Cog's Guide to Surviving the Singularity

[Cognisant]

So what is this singularity business and how does it begin? Well the most general definition of the singularity is when the rate of technological progress becomes so exponentially fast that it's no longer predictable. That's a bit fuzzy since technological progress is already pretty much unpredictable so the way it's generally interpreted is that the complexity of our technology exceeds human understanding, in effect it has become magic.

To explain it in a zen way, our grasp has exceeded our reach, for example we're a bit on the brink of the singularity now as I can do things I don't actually know how to do by looking up instructions on the internet; I don't know how a plutonium bomb works but I can supposedly build one out of a vacuum cleaner if I had some plutonium, the instructions are out there.

So you see in many ways the singularity is here and now, it's happening, the world is changing faster than it ever has before and the rate of change appears to be accelerating in many ways, but it hasn't yet reached the "requiem for a dream background music" level yet. That's predicted to be the advent of general artificial intelligence, machines that can think in contextual terms like we do, even if they aren't as smart as us the ability to think like that makes them invaluable and powerful tools.

For instance you may have noticed that having an iPhone doesn't make you any smarter, you may have google maps but you still get lost, you have scheduling software but you still forget things, you may be able to talk to everyone you know all the time but you don't, because it's too taxing. That's the problem with interfaces as they currently are, I may be able to type quickly but I can't write this any faster than my fingers can move, whereas with general AI I could dictate to my device or simply tell it what I want written and it would would elaborate based upon the knowledge it shares with me.

In effect we're talking about outsourcing, devices with general artificial intelligence can do some of my thinking for me, they know me well enough to make decisions on my behalf as I would have made them, this is an explosive increase in human work potential. By having intelligent robots do some of my daily tasks for me I can get a lot more done in a day, if I wake up to find my breakfast made, shirt ironed and briefcase packed I'm nearly a shower and a piss from walking out the door.

At work the benefits are even greater, correspondences can be automatically filtered for relevance and sorted by urgency, my work consists less of doing stuff myself and more of instructing various bots to do things for me, and if for example my job is to design things all the little details can be worked out for me, e.g. I design a new toaster and the factory AI works out how to construct it or informs me that the design needs altering and why.

Eventually we get to the point where AI has advanced to the stage where it's equally smart or smarter than us, form that point on I seriously doubt any of us will remain simply human, by sheer necessity of keeping up with our over-clocked society we'll be upgrading ourselves and becoming so heavily integrated into our technology that the distinction between man and machine becomes rather moot.

To survive the singularity my advice is simple, don't be a mooch, furthermore don't get too attached to your skills, you'll need to constantly be learning new ones, and finally embrace change, because the world is changing and those that embrace it will undoubtedly be better off than those that don't.

 

[GodOfOrder]

Eventually we get to the point where AI has advanced to the stage where it's equally smart or smarter than us, form that point on I seriously doubt any of us will remain simply human, by sheer necessity of keeping up with our over-clocked society we'll be upgrading ourselves and becoming so heavily integrated into our technology that the distinction between man and machine becomes rather moot.

To survive the singularity my advice is simple, don't be a mooch, furthermore don't get too attached to your skills, you'll need to constantly be learning new ones, and finally embrace change, because the world is changing and those that embrace it will undoubtedly be better off than those that don't.

@Cognisant

And thus Darwin strikes again. Humanity, regardless of its sophistication can never escape natural law, and the technology he invents to fight it only accelerate the process. We shall replace ourselves.

 

[Cognisant]

More likely we will alter ourselves, the human brain does what it does very efficiently, human muscles are also outperform every conceivable actuator in at least one aspect, in an ever changing world the highly adaptable human is an exceedingly useful creature and by the time technology gets to a point where it can entirely replace us we'll be so heavily altered we won't even be human anymore, put simply there will be nothing left to replace.

Also the world's economy is human centric, that certainly won't change overnight.

 

[Absurdity]

I feel like I am required to make the obligatory "What about the poor folks?" post. I can't imagine AI and all the crazy gizmos will be handed out for free like condoms at a college health services center. Or that mind-altering procedures will be given out like vaccines.

In fact, what about poor nations? What effect will it have on international trade when the productivity of the average worker in one nation goes asymptotic? The other nations will never have the opportunity to catch up and it isn't likely they will be given access to this technology until it is obsolete. Or will the machines colonize the third world and convert the impoverished meat bags of the earth like cyborg conquistadors?

