Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: How do you define the singularity?

news.ycombinator.com

51–59 of 59 posts

Re: Ask HN: How do you define the singularity?

#51
post #17
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

You've made some fair points, but there's an underlying assumption: that we are only going to be able to do what we are doing today. Of course, my example is not that good, but imagine things like increased spatial sensing, instant data analysis, better (supervised) sleep, bigger muscle and organ efficiency. Are those in your opinion still more of the same?

Pretty much, yes. That just sounds like better sensors or information presentation, faster computers, medical advances and maybe some genetic engineering. We've been doing all of that stuff for decades.

The way I see it brain interfaces aren't necessarily a huge game changer by themselves, in fact it's conceivable they might actually be slower than existing interfaces but more convenient for some tasks. It's more likely to be about overcoming bottlenecks that might arise in our existing technological advance trajectory, so we don't stall out.

Re: Ask HN: How do you define the singularity?

#52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Language is a rathole. Interesting AI synthetic chemistry systems work ab initio modeling how a molecule interacts with proteins.

and where do they get their training dat... oh,right, literature.

AI isn't just machine learning. Searching huge spaces (Chess, Travelling Salesman, etc.) is a paradigm in and of itself.

It's possible to model molecular binding with nothing but physics.

Re: Ask HN: How do you define the singularity?

#53
Could be when humans understand God, but that will never happen on our own. That's why God sent His Son, so humans could understand everything they need to about their creator.

Same with machines, a human will eventually need to go into the machine world and let the machines destroy him, so they can analyze and take upon themselves the human coding, thus machines will be able to understand humans.

Re: Ask HN: How do you define the singularity?

#54
Technological evolution today is very slow, with products coming after years of research or at best months: Singularity is when this evolution accelerates to "near-instant" level - i.e. products of idea are actualized and developed to state of art instantly. This would be my definition: it doesn't require a Sci-Fi AI overlords deciding whats optimal for you, just general technological capability that reduce time of development to 0.

Re: Ask HN: How do you define the singularity?

#57
I define it as when machines start doing things that we don't know why. It may already have happened with ML models, unless we can get them to explain themselves so that we can understand.

Extrapolate this to self-driving, defense systems, recommendation systems, content moderation, etc. The basis is that we gave up executive control.

Re: Ask HN: How do you define the singularity?

#59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OP is referring to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity

Both of those are absurd. You hear statements like "physics breaks down at the singularity of a black hole". Physics (the real Physics) doesn't break down ever, it's your theory that breaks down, it's your theory that is wrong . General relativity gets a lot of things right, it seems to explain what happens outside of a black hole well. In the usual approach to the Schwarzchild solution (a black hole with no spin and…

I’m no physicist but my understanding of black hole singularity is that it is something we can never learn more about as “by definition” no information ever could get out of it. So it’s not about a good or bad model, but that we can never even verify any model against it.

But again, I have very limited understanding of the topic at hand.

Post reply on HN