Yahoo Tuning Groups Ultimate Backup metatuning Exploring 'The Singularity'

EXPLORING THE 'SINGULARITY'
By James John Bell
The Futurist
Originally published in The Futurist (http://www.wfs.org/futcontmj03.htm)
June 1, 2003. Published on KurzweilAI.net June 6, 2003.

http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0584.html

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The point in time when current trends may go wildly off the charts -- known
as the "Singularity" -- is now getting serious attention. What it suggests
is that technological change will soon become so rapid that we cannot
possibly envision its results.

...........

Technological change isn't just happening fast. It's happening at an
exponential rate. Contrary to the commonsense, intuitive, linear view, we
won't just experience 100 years of progress in the twenty-first century --
it will be more like 20,000 years of progress.

The near-future results of exponential technological growth will be
staggering: the merging of biological and nonbiological entities in
bio-robotics, plants and animals engineered to grow pharmaceutical drugs,
software-based " life ," smart robots, and atom-sized machines that
self-replicate like living matter. Some individuals are even warning that we
could lose control of this expanding techno-cornucopia and cause the total
extinction of life as we know it. Others are researching how this permanent
technological overdrive will affect us. They're trying to understand what
this new world of ours will look like and how accelerating technology
already impacts us.

A number of scientists believe machine intelligence will surpass human
intelligence within a few decades, leading to what's come to be called the
Singularity. Author and inventor Ray Kurzweil defines this phenomenon as
"technological change so rapid and profound it could create a rupture in the
very fabric of human history."

Singularity is technically a mathematical term, perhaps best described as
akin to what happens on world maps in a standard atlas. Everything appears
correct until we look at regions very close to the poles. In the standard
Mercator projection, the poles appear not as points but as a straight line.
Each line is a singularity: Everywhere along the top line contains the exact
point of the North Pole, and the bottom line is the entire South Pole.

The singularity on the edge of the map is nothing compared to the
singularity at the center of a black hole. Here one finds the
astrophysicist's singularity, a rift in the continuum of space and time
where Einstein's rules no longer function. The approaching technological
Singularity, like the singularities of black holes, marks a point of
departure from reality. Explorers once wrote "Beyond here be dragons" on the
edges of old maps of the known world, and the image of life as we approach
these edges of change are proving to be just as mysterious, dangerous, and
controversial.

There is no concise definition for the Singularity. Kurzweil and many
transhumanists define it as "a future time when societal, scientific, and
economic change is so fast we cannot even imagine what will happen from our
present perspective." A range of dates is given for the advent of the
Singularity. "I'd be surprised if it happened before 2004 or after 2030,"
writes author and computer science professor Vernor Vinge. A distinctive
feature will be that machine intelligence will have exceeded and even merged
with human intelligence Another definition is used by extropians, who say
it denotes "the singular time when technological development will be at its
fastest." From an environmental perspective, the Singularity can be thought
of as the point at which technology and nature become one. Whatever
perspective one takes, at this juncture the world as we have known it will
become extinct, and new definitions of life, nature, and human will take
hold.

Many leading technology industries have been aware of the possibility of a
Singularity for some time. There are concerns that, if the public understood
its ramifications, they might panic over accepting new and untested
technologies that bring us closer to Singularity. For now, the debate about
the consequences of the Singularity has stayed within the halls of business
and technology; the kinks are being worked out, avoiding "doomsday"
hysteria. At this time, it appears to matter little if the Singularity ever
truly comes to pass.

What Will Singularity Look Like?

Kurzweil explains that central to the workings of the Singularity are a
number of "laws," one of which is Moore's law. Intel cofounder Gordon E.
Moore noted that the number of transistors that could fit on a single
computer chip had doubled every year for six years from the beginnings of
integrated circuits in 1959. Moore predicted that the trend would continue,
and it has -- although the doubling rate was later adjusted to an 18-month
cycle.

