Polynikes
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This is a topic I have become increasingly more interested in recent years.
Waking Up In Time - Singularities
That site is a little out there, but offers some interesting opinions and knowledge.
When might this moment occur? People such as Vernor Vinge, who chart the acceleration of technological development, argue for a date somewhere around the year 2035. They believe the trigger for the singularity will be the development of the super-intelligent computer. Although current computers are very fast by human standards, they are still not nearly as complex as our own brains. In terms of sheer processing capacity, the human brain, with its tens of billions of neurons, is around a million times more powerful than a computer. That is why you and I can easily pick out a person from a background of trees and buildings, and recognize them as someone we know, all in a fraction of second, while a robot still has a hard time following the white line down the middle of the road.
However, if computing power keeps doubling every eighteen months, as it has done for the last twenty years, then sometime in the 2030s there will be computers that can equal the human brain’s abilities. From there it is only a small step to the computer that can surpass the human brain. There would then be little point in human beings’designing future computers; super-intelligent machines would be able to design better ones, and do so faster. Once super-intelligent machines, rather than human beings, drove the rate of progress, an exponential runaway effect would be created. Computer power would no longer be doubling once every eighteen months. A simple mathematical analysis shows that super-intelligent computers designing even more intelligent machines, which in turn could design yet more intelligent machines would cause the doubling time to drop from eighteen months to nine months, to four-and-a-half months, to nine weeks, to thirty days, to fifteen days . . . Another two weeks after that, computing power would have reached infinity. We would have arrived at a singularity -- the point at which the mathematical equations break down, and the old laws no longer apply.
Vernor Vinge on the Singularity
Vernor Vinge is credited with recognizing the implications of what occurs leading up to the singularity and whether it can be avoided among other things.
Welcome to Principia Cybernetica Web
A very interesting site that I have barely scratched the surface of. Offers many intelligent insights into defining things such as consciousness and also addresses epistemological and metaphysical concerns regarding cybernetics.
Cybernetic integration of humans must preserve the creative core of human individual, because it is the engine of evolution. And it must make it immortal, because for the purpose of evolution there is no sense in killing humans. In natural selection, the source of change is the mutation of the gene; nature creates by experimenting on genes and seeing what kind of a body they produce. Therefore, nature has to destroy older creations in order to make room for the newer ones. The mortality of multicellular organisms is an evolutionary necessity. At the present new stage of evolution, the evolution of human-made culture, the human brain is the source of creativity, not an object of experimentation. Its loss in death is unjustifiable; it is an evolutionary absurdity. The immortality of human beings is on the agenda of Cosmic Evolution.
With the progress being made in nanotechnology and artificial intelligence, is the next stage in human evolution inevitably going to lead to a future of cybernetic organisms?
Waking Up In Time - Singularities
That site is a little out there, but offers some interesting opinions and knowledge.
When might this moment occur? People such as Vernor Vinge, who chart the acceleration of technological development, argue for a date somewhere around the year 2035. They believe the trigger for the singularity will be the development of the super-intelligent computer. Although current computers are very fast by human standards, they are still not nearly as complex as our own brains. In terms of sheer processing capacity, the human brain, with its tens of billions of neurons, is around a million times more powerful than a computer. That is why you and I can easily pick out a person from a background of trees and buildings, and recognize them as someone we know, all in a fraction of second, while a robot still has a hard time following the white line down the middle of the road.
However, if computing power keeps doubling every eighteen months, as it has done for the last twenty years, then sometime in the 2030s there will be computers that can equal the human brain’s abilities. From there it is only a small step to the computer that can surpass the human brain. There would then be little point in human beings’designing future computers; super-intelligent machines would be able to design better ones, and do so faster. Once super-intelligent machines, rather than human beings, drove the rate of progress, an exponential runaway effect would be created. Computer power would no longer be doubling once every eighteen months. A simple mathematical analysis shows that super-intelligent computers designing even more intelligent machines, which in turn could design yet more intelligent machines would cause the doubling time to drop from eighteen months to nine months, to four-and-a-half months, to nine weeks, to thirty days, to fifteen days . . . Another two weeks after that, computing power would have reached infinity. We would have arrived at a singularity -- the point at which the mathematical equations break down, and the old laws no longer apply.
Vernor Vinge on the Singularity
Vernor Vinge is credited with recognizing the implications of what occurs leading up to the singularity and whether it can be avoided among other things.
Welcome to Principia Cybernetica Web
A very interesting site that I have barely scratched the surface of. Offers many intelligent insights into defining things such as consciousness and also addresses epistemological and metaphysical concerns regarding cybernetics.
Cybernetic integration of humans must preserve the creative core of human individual, because it is the engine of evolution. And it must make it immortal, because for the purpose of evolution there is no sense in killing humans. In natural selection, the source of change is the mutation of the gene; nature creates by experimenting on genes and seeing what kind of a body they produce. Therefore, nature has to destroy older creations in order to make room for the newer ones. The mortality of multicellular organisms is an evolutionary necessity. At the present new stage of evolution, the evolution of human-made culture, the human brain is the source of creativity, not an object of experimentation. Its loss in death is unjustifiable; it is an evolutionary absurdity. The immortality of human beings is on the agenda of Cosmic Evolution.
With the progress being made in nanotechnology and artificial intelligence, is the next stage in human evolution inevitably going to lead to a future of cybernetic organisms?
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