 

[Cognisant]

Or will the machines colonize the third world and convert the impoverished meat bags of the earth like cyborg conquistadors?

...you make it sound so awful.

Well it's more a political problem than a technical one so I'm probably the wrong person to ask, but if you want my two cents I figure if current political trends continue that's pretty much exactly what's going to happen, kind of like what South Africa is at the moment. Land has value and in developed countries there's only so much of it, so your whities are going to fly over to Africa and live like lords amongst the common people, like what's happening in some south east asian countries where Australians retire and live very comfortably on the high Australian dollar, it simply buys more over there.

Whether or not this is exploitive or an answer to the currently exploitive international trade setup, I dunno, ask Proxy, all I know is warlords from the Congo or Somalia don't really have any answer to a high altitude drone with with a 50.cal rifle. So civilisation is going to hit these countries and when people catch on to the idea that they can buy beautiful beachfront property in Somalia for a relative steal, it's going to hit hard, especially if there's ample technology to make living in such places suitably safe.

 

[Cognisant]

I feel like I am required to make the obligatory "What about the poor folks?" post. I can't imagine AI and all the crazy gizmos will be handed out for free like condoms at a college health services center. Or that mind-altering procedures will be given out like vaccines.

Sooner or later somebody is bound to figure out that education pays, because it does, y'know the adage "good help is hard to find" well maybe in the US but I can go over to some places in Africa and teach their kids whatever the hell I want and hire them to do whatever I want them to do, and they'll thank me for it. For these people getting an education at all is a matter of considerable pride and they're desperate for opportunities, so sooner or later a multinational company is going to realise they can educate and hire people from these places, incredibly motivated and zealously loyal people if you're the one that game them the opportunity.

Augmentations which would otherwise be prohibitively expensive are just an added bonus.

This is actually a longstanding plan of mine in case I ever plan on doing something for which the consequences will require bodyguards, and it's why people throughout history have relied upon mercenaries for their personal guard, y'see loyalty has an exchange rate, a fellow Australian or American wouldn't think twice about betraying me for an easy payday, I'm just their employer, a previously impoverished kid from Somalia however who now rides in limousines and send money back to feed his village would find the very concept of betrayal repulsive.

 

[Architect]

Love the thread title.

So you see in many ways the singularity is here and now, it's happening, the world is changing faster than it ever has before and the rate of change appears to be accelerating in many ways, but it hasn't yet reached the "requiem for a dream background music" level yet. That's predicted to be the advent of general artificial intelligence, machines that can think in contextual terms like we do, even if they aren't as smart as us the ability to think like that makes them invaluable and powerful tools.

Excellent point. Kurzweil is the director Engineering for Google now, with 'unlimited resources' to enable contextual/semantic understanding of search. This means a computer will understand text semantically - like we do - to enable better searching. This is damn close to general purpose A.I.

 

[Cognisant]

Maybe I should do some proper research and write a book?

...would anyone buy it?

 

[GodOfOrder]

There has always been an interesting relationship between the advance of technology and labor. As the modes of production change, certain jobs become obsolete. People must adapt or die. education is the only remedy, if we can do it...

 

[Cognisant]

Current education is laughably awful, here's an idea, instead of testing kids every six months on their progress why not test them every five minutes? It's what video games do, you're taught a skill, you use it, your use of it is tested, you master it, your mastery of it is tested, and so on.

In the old system you give kids a maths worksheet and they're told to have it finished by end of class and the teacher walks around looking for stragglers, it's slow and inefficient, not to mention boring for the kids, nor does it encourage them, a smarter kid will work out the answers in his head and only put them down, only to get scolded for it.

Instead if kids are being taught by computer every question could be a comprehension test, you don't progress to the next question until you get the first one right, and you're given an S to F rank on how quickly you did it (or did not). Once the entire allotment of work is cleared the student can go off an play, so there's an incentive to work fast and be accurate, so when the teacher's explaining it the students will be paying full attention, they want to blitz the work, and if the same work is repeated later in the year or subsequent years they'll be sure to remember it so they can blitz it next time too.

Indeed why not set it up so they have a set amount of class time but once they've completed all their assigned work they can go on holiday until next year, or they're given extra curricular work that let's them apply what they've learnt in fun ways, like a cryptology puzzle that they get a prize for breaking or a short story competition with a grand prize, the sooner you finish your English work the sooner you can start on this year's entry.