Today, the smallest transistors in chips span only thousands of atoms
(hundreds of nanometers). Chipmakers build such components using a process
in which they apply semiconducting, metallic, and insulating layers to a
semiconductor wafer to create microscopic circuitry. They accomplish the
procedure using light for imprinting patterns onto the wafer. In order to
keep Moore's law moving right along, researchers today have built circuits
out of transistors, wires, and other components as tiny as a few atoms
across that can carry out simple computations.

Kurzweil and Sun Microsystems' chief scientist Bill Joy agree that, circa
2030, the technology of the 1999 film The Matrix (which visualized a
three-dimensional interface between humans and computers, calling
conventional reality into question) will be within our grasp and that
humanity will be teetering on the edge of the Singularity. (See their essays
in Taking the Red Pill: Science, Philosophy, and Religion in The Matrix,
edited by Glenn Yeffeth, 2003.) Kurzweil explains that this will become
possible because Moore's law will be replaced by another computing paradigm
over the next few decades. "Moore's law was not the first but the fifth
paradigm to provide exponential growth of computing power," Kurzweil says.
The first paradigm of computer technology was the data processing machinery
used in the 1890 American census. This electromechanical computing
technology was followed by the paradigms of relay-based technology, vacuum
tubes, transistors, and eventually integrated circuits. "Every time a
paradigm ran out of steam," states Kurzweil, "another paradigm came along
and picked up where that paradigm left off." The sixth paradigm, the one
that will enable technology ï¿½ la The Matrix , will be here in 20 to 30
years. "It's obvious what the sixth paradigm will be -- computing in three
dimensions," says Kurzweil. "We will effectively merge with our technology."

Stewart Brand in his book The Clock of the Long Now discusses the
Singularity and another related law, Monsanto's law, which states that the
ability to identify and use genetic information doubles every 12 to 24
months. This exponential growth in biological knowledge is transforming
agriculture, nutrition, and health care in the emerging life-sciences
industry.

A field of research building on the exponential growth rate of biotechnology
is nanotechnology -- the science of building machines out of atoms. A
nanometer is atomic in scale, a distance that's 0.001% of the width of human
hair. One goal of this science is to change the atomic fabric of matter --
to engineer machine, like atomic structures, that reproduce like living
matter. In this respect, it is similar to biotechnology, except that
nanotechnology needs to literally create something like an inorganic version
of DNA to drive the building of its tiny machines. "We're working out the
rules of biology in a realm where nature hasn't had the opportunity to
work," states University of Texas biochemistry professor Angela Belcher.
"What would take millions of years to evolve on its own takes about three
weeks on the bench top."

Machine progress is knocking down the barriers between all the sciences.
Chemists, biologists, engineers, and physicists are now finding themselves
collaborating on more and more experiment al research . This collaboration
is best illustrated by the opening of Cornell University's Nanobiotechnology
Center and other such facilities around the world. These scientists predict
breakthroughs soon that will open the way to molecular-size computing and
the quantum computer, creating new scientific paradigms where exponential
technological progress will leap off the map. Those who have done the
exponential math quickly realize the possibilities in numerous industries
and scientific fields -- and then they notice the anomaly of the Singularity
happening within this century.

In 2005, IBM plans to introduce Blue Gene, a supercomputer that can perform
at about 5% of the power of the human brain. This computer could transmit
the entire contents of the Library of Congress in less than two seconds.
Blue Gene/L, specifically developed to advance and serve the growing
life-sciences industry, is expected to operate at about 200 teraflops (200
trillion floating-point operations per second), larger than the total
computing power of the top 500 supercomputers in the world. It will be able
to run extremely complex simulations, including breakthroughs in computers
and information technology , creating new frontiers in biology, says IBM 's
Paul M. Horn. According to Moore's law, computer hardware will surpass human
brainpower in the first decade of this century. Software that emulates the
human mind -- artificial intelligence -- may take another decade to evolve.

