Singularity: What's the Point?

I like blogs that mull ideas.

One idea that is uber-trendy in sci-fi just now is 'the singularity'. It's basically Raymond Kurzweil's prediction that, one day soon, our understanding and technical sophistication will enable the emergence of human-machine hybrids (or just intelligent machines in some versions) which, with exponentially-increasing speed, will rapidly 'upgrade' themselves beyond our understanding. It's a version of the future that tends to end badly for the poor hom saps left behind. So get your brains augmented now guys or you'll miss the boat.

I suppose I'm rather sceptical. Kurzweil's writings tend to be all breathless and excited, with half-formed ideas shooting out in all directions. Wonderful to nibble at now and then but ultimately unsatisfying - like chocolate eclairs. It's not that there is nothing in it - far from it - I just don't see it going the way Kurzweil so obviously longs for it to go. Nor do I see advances in biology, computing, AI, nanotech, etc. ever amounting to a 'singularity' as such. (I wish he'd called it 'The Phase Transition' or something more sensible - 'singularity' is such a bad name for it.) It's hard to believe humans could ever create anything 'transhuman' or, if by some miracle we did, it's hard to see us ever letting it survive. (I also have a strong suspicion that anything 'transhuman' would be so flawed it wouldn't survive long in the wild anyway.)

There is a sense in which the path to transhumanity started when we first began using tools and building shelters - certainly when we stopped hunting and gathering and started farming. Building that first city was probably our biggest mistake! It's hard - probably impossible - deliberately to go back from where you are once that process has started. Of course, there are forces outside our control (climate change, peak oil, pandemics, religion) which could drive us backwards whether we like it or not. Perhaps, if we could develop our intelligence a bit, we would all see what a silly mistake it had all been and take another path.

Anyway, thanks to Sue Lange, writing as Scusteister Schwamp, for reminding me about all this with her Singularity Watch blog. Sue seems to see us all ending up in completely artificial environments one day but I don't see it as inevitable. Some may want it. Many will not. Personally, I would like to live forever - but I'm not holding my breath waiting for the singularity to make it possible.