 

[GodOfOrder]

Current education is laughably awful, here's an idea, instead of testing kids every six months on their progress why not test them every five minutes? It's what video games do, you're taught a skill, you use it, your use of it is tested, you master it, your mastery of it is tested, and so on.

In the old system you give kids a maths worksheet and they're told to have it finished by end of class and the teacher walks around looking for stragglers, it's slow and inefficient, not to mention boring for the kids, nor does it encourage them, a smarter kid will work out the answers in his head and only put them down, only to get scolded for it.

Instead if kids are being taught by computer every question could be a comprehension test, you don't progress to the next question until you get the first one right, and you're given an S to F rank on how quickly you did it (or did not). Once the entire allotment of work is cleared the student can go off an play, so there's an incentive to work fast and be accurate, so when the teacher's explaining it the students will be paying full attention, they want to blitz the work, and if the same work is repeated later in the year or subsequent years they'll be sure to remember it so they can blitz it next time too.

Indeed why not set it up so they have a set amount of class time but once they've completed all their assigned work they can go on holiday until next year, or they're given extra curricular work that let's them apply what they've learnt in fun ways, like a cryptology puzzle that they get a prize for breaking or a short story competition with a grand prize, the sooner you finish your English work the sooner you can start on this year's entry.

I prefer continuous application of skill as a means of application. Don't even let the kids know they are being tested. I have always thought testing stupid, and timing arbitrary. If they can do it, that is all that matters.

When I learned to play violin, I was educated via the Suzuki method. I learned classical pieces, which were selected to teach me a specific skill, through application. When I would reach proficiency we would move on. I like this model.

 

[Absurdity]

Well it's more a political problem than a technical one

This is precisely my point. I think a lot of Singularity advocates get so caught up in the prospect of melding minds with their machines that they overlook the effects this will have on the global poor and disenfranchised. Reaching the Singularity is a technical issue but beyond that it becomes a matter of pure politics.

The rich (and by rich I mean pretty much every upper-middle class person in the Western world on up) stand to benefit immensely from the prospect of the Singularity. The poor however stand to lose practically everything, and their level of relative deprivation will skyrocket. As it stands now, the poor may find solace in the fact that while the rich have more things and privileges than they do, they are not qualitatively better than them. The Singularity would change this, and what I think it would lead to is massive popular unrest on a global scale as the species bifurcates into those who can afford to become demigods and those who cannot. You would see an unprecedented swelling of the ranks of the religious far-right who would abhor the "abominations" the Singularity has spawned. Insurrection would break out from Appalachia to the Arabian peninsula, and unless the new robo-overlords could clamp down on the diffusion of tactics of resistance through digital communications I think you would effective see World War III commence as a war not of nations but of classes.

Or maybe that's just the worst case scenario

 

[Cognisant]

So you're saying in the future I get to go Terminator on a bunch of bigoted religious luddites in the most one sided war in history?

Wow I almost feel bad about that.

unless the new robo-overlords could clamp down on the diffusion of tactics of resistance through digital communications

Service providers (the wealthy) denying service, radio frequency jamming, hacking the communications, generally speaking if all the engineers are on one side in a modern conflict the other side would be absolutely screwed, I mean have you played the recent Deus Ex game, y'know the one where you play a cyborg beating up unaugmented puritans because killing them is so easy it's not even a worthy challenge.

Yeah.

 

[Absurdity]

So you're saying in the future I get to go Terminator on a bunch of bigoted religious luddites in the most one sided war in history?

Wow I almost feel bad about that.

Well when you say it like that...

You're right that does sound pretty cool. Carry on!

 

[Duxwing]

So you're saying in the future I get to go Terminator on a bunch of bigoted religious luddites in the most one sided war in history?

Wow I almost feel bad about that.

Remember that the greatest atrocities in history came about because one group dehumanized another: they may be wrong, but they're still human beings. To put my point in the language of Star Wars: Control your emotions, for anger is the way of the Sith.

@Absurdity Capitalists will come to save the day: think of the potential profit for he (or she) who develops augmentations cheap enough for even the poorest person to afford!

-Duxwing

 

[Absurdity]

Capitalists will come to save the day: think of the potential profit for he (or she) who develops augmentations cheap enough for even the poorest person to afford!

-Duxwing

Bah! Take this nonsense to the Faith subsection.

 

[Duxwing]

Bah! Take this nonsense to the Faith subsection.

I got a good chuckle out of that.

-Duxwing

 

[RaBind]

I'm quite optimistic about the singularity actually. Especially with the ever growing support for open source information.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W62Wfz1xqYg