The Singularity Is Near Book Response

As a species, we gained the ability to learn from each other and specialize further in whatever sector we were skilled in. Specialization allowed humanity to use their time to do things besides just surviving. People began to live longer, healthier lives, and the average man’s contribution to society increased. Then, in the last 25 years, we have seen the expansion of the information age. Never before has there been a source of literally all of human knowledge. There have been great libraries with thousands of books, but nothing that can even remotely compare to the level of ease of access that the internet provides. What does this tell us? This says that the rate of humanity’s technological advancement is rapidly increasing. A common model for how quickly computers are advancing is given by Moore’s Law. Moore’s law is a prediction made in 1965 by Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel, based on his observation of computer progress, that says that the number of transistors that can fit on a chip of a given area doubles roughly every 18 months (Investopedia). Transistor count correlates directly to performance and efficiency. Our progress on the power of computer and abilities of Artificial Intelligence in the past couple years is enticing, but if progress continues at the same rate, the famed, or to some infamous, singularity is right around the corner.

It must occur because, it will benefit our society and increase productivity. The risk may begin later but probably within this century, when supercomputers and robots have considerably higher levels of thinking, intelligence, and they rather than humans,

Kurzweil makes a prediction on a theory he comes up with called Singularity, he describes it in his book as “the culmination of the merger of our biological thinking and existence with our technology, resulting in a world that is still human but that transcends our biological roots." And he also states that "There will be no distinction, post-Singularity, between human and machine or between physical and virtual reality," 2

In this day and age of conspiracy theories and obsession over the inevitable end of the world, people have come to develop one more end of the world theory: technological singularity. People fail to understand that technological singularity does not need to mean the end of world but can be beneficial to humanity in more ways than one. Although fear of the unknown is understandable, history has shown that, more often than not, fear only limits one’s potential and the potential of the world to advance. Technological singularity and the arrival of machines with superior intelligence brings along the possibility of an array of innovations from nerve-connected limb prosthetics to robotic bodies that we can integrate our brains into, virtually allowing

With so many new inventions coming out, new inventors have to be stepping there game up all of the time. This will eventually lead to the normal people in society to begin thinking and getting challenged by all this new technology. For example, the older generations were not accustomed to cell phones, so they eventually had to learn. The younger generations grew up with cell phones, so they will begin to invent new ways of using them, new ways to program it, newer functions for it. With every new machine we bring out, humans begin challenging themselves far and beyond their expectations. This leads to much newer and more complicated type of intelligent machines that will later on seem average an normal to further

Ray Kurzweil discusses the rate of technology will no longer be linear, it will now follow an exponential growth rate. He explains that the exponential growth will continue to accelerate at a fast pace than we can ever think of. Although it will not reach infinity it is still fast enough to make an impact on our world. Though progression will be slow at first it will eventually take off. It will be thousands of year of progress made in a matter of decades. Ray Kurzweil comes up with the law of accelerating returns to explain the exponential growth rate. He talks about a number of things, the first being that progress comes from the work of the evolutionary stage. It is the work at this stage that allow us to continue forward. Secondly, this exponential growth will lead to an increase in returns. This exponential growth will lead to more effort and resources put toward the future progress, leading the exponential growth rate to grow even more. Lastly, Kurzweil believes that the biological and technological fields will go through this evolutionary process that will indeed lead to an exponential growth rate. Kurzweil later in his essays discusses the law of accelerating returns will decrease the size of technology but increase their potential. Kurzweil discusses

This indicates that there will be continuous changes at a rapid pace to the industry and the ever changing world. As a mortgage loan consultant it is imperative for me to be at the top, and ahead of my game. This is crucial to my livelihood as well as being successful at my craft. The video highlighted that a super computer will be built that will go beyond the computational capability of the human brain. Likewise, it is predicted “that by 2049, a $1000.00 computer will exceed the computational capabilities of the entire human species.” Is this a case of man versus machine? I

In Paul Kurtz’s Fears of the Apocalypse: The Escape from Reason, he explains that “the fixation on apocalypse grows out of fear of the unknown, and it is fed by hope of redemption” (1). Written a year before the new millennium, Kurtz writes about how different types of doomsday prophecies such as the secular, religious, or New Age have predicted the world’s fate. Although each prophecy has their own tale of how and when the world will end, they can all agree that the new millennium is the end for all of mankind. However, these dates have miniscule significance on these doomsday prophecies. Afterall, time is human creation.

