I have been keeping track of this idea of “Singuality” a term and concept popularized by Ray Kurzweil. Building on this concept the Singularity Institute of Artificial Intelligence (SIAI) is planning a major two-day event “bringing together 16 prominent thinkers to examine a historical moment in humanity’s history – a window of opportunity to shape how we develop advanced artificial intelligence.”
Tom Abate of the SF Chronicle in a report from the Singularity Summit describes Singularity well:
Borrowing a term from physics, singularity suggests a horizon beyond which we can’t see. It describes the point at which some form of intelligence spawned by technology gains the ability to rapidly improve its own programming — becoming so powerful that we cannot predict what it might do. At that point, its capabilities could exceed even the power of our imaginations.
Artificial Intelligence and Network/Human Augmentation
The book What the Dormouse Said: How the 60s Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer by John Markoff, discusses a major break among the computer geeks in the 60s. The dichotomy can be seen as a debate between:
- Technology Augmentation - Inspired by Venevar Bush’s 1940s vision and more recently with Doug Engelbart’s HyperText Device as a practical attempt to realize that vision or his theory Network Improvement Communities or NICs. Transcending a purely technological approach the augmentation school seeks to design a social architecture to promote higher levels of Collective Intelligence.
- Artificial Intelligence – AIers seem to put a lot of focus on when computers will overtake human intelligence and the rise of AI as a governing force in our society. However the development of the Singularity Thesis by Kurzweil seems to be an holistic understanding of the changes associated with humanity’s movement towards AI.
Accelerating Intelligence and Artificial Intelligence
The “AI” in the title of his blog site suggests Ray Kurzweil’s work in “artificial intelligence,” however according to the About section of the KurzwellAI.net site it also is seeking to encompass a more integrated and holistic perspective: “referring to the far broader world of “accelerating intelligence” in all of its diverse forms” and “The quickening pace of our knowledge and intelligence will ultimately alter the nature of what it means to be human.”
Kurzwell and others like Stephen Hawking, Douglas Hofstadter, Bill Joy, and Martin Rees) do not necessarily advocate AI so much as see it as an inevitability that we must prepare for. In the Singurality Institute’s blog post “about why we exist and our short term research program” they note that the “advent of advanced AI as a plausible possibility, should serve as a “wake-up call” to anyone seriously concerned about the future of humanity.”
While the Augmentation and AI groups have similar goals, there do appear to be major philosophical differences. Even though I sympathize more with the augmentation ideas of Engelbart, at the same time, I appreciate the dialog that AIers put forward. Especially with regards to how KurzweilAI.Net sees the “exponential growth of intelligence, both biological and machine, and their merger, as humans transcend biology.” Yet I cant help but wonder if our ability to manage this exponential growth and build truly sustainable societies will most likely be an issue several years before the predicted date of the AI revolution put forward by Kurzweil.
The revolutions in the fields of biotechnology, nanotechnology, molecular electronics, computation, artificial intelligence, pattern recognition, virtual reality, human brain reverse engineering, brain augmentation, robotics all have to be effectively incorporated into a process of sustainable development and responsible stewardship of the planet’s resources.
Most important but seemingly overlooked by the “Singularists” is the very basic revolution in our understanding of how things in the planet holistically interconnect to impact biological as well as human systems. The assumption seems to be that the merger of human intelligence is something new as we transcend biology and embrace singularity.
Essential Singularity as Something that Transcends a Conscious Human Action and becomes a Transient Esoteric Reality
“Essential Singularity” (if I understand the word properly) and interconnectedness of systems is a very basic fact of all life and indeed the idea of singularity has been used by philosophers for many years to describe the essential oneness of all things in the universe. Our inability to see Singularity as something that goes beyond ourselves is therefore surprising.
- Could it be that we are seeing a superconsciousness as an articifical entity created by humans driving or being driven by ever advanced forms of technologies, when it is in fact all around us in the complex systems we are rapidly developing in the modern world?
- Could it be that is also everpresent in nature in the form of Gaia?
- Could it be that what is really remarkable is not so much this future singular event in 2029 but the unfolding reality that we are evolving right as we create biointegrated systems that interact with nature in new and innovative ways? The idea of terraforming allows us to visualize an highly integrated socioeconomic network of global innovators rapidly regenerating ecosystems that have degraded through the flawed notion of the