Why the singularity may never arrive
maximise.dk
Why the singularity may never arrive
1–10 of 51 posts
Re: Why the singularity may never arrive
#2I always thought that Kurzweil was too simplistic in the way he comes to his conclusions and this points to just a couple of the reasons.
I think if we ever hit singularity, it will be because of some black swans spikes and leaps, not because of a gradual curve.
Re: Why the singularity may never arrive
#3This article is overly simplistic to the point of uselessness. Population growth peaked in 1963 not because of food production limits but because of cultural and social changes related to growing wealth. That destroys the whole Malthusian argument.
Similar demolitions can be performed on the rest of the article's key points:
The same thing will happen with technology - eventually we will run into insurmountable barriers to growth and progress will stabilise at this level. It's just a question of what the barriers are - the food for progress so to say.
The food for progress is human intelligence. Singularity models are built precisely on an exponential increase of intelligence that can be used to produce more intelligence. The Malthusian model breaks down there again.
To presume that Kurzweil doesn't know about Malthus is pretty cocky and very likely wrong.
Re: Why the singularity may never arrive
#4Interesting suggestion that resources for computing will eventually run out in some fashion, thereby invalidating the Singularity prediction. But what resources?
I wonder where energy costs fit into this. Already, Internet companies are seeing energy as a significant part of the costs for running their business. How much energy would be consumed by a $1000 computer with the same computing capacity as the entire human race? How much heat would it produce?
Re: Why the singularity may never arrive
#5This article is overly simplistic to the point of uselessness. Population growth peaked in 1963 not because of food production limits but because of cultural and social changes related to growing wealth. That destroys the whole Malthusian argument. Similar demolitions can be performed on the rest of the article's key points: The same thing will happen with technology - eventually we will run into insurmountable barri…
I'm sure Kurzweil knows about Malthus. The point is that nowhere in nature or sociology is there such a thing as unlimited exponential growth - it is always stopped by lack of resources.
Why should computation be any different?
Re: Why the singularity may never arrive
#6Interesting suggestion that resources for computing will eventually run out in some fashion, thereby invalidating the Singularity prediction. But what resources? I wonder where energy costs fit into this. Already, Internet companies are seeing energy as a significant part of the costs for running their business. How much energy would be consumed by a $1000 computer with the same computing capacity as the entire human…
Of course, Kurzweil took this into account. The first link for a "kurzweil malthus" Google search is directly to a page in The Singularity is Near, via Google books. He seems to think the energy requirements are not significant.
Here's the URL, but might just work better to do the search yourself.
Re: Why the singularity may never arrive
#7Interesting suggestion that resources for computing will eventually run out in some fashion, thereby invalidating the Singularity prediction. But what resources? I wonder where energy costs fit into this. Already, Internet companies are seeing energy as a significant part of the costs for running their business. How much energy would be consumed by a $1000 computer with the same computing capacity as the entire human…
Energy production is also increasing exponentially.
Re: Why the singularity may never arrive
#8A $1000 computer with the equivalent knowledge of the whole human race won't happen because it is physically impossible.
There are 10^11 neurons or so in the brain. There are 10^10 (say) people in the world (more like 0.5 X 10^10 but anyway). So loosely there is an order of 10^20 neurons in humans on earth total. Avogadro's number has approx. 6 * 10^23 atoms in 12 grams of carbon, so, basically, you'd have to have 1 neuron simulation per atom to fit the entire human intelligence on say, your hand held mobile device, or close to a 1 : 1 simulated neuron to atom ratio. Transistors are cool but they ain't that cool boys and girls. Won't happen.
Now, you could fit a 10^10 neuron simulation in a 10 meter square server room 1 meter deep, that might be possible. So replicate this set-up 10 billion times and then you'd get the population of the human race on a computer. Slightly more than $1,000 tho. :-)
Re: Why the singularity may never arrive
#9Oh, one other comment regarding population explosions in general. I just got a tip from an inside source at the government that is top-secret classified information:
"SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE! SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE!"
Re: Why the singularity may never arrive
#10Interesting suggestion that resources for computing will eventually run out in some fashion, thereby invalidating the Singularity prediction. But what resources? I wonder where energy costs fit into this. Already, Internet companies are seeing energy as a significant part of the costs for running their business. How much energy would be consumed by a $1000 computer with the same computing capacity as the entire human…
Energy production is also increasing exponentially. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale
According to the chart on that page, at a much slower rate than Moore's law. So what is the implication of that for the Singularity? Will the increased demand for energy to power computation cheaply force the Singularity to wait until the energy growth curve catches up?
It is also relevant to note, I think, the current volatility in energy prices. We are having a difficult time already supplying all of humanity's energy demands.
Of course, as I note in another post Kurzweil has considered this and does not think it will be a significant barrier. I'm just curious about how the numbers work out.