The idea that one day consciousness may spread throughout the universe has been considered seriously by physicists. Sir Martin Rees, the Royal Astronomer of Great Britain, has written, “Wormholes, extra dimensions, and quantum computers open up speculative scenarios that could transform our entire universe eventually into a ‘living cosmos’!” But will the mind one day be freed of its material body to explore the entire universe? This was the theme explored in Isaac Asimov’s classic science-fiction tale “The Last Question.” (He would fondly recall that this was his favorite science-fiction short story of all the ones he had written.) In it, billions of years into the future, humans will have placed their physical bodies in pods on an obscure planet, freeing their minds to control pure energy throughout the galaxy. Instead of surrogates made of steel and silicon, these surrogates are pure energy beings that can effortlessly roam the distant reaches of space, past exploding stars, colliding galaxies, and other wonders of the universe. But no matter how powerful humanity has become, it is helpless as it witnesses the ultimate death of the universe itself in the Big Freeze. In desperation, humanity constructs a supercomputer to answer the final question: Can the death of the universe be reversed? The computer is so large and complex that it has to be placed in hyperspace. But the computer simply responds that there is insufficient information to give an answer.

It’s the age old conundrum of the future. Where we are going to be in 10 years, or in 100, or 1,000,000,000,000,000. No one can really agree on any one path for our future, there are many varieties of ideas and theories out there, and people seem seem to eager to choose which path humans will pursue. Will we become cyborgs or genetically modified? will we be mono-ethnic? Will humans involved in space colonization become adapted to the environment of the planet they are inhabiting. I don’t believe in a single one of these theories, I believe in all of them.

An ongoing, redeveloping, catalyst-ensuing catastrophe known as “The End of the World as We Know it” has been hypothesized since humanity’s humble beginnings that predicts the apocalyptic theories for mass extinction, earth-crumbling events possibly dictating the end of the world. So far, all theories: scientific, religious, or phenomena-related, who yield a specific date for the end of the world have been debunked; creation of this essay would not exist otherwise. It is what looms in the future that theorists and educators such as Dr. F. Kenton Beshore and David Powell understand to be the demise of Earth’s doomsday. President of the World Bible Society, Beshore, has calculated the “Rapture” to occur on or before 2021 with the “Second

Computers are taking more and more jobs and this trend will accelerate as we approach technological singularity. This is the event “when computers will attain human-level intelligence” Natalie Wolchover states. The singularity is projected to arrive sometime around 2030 -2040, but it could occur sooner depending on how computer technology develops. Wolchover states:

The man, a little being compared to the Universe, often feels threatened by wars, comets, natural phenomena and all those dates that contain repeating numbers that seem to bring the end of the world, but truly the end comes? To this day, many predictions about the end of the world have emerged, but none has come true, that is why it has always existed and will probably continue to exist that doubt about what will happen to the world in the future. The end has been predicted by scientists, ancient civilizations, different religions, and many others. For example, Nostradamus was one of the most famous scientists that wrote many prophecies and events about the future, his predictions are known worldwide and have impacted societies; as him, there are other scientists such as Isaac Newton, Stephen Hawking, and Richard Noone. Moreover, the Mayans, an ancient civilization, known as one of the most advanced civilizations in the field of mathematics, astronomy, physics and arts; they are also known for predicting that the world would end of December 21, 2012. Perhaps, this was one of the most famous prophecies in recent times. Also, different religions such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses has predicted many times the end of the world. The impact of this topic is very well known, many people have been influenced greatly. Even Hollywood have been carried away by those predictions and theories, creating movies such as "The day after tomorrow" or "2012", where they show what would happen.

In the beginning of the human race, technology was nonexistent, or even thought of, but ever since the start they have always tried to find things to make their live simpler. Today, people live are simpler than they were in history due to the advancements of technology that have made life a little too easy. The computer for instance is everywhere today, from a smartphone to a desktop computer. Advancements with the technology of the computer have helped scientist take the most complex equation to solve in less than a few seconds. Computers can take on tasks that require a lot of info to tasks that would take less than a second. Even today computers take on tasks that were once occupied by man, and people are looking to expand on the computers abilities to see how much they are able to accomplish compared to the men or women that work in the jobs. Although that seems like an improbable thing, it is coming sooner than people think. Computers almost replicate, or maybe double the abilities that humans can do. Question is when technological revolution going to begin to take over the jobs of millions of people due to cheaper work and more productivity.

The head of engineering at Google is Dr Ray Kurzweill, he has predicted that the intellect of machines will surpass human intellect by 2045 and believes that by this point machines will be capable of everything that humans are only they will do it better.(Kurzweill,2005). More recently Kurzweill has explained that his aim while working with google is to reverse engineer the human brain (Kurzweill,2013). There are however many sceptics of Kurzweill's theories and proof of Kurzweils singularity theories remains to be shown. (Regalado,2013)