Aaaand once again, author does not know what a "Singularity" is.
http://www.singinst.org/blog/2007/09/30/three-major-singular...
Why the singularity may never arrive
21–30 of 51 posts
Re: Why the singularity may never arrive
#22We are not on Moore's law for batteries.
Re: Why the singularity may never arrive
#23From the article:
"Thomas Malthus Put forth his theory of limits to human growth... What happened was that population growth declined and has halved since its peak in 1963."
Of course, on the other hand, something else happened 3 years before that peak: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birth_control_pill
Re: Why the singularity may never arrive
#24Kurzweil deals with this "S-curve" phenomenon extensively in his books. He shows that each individual computing technology follows an S curve, but the exponential price-performance of computation continues through a smooth transition to the next method. For example, as vacuum tube computing saturated, transistor computing picked up. This is not a coincidence; as one technology reaches saturation, resources flow to th…
Actually Intel did not really "find a way around the problem". CPU speeds have barely improved since then, instead it's all about multi-core.
If passively parallel was all it took, we could have AI today, but we can't. And it doesn't look like CPU's are going to get any faster.
The curve did exactly what the linked article said: it turned into an S curve.
Moore's law still works because that's a measure of cost, but if you plot a single core, you get an S curve - which means no more singularity.
Plus, even if you had a super fast computer, you'd still not get a singularity since no one knows how to program AI - even if you gave them the fastest computer in the world.
Re: Why the singularity may never arrive
#25I don't think the hole for the singularity argument is necessarily that technological progress, measured by CPU speed or accessible memory or bandwidth or whatever, will necessarily slow. I think that the hole is probably "We have virtually inexhaustible amounts of X and THIS MEANS MAGIC HAPPENS." There are many resources for humans which were, in certain times and places, very, very finite. Let me give you a trivial…
There are currently problems that is pushing the envelope of computational power, i.e., MD simulation (see D.E Shaw Research), engineering simulation on jet engines (see Pratt & Whitney) - even state of art of Infiniband clusters and custom-designed chips cannot simulate more than 10 seconds of molecular interactions or the complete fluid dynamics of a jet engine under a reasonable time-frame.
You are however right in the sense that AI can't be achieved by tossing more CPU power. Almost all of the media hype on the Deep Blue Chess Playing or hedge fund black boxes are all narrow AI, that is, programs that look "smart" because human beings have painstakingly poured so many techniques into a specific and narrow problem-space. We have yet to come up with a artificial general intelligence (AGI). For those who are interested in AGI, check out: http://www.agi-09.org/ and http://journal.agi-network.org/ .
Re: Why the singularity may never arrive
#26A $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…
You fail for assuming future $1000 computer will be transistor based.
You're also being disingenuous in stating that every neuron contributes to a human's knowledge, that there is no overlap of knowledge between humans, and creating a computer with equivalent human knowledge requires a 1 to 1 mapping of neurons to thingers(say transistors, but could be quantum gate whatcha-ma-callits).
Re: Why the singularity may never arrive
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
The Malthusian curve occurs because progress impedes progress. The more you grow, the less resources you have to grow with. Technology doesn't work that way. Technology feeds technology. Therefore, the curve will not look like the Malthus curve. Kurzweil doesn't claim it'll actually go forever. That's a strawman. He simply observes that technology feeding technology is a different shape. Technology feeding technology…
The computationally enormous brain contained in a compact space is proof enough that technology won't graze any limits for a long time.
Re: Why the singularity may never arrive
#28This is not exactly on-topic, but here's a question that I still haven't gotten a good answer to:
People who are excited about a potential singularity: why? Doesn't the idea of being obsolete scare you?
Re: Why the singularity may never arrive
#29I don't think the hole for the singularity argument is necessarily that technological progress, measured by CPU speed or accessible memory or bandwidth or whatever, will necessarily slow. I think that the hole is probably "We have virtually inexhaustible amounts of X and THIS MEANS MAGIC HAPPENS." There are many resources for humans which were, in certain times and places, very, very finite. Let me give you a trivial…
There are currently problems that is pushing the envelope of computational power, i.e., MD simulation (see D.E Shaw Research), engineering simulation on jet engines (see Pratt & Whitney) - even state of art of Infiniband clusters and custom-designed chips cannot simulate more than 10 seconds of molecular interactions or the complete fluid dynamics of a jet engine under a reasonable time-frame. You are however right i…
Also called strong AI:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_AI
Re: Why the singularity may never arrive
#30This is not exactly on-topic, but here's a question that I still haven't gotten a good answer to: People who are excited about a potential singularity: why? Doesn't the idea of being obsolete scare you?
That's why Eliezer Yudkowsky is working on friendly AI.
Though, that still doesn't rule out people misusing friendly AI against each other. Say some megalomaniac thinks it'd be much more convenient to have a bunch of friendly AIs around than a human population prone to revolt. In that case, friendly AI is not so great since it disrupts the power balance.