I’ve been reading the book “The Singularity is Near” by Ray Kurzweil, which Holly and Rick gave me for Christmas. It’s all about the accelerating rate of technology and what will happen when that rate approaches infinity (the singularity). This is something I discussed in one of my old rants from 2003 (Part 1, Part 2). I speculated that this infinite rate could be reached when we can manipulate and travel in time. Since an actual rate of infinity seems impossible, would we be able to differentiate between close to infinity and really really close to infinity? Would our perception of time change as technologies are developed at such an absurd rate?

In the book, Kurzweil suggests that the singularity will occur when when we develop powerful enough computers with good enough AI that they can design newer better computers. These intelligent computers would redesign themselves, continually designing better and better computers and other technology. With the computer power available increasing exponentially and the amount of money we spend on computers each year also increasing exponentially, we’ll be buying enough computing power to match all of life on Earth by the 2040’s, so this is when Kurzweil suggests the singularity will occur. We will all be augmented by computers in our brains and also have rapidly accelerating intelligence to go along with the artificially intelligent computers.

Here’s a quote from the book (p. 22):

“Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an “intelligence explosion,” and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make.”

~Irving John Good, “Speculations Concerning the First Ultraintelligent Machine,” 1965.