Nanotech Advances Promote Singularity

Physicists, mathematicians, and scientists like Vinge and Kurzweil have
identified through their research the likely boundaries of the Singularity
and have predicted with confidence various paths leading up to it over the
next couple of decades. These scientists are currently debating what
discovery could set off a chain reaction of Earth -- altering technological
events. They suggest that advancements in the fields of nanotechnology or
the discovery of artificial intelligence could usher in the Singularity.

The majority of people closest to these theories and laws -- the tech sector
-- can hardly wait for these technologies to arrive. The true believers call
themselves extropians, posthumans, and transhumanists, and are actively
organizing not just to bring the Singularity about, but to counter the
technophobes and neo-Luddites who believe that unchecked technological
progress will exceed our ability to reverse any destructive process that
might unintentionally be set in motion.

The antithesis to neo-Luddite activists is the extropians. For example, the
Progress Action Coalition, formed in 2001 by bio-artist, author, and
extropian activist Natasha Vita-More, fantasizes about "the dream of true
artificial intelligence . . . adding a new richness to the human landscape
never before known." Pro-Act, AgBioworld, Biotechnology Progress, Foresight
Institute, the Progress and Freedom Foundation, and other industry groups
acknowledge, however, that the greatest threat to technological progress
comes not just from environmental groups, but from a small faction of the
scientific community.

Knowledge-Enabled Mass Destruction

In April 2000, a wrench was thrown into the arrival of the Singularity by an
unlikely source: Sun Microsystems chief scientist Bill Joy. He is a
neo-Luddite without being a Luddite, a technologist warning the world about
technology. Joy co-founded Sun Microsystems, helped create the Unix computer
operating system, and developed the Java and Jini software system sï¿½systems
that helped give the Internet "life."

In a now-infamous cover story in Wired magazine, "Why the Future Doesn't
Need Us," (http://www.nhne.com/misc/foodbilljoy.html) Joy warned of the
dangers posed by developments in genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics.
Joy's warning of the impacts of exponential technological progress run amok
gave new credence to the coming Singularity. Unless things change, Joy
predicted, "We could be the last generation of humans." Joy warned that
"knowledge alone will enable mass destruction" and termed this phenomenon
"knowledge-enabled mass destruction."

The twentieth century gave rise to nuclear, biological , and chemical (NBC)
technologies that, while powerful, require access to vast amounts of raw
(and often rare) materials, technical information, and large-scale
industries. The twenty-first-century technologies of genetics,
nanotechnology, and robotics (GNR ), however, will require neither large
facilities nor rare raw materials.

The threat posed by GNR technologies becomes further amplified by the fact
that some of these new technologies have been designed to be able to
replicate -- i.e., they can build new versions of themselves. Nuclear bombs
did not sprout more bombs, and toxic spills did not grow more spills. If the
new self-replicating GNR technologies are released into the environment,
they could be nearly impossible to recall or control.

Joy understands that the greatest dangers we face ultimately stem from a
world where global corporations dominate -- a future where much of the world
has no voice in how the world is run. Twenty-first-century GNR technologies,
he writes, "are being developed almost exclusively by corporate enterprises.
We are aggressively pursuing the promises of these new technologies within
the now-unchallenged system of global capitalism and its manifold financial
incentives and competitive pressures."

Joy believes that the system of global capitalism , combined with our
current rate of progress, gives the human race a 30% to 50% chance of going
extinct around the time the Singularity is expected to happen, around 2030.
"Not only are these estimates not encouraging," he adds, "but they do not
include the probability of many horrid outcomes that lie short of
extinction."

It is very likely that scientists and global corporations will miss key
developments -- or, worse, actively avoid discussion of them. A whole
generation of biologists has left the field for the biotech and nanotech
labs. Biologist Craig Holdredge, who has followed biotech since its
beginnings in the 1970s, warns, " Biology is losing its connection with
nature."

