The Singularity

[Mike]

Recently, prominent futurists such as Ray Kurzweil have speculated that society is on the cusp of a "technological singularity": i.e., a point at which technology accelerates so quickly that its course can no longer be predicted. Kurzweil believes that this event will be precipitated by creation of "strong" artificial intelligence exceeding the reasoning capacity of a human. The idea is that this agent can in turn develop an even smarter AI, until the capacity of the machines outstrips human reasoning entirely.

What are your thoughts on this? Do you believe "The Singularity is Near"? Is AI really the most efficient way to go about this? (why not bioengineer smarter human beings rather than try to recreate reasoning from the ground up?) What will this do to humanity, socially and philosophically? Will we become vegetables if our creations do all of the thinking for us, or will we find other pursuits? Is this territory that we should step into?

[Gary]

Some would argue that bioengineering smarter human beings is territory we should not step into.

What interests me is not the singularity but the road there - engineering smarter human beings may be an essential step towards or away from the singularity - or would the singularity be an essential step towards the re-engineering of the human being.

Is the human mind too much of a kluge to be redesigned? Don't we have to start from the ground up?

The singularity could have egalitarian effects on mankind - we would all be stupid, whereas Bioengineering humans could create an even greater gap between rich and poor.

How about some crazy mash-up that enhances both the machine and the human? Don't we already have this?

Technology used to be the constraint - now we might be

[Gary]

Ray Kurzweil: How technology's accelerating power will transform us [TED]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfbOyw3C ... C5&index=0