. In short, we would reach the singularity.

Vinge says it's impossible to say. The world would become such a different landscape that we can only make the wildest of guesses. Vinge admits that while it's probably not fruitful to suggest possible scenarios, it's still a lot of fun. Maybe we'll live in a world where each person's consciousness merges with a computer network.

Or perhaps machines will accomplish all our tasks for us and let us live in luxury. But what if the machines see humans as redundant or worse? When machines reach the point where they can repair themselves and even create better versions of themselves, could they come to the conclusion that humans are not only unnecessary, but also unwanted?

It certainly seems like a scary scenario. But is Vinge's vision of the future a certainty? Is there any way we can avoid it?

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What Is the Singularity? And Should You Be Worried? - Electronics | HowStuffWorks

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What Is the Singularity? And Should You Be Worried? – Electronics (2024)

FAQs

What is the singularity and why is it worrying? ›

And Should You Be Worried? It's a common theme in science fiction: Mankind struggles to survive in a dystopian futuristic society. Scientists discover too late that their machines are too powerful to control and they even end human life in an event commonly referred to as the singularity.

Tell Me More ›
What is the idea of the singularity? ›

In the theory, a singularity describes the center of a black hole, a point of infinite density and gravity within which no object inside can ever escape, not even light. The current knowledge of physics breaks down at the singularity and can't describe reality inside of it.

Find Out More ›
What is the danger of technological singularity? ›

The technological singularity—or simply the singularity—is a hypothetical future point in time at which technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible, resulting in unforeseeable consequences for human civilization.

Find Out More ›
What is the tech singularity referring to? ›

hypothetic future event in which a superhuman artificial general intelligence is made that iteratively redesigns itself to rapidly become much more intelligent, and a rapid general technological and social change follows that is beyond prediction.

View More ›
What is singularity explained? ›

A gravitational singularity, spacetime singularity or simply singularity is a condition in which gravity is predicted to be so intense that spacetime itself would break down catastrophically. As such, a singularity is by definition no longer part of the regular spacetime and cannot be determined by "where" or "when".

See Details ›
What is singularity how can it be avoided? ›

A simple and effective solution to avoid some singularities is to impose joint limits in your robot programming. This prevents the joints in question from moving beyond certain angles, which would lead to the robot entering a singularity. While this method is simple and effective, it restricts the robot's motion.

Read The Full Story ›
What year will the singularity happen? ›

In all cases, the majority of participants expected AI singularity before 2060. In the 2022 Expert Survey on Progress in AI, conducted with 738 experts who published at the 2021 NIPS and ICML conferences, AI experts estimate that there's a 50% chance that high-level machine intelligence will occur until 2059.

View More ›
Will AI take over humanity? ›

1. AI will take over the world. If you believe science fiction, then you don't understand the meaning of the word fiction. The short answer to this fear is: No, AI will not take over the world, at least not as it is depicted in the movies.

Get More Info Here ›
How close are we to AI singularity? ›

Most likely, it will be reached in our very near future when advances in artificial intelligence lead to the creation of a machine smarter than humans. If Ray Kurzweil is to be believed, the singularity will happen in 2045.

Read The Full Story ›
Is singularity good or bad? ›

The development of Singularity raises several ethical concerns, including the value of human life in a world where machines are more intelligent than humans. Some experts argue that this could lead to a devaluation of human life and a world where machines are prioritized over humans.

Learn More Now ›

Will AI ever become self-aware? ›

We don't know whether AI could have conscious experiences and, unless we crack the problem of consciousness, we never will. But here's the tricky part: when we start to consider the ethical ramifications of artificial consciousness, agnosticism no longer seems like a viable option.

Know More ›
What will happen after the singularity? ›

After the singularity he says the final epoch will occur, The Universe Wakes Up. Kurzweil explains that evolutionary progress is exponential because of positive feedback; the results of one stage are used to create the next stage.

See More ›
What is the key idea of singularity? ›

Abstract. What happens when machines become more intelligent than humans? One view is that this event will be followed by an explosion to ever-greater levels of intelligence, as each generation of machines creates more intelligent machines in turn. This intelligence explosion is now often known as the “singularity”.

Explore More ›
What did Stephen Hawking say about singularity? ›

At this time, the Big Bang, all the matter in the universe, would have been on top of itself. The density would have been infinite. It would have been what is called, a singularity. At a singularity, all the laws of physics would have broken down.

Explore More ›
What would a technological singularity look like? ›

What is an example of technological singularity? As AI advances, supercomputer networks may match human intelligence, at which point they could “wake up” and build better machines, creating superintelligence that surpasses humans in the process.

Read On ›
What is the problem of singularity? ›

Singularity problem is a long-standing weak point in the theory of general relativity. Most scholars think that the solution to this singularity problem lies in quantum mechanics. However, to solve the singularity problem, waiting for the quantum mechanics theory to be completed is wrong.

View Details ›
What will happen when the singularity occurs? ›

The concept of singularity, often referred to as the technological singularity, describes a theoretical point in the future when artificial intelligence (AI) surpasses human intelligence, resulting in an era of rapid technological advancements that defy our current understanding and ability to predict.

Discover More ›
What happens when you enter the singularity? ›

The matter continues to collapse to a point that is known as a singularity. This point has infinite mass and density and is infinitely small. The effect of this point on space-time is to distort it so that nothing can escape from the immediate region, not even light.

Read More ›
What caused the singularity to exist? ›

The Big Bang theory, which assumes general relativity to be true, is the modern cosmological model of the history of the universe. It also contains a singularity. In the distant past, about 13.77 billion years ago, according to the Big Bang theory, the entire universe was compressed into an infinitely tiny point.

Learn More ›

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