When Machines Make War

Cloning, biotechnology, nanotechnology, and robotics are blurring the lines
between nature and machine. In his 1972 speech "The Android and the Human,"
science fiction visionary Philip K. Dick told his audience, "Machines are
becoming more human. Our environment, and I mean our man-made world of
machines, is becoming alive in ways specifically and fundamentally analogous
to ourselves." In the near future, Dick prophesied, a human might shoot a
robot only to see it bleed from its wound. When the robot shoots back, it
may be surprised to find the human gush smoke. "It would be rather a great
moment of truth for both of them," Dick added.

In November 2001, Advanced Cell Technology of Massachusetts jarred the
nation's focus away from recession and terrorism when it announced that it
had succeeded in cloning early-stage human embryos. Debate on the topic
stayed equally divided between those who support therapeutic cloning and
those, like the American Medical Association, who want an outright ban.

Karel Capek coined the word robot (Czech for "forced labor") in the 1920
play R.U.R., in which machin s assume the drudgery of factory production,
then develop feelings and proceed to wipe out humanity in a violent
revolution. While the robots in R.U.R. could represent the "nightmare vision
of the proletariat seen through middle-class eyes," as science-fiction
author Thomas Disch has suggested, they also are testament to the persistent
fears of man-made technology run amok.

Similar themes have manifested themselves in popular culture and folklore
since at least medieval times. While some might dismiss these stories simply
as popular paranoia, robots are already being deployed beyond Hollywood and
are poised to take over the deadlier duties of the modern soldier. The
Pentagon is replacing soldiers with sensors, vehicles, aircraft, and weapons
that can be operated by remote control or are autonomous. Pilot-less
aircraft played an import ant role in the bombings of Afghanistan, and a
model called the Gnat conducted surveillance flights in the Philippines in
2002.

Leading the Pentagon's remote-control warfare effort is the Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Best known for creating the infrastructure
that became the World Wide Web, DARPA is working with Boeing to develop the
X-45 unmanned combat air vehicle. The 30-foot-long windowless planes will
carry up to 12 bombs, each weighing 250 pounds. According to military
analysts, the X-45 will be used to attack radar and antiaircraft
installations as early as 2007. By 2010, it will be program med to
distinguish friends from foes without consulting humans and independently
attack targets in designated areas. By 2020, robotic planes and vehicles
will direct remote-controlled bombers toward targets, robotic helicopters
will coordinate driverless convoys, and unmanned submarines will clear mines
and launch cruise missiles.

Rising to the challenge of mixing man and machine, MIT's Institute for
Soldier Nanotech nologies (backed by a five-year, $50-million U.S. Army
grant) is busy innovating materials and designs to create military uniforms
that rival the best science fiction. Human soldiers themselves are being
transformed into modern cyborgs through robotic devices and nanotechnology.

The Biorobotic Arms Race

The 2002 International Conference on Robotics and Automation, hosted by the
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, kicked off its technical
session with a discussion on biorobots, the melding of living and artificial
structures into a cybernetic organism or cyborg.

"In the past few years, the biosciences and robotics have been getting
closer and closer," says Paolo Dario, founder of Italy's Advanced Robotics
Technology and Systems Lab. "More and more, biological models are used for
the design of biometric robots [and] robots are increasingly used by
neuroscientists as clinical platforms for validating biological models."
Artificial constructs are beginning to approach the scale and complexity of
living systems.

Some of the scientific breakthroughs expected in the next few years promise
to make cloning and robotics seem rather benign. The merging of technology
and nature has already yielded some shocking progeny. Consider these
examples:

- Researchers at the State University of New York Health Science Center at
Brooklyn have turned a living rat into a radio-controlled automaton using
three electrodes placed in the animal's brain . The animal can be remotely
steered through an obstacle course, making it twist, turn, and jump on
demand.

- In May 2002, eight elderly Florida residents were injected with
microscopic silicon identification chips encoded with medical information.
The Los Angeles Times reported that this made them "scannable just like a
jar of peanut butter in the supermarket checkout line." Applied Digital
Solutions Inc., the maker of the chip, will soon have a prototype of an
implantable device able to receive GPS satellite signals and transmit a
person's location.

- Human embryos have been successfully implanted and grown in artificial
wombs. The experiments were halted after a few days to avoid violating in
vitro fertilization regulations.

- Researchers in Israel have fashioned a "bio- computer" out of DNA that can
handle a billion operations per second with 99.8% accuracy. Reuters reports
that these bio-computers are so minute that "a trillion of them could fit
inside a test tube."

- In England, University of Reading Professor Kevin Warwick has implanted
microchips in his body to remotely monitor and control his physical motions.
During Warwick's Project Cyborg experiments, computers were able to remotely
monitor his movements and open doors at his approach.

- Engineers at the U.S. Sandia National Labs have built a remote-controlled
spy robot equipped with a scanner, microphone, and chemical microsensor. The
robot weighs one ounce and is smaller than a dime. Lab scientists predict
that the microbot could prove invaluable in protecting U.S. military and
economic interests.

The next arms race is not based on replicating and perfecting a single
deadly technology, like the nuclear bombs of the past or some space-based
weapon of the future . This new arms race is about accelerating the
development and integration of advanced autonomous, biotechnological, and
human-robotic systems into the military apparatus. A mishap or a massive war
using these new technologies could be more catastrophic than any nuclear
war.

Where the Map Exceeds the Territory

The rate at which GNR technologies are being adopted by our society --
without regard to long-term safety testing or researching the political,
cultural, and economic ramifications -- mirrors the development and
proliferation of nuclear power and weapons. The human loss caused by
experimentation, production, and development is still being felt from the
era of NBC technologies.

The discussion of the environmental impacts of GNR technologies, at least in
the United States, has been relegated to the margins. Voices of concern and
opposition have likewise been missing in discussions of the technological
Singularity. The true cost of this technological progress and any coming
Singularity will mean the unprecedented decline of the planet's inhabitants
at an ever-increasing rate of global extinction.

The World Conservation Union, the International Botanical Congress, and a
majority of the world's biologists believe that a global mass extinction
already is under way. As a direct result of human activity (resource
extraction, industrial agriculture, the introduction of non-native animals,
and population growth ), up to one-fifth of all living species are expected
to disappear within 30 years. A 1998 Harris Poll of the 5,000 members of the
American Institute of Biological Scienc s found that 70% believed that what
has been termed "The Sixth Extinction " is now under way. A simultaneous
Harris Poll found that 60% of the public were totally unaware of the
impending biological collapse.

At the same time that nature's ancient biological creation is on the
decline, laboratory-created biotech life-forms -- genetically modified
soybeans, genetically engineered salmon, cloned sheep, drug-crops, biorobots
-- are on the rise.

Nature and technology are not just evolving; they are competing and
combining with one another. Ultimately they will become one. We hear reports
daily about these new technologies and new creations, while shreds of the
ongoing biological collapse surface here and there. Past the edges of
change, beyond the wall across the future , anything becomes possible.
Beware the dragons.

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RESOURCES ON THE WEB:

Visit the following websites to find out more about the Singularity and
related technologies.

- Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
(http://www.singinst.org/) is a nonprofit organization based in Atlanta,
Georgia, devoted solely to creating the Singularity by direct research into
Singularity technologies and direct implementation of the Singularity. They
provide forums for discussion, coordinate Singularity-related efforts, and
publish introductory material and research papers.

- Singularity Watch (http://www.singularitywatch.com/) shares news, events,
and editorials helpful to understanding the accelerating progression to the
Singularity; planning for, investing in, and managing its balanced
development; and improving human interdependence and ethics.

- Singularity (http://www.singularity.org/) is dedicated to those
technologies most likely to take humankind to Singularity.

- Singularity expert Ray Kurzweil's website (http://www.KurzweilAI.net )
features a discussion by leading "big thinkers" on the technological
Singularity and other related science and philosophy.

- The Foresight Institute (http://www.foresight.org/) guides emerging
technologies, particularly nanotechnologies, to improve the human condition.
A feature of this Web site is the Nanotechnology FAQ.

Exploring 'The Singularity'

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