The Singularity, defined by some scientists as “a future time when societal, scientific, and economic change is so fast we cannot even imagine what will happen from our present perspective, (1)” seems far in the future; past our lifetimes at least. But data from all aspects of life shows that this might not be the case. In fact, Ray Kurzweil predicts in his book The Singularity is Near that this event will happen by 2045. Not surprisingly, this radically different future will have many problems, most of which aren’t discussed by Kurzweil or his followers. There will be external dangers—such as out of control self-replicating nanobots, which I won’t discuss in this paper. There will also be dangers within the human race such as almost a complete destruction of human interaction and motivation. I believe Kurzweil’s predictions will come true, but propose possible solutions to the problems humans will inevitably face.
The basis for Kurzweil’s predictions is the law of accelerating returns, which says that technology is improving exponentially over time (p.7). An important example of this is Moore’s law, which states that the number of transistors that can be put on a computer chip will double every two years. While Moore only intended this to be a short-term explosion in computer technology lasting until 1975 or so, the trend continued and still is continuing to this day (p. 111-112). In fact, Paolo Gargini, chairman of the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors, said in 2005 that Moore’s law should continue to be correct until 2020 (2). So this law turned out to be even more powerful than its founder predicted. The law of accelerating returns occurs in many other areas with some relation to technology such as DNA sequencing and manufacturing speed (p. 74, 101). Critics of this law believe that it is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Businesses predict that a certain area of technology will improve exponentially and then focus their resources on making it happen. However, exponential improvement has occurred in so many different areas of technology that this cannot be the case.
While there is an enormous accumulation of evidence in support of exponential improvement in technology, people continue to think that technology will improve linearly. People naturally expect most things, including improvement in technology, to happen as it traditionally has. This linear view of the future has resulted in many terribly conservative predictions. Even Popular Mechanics, a magazine that has a more optimistic view of the future than most people, said in 1949, “[While] a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and perhaps weigh 1.5 tons (p. 56).” The difference between an exponential and a linear view of the future can be seen with internet usage over the past 30 years...
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Your introduction is interesting and articulate, but your apparent thesis - that Kurzweil is right, but in a problematic way - is awfully vague. What are the problems, and what is your overall response to them?
Your discussion of exponential increase is good - I have my own criticisms of this point of view (short version: that Moore's law and the like are in no sense scientific laws, but are observations without a coherent theoretical basis -- also that Moore's law is rendered problematic by the utter failure for software to improve at anything like the rate that software improves at). Regardless, I think you do a good job of introducting the topic - it's the vagueness of your thesis, and that alone, which is troubling at this point.
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