I define it as when machines understand people.
Ask HN: How do you define the singularity?
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Re: Ask HN: How do you define the singularity?
#2I still think of that Vernor Vinge novel Across Realtime where people just disappear. Like a murder mystery it has already happened at the beginning of the book and people at various technology levels are one-way time traveling into the future trying to figure out what happened but… they never do.
It’s a good read.
I also think of this differential equation
dx/dt = x*x
x = 1/t
Anyhow I don’t believe in that God at the end of time that Aella and Tielhard de Chardin believe in because I think intelligence itself is limited the way Godel, Turing and many others point to.
Re: Ask HN: How do you define the singularity?
#3I'm bearish on AI. The human brain does far more than just learn things. AI still has no ability to reason or think creatively. So we're not even in the ballpark. The space has been worked on for 50 years. I'm not sure why people think the field will now start to progress rapidly.
Re: Ask HN: How do you define the singularity?
#4I'm bearish on AI. The human brain does far more than just learn things. AI still has no ability to reason or think creatively. So we're not even in the ballpark. The space has been worked on for 50 years. I'm not sure why people think the field will now start to progress rapidly.
AI systems can search through millions of molecules to find a drug. How is that different from Thomas Edison trying 1000 filaments for a light bulb?
Re: Ask HN: How do you define the singularity?
#5Well, it's a spectrum to me. Glasses are already humans and machines merging together, and I feel that people in the 1500s would think the singularity had already happened to us, given how smartphones are available everywhere.
If I had to choose an event, though, I think it would be the first time that human intelligence is enhanced by AI in some way (imagine offloading numerical computations on your mind). When that happens, we will have lots of questions to answer, like: what happens when rich people are not only richer, but also fundamentally smarter and more efficient?
Re: Ask HN: How do you define the singularity?
#6Well, it's a spectrum to me. Glasses are already humans and machines merging together, and I feel that people in the 1500s would think the singularity had already happened to us, given how smartphones are available everywhere. If I had to choose an event, though, I think it would be the first time that human intelligence is enhanced by AI in some way (imagine offloading numerical computations on your mind). When that…
We already have calculators and spreadsheets for enhanced mathematical ability, and rich people have had assistants and advisers to enhance their knowledge and help them work more efficiently.
The interesting thing about AI and machine learning is it's actually becoming available to everyone very democratically. We all have access to Siri and Google Assistant because the best way to extract value is through massive scale. Developing a billion dollar AI and then only letting one person benefit from access to it is absurdly inefficient, partly because access to more people and more data and interactive usage it can learn from at massive scale is actually necessary to train the AI. Keeping it private also cripples it.
I know what you mean, you're thinking without any external mechanical interface like keyboards and such, but those things don't matter by themselves. A direct brain interface might provide an incremental advantage in latency, but we've had incremental improvements for ages. Unless it provides some sort of sudden multi-orders of magnitude advantage it's really just more of the same.
Re: Ask HN: How do you define the singularity?
#7Well, it's a spectrum to me. Glasses are already humans and machines merging together, and I feel that people in the 1500s would think the singularity had already happened to us, given how smartphones are available everywhere. If I had to choose an event, though, I think it would be the first time that human intelligence is enhanced by AI in some way (imagine offloading numerical computations on your mind). When that…
> what happens when rich people are not only richer, but also fundamentally smarter and more efficient?
Even right now, people who are fundamentally smarter and more efficient are likely to be richer.
This is just an extension of capitalism giving an advantage to those who are already ahead.
Re: Ask HN: How do you define the singularity?
#8I'm bearish on AI. The human brain does far more than just learn things. AI still has no ability to reason or think creatively. So we're not even in the ballpark. The space has been worked on for 50 years. I'm not sure why people think the field will now start to progress rapidly.
AI systems can search through millions of molecules to find a drug. How is that different from Thomas Edison trying 1000 filaments for a light bulb?
A.I. can generate a million art pieces or a love song, but it won’t feel the same as a just one from a human. At least not yet.
Re: Ask HN: How do you define the singularity?
#9The day programmers aren't needed anymore.
Re: Ask HN: How do you define the singularity?
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
AI systems can search through millions of molecules to find a drug. How is that different from Thomas Edison trying 1000 filaments for a light bulb?
A.I. can generate a million art pieces or a love song, but it won’t feel the same as a just one from a human. At least not yet.
It could if the audience did not know the piece was generated by a machine. This has already been proven when art critics gushed praise over works which turned out to have been made by a chimpanzee [1].
[1] https://www.ladbible.com/funny/awesome-the-hoax-that-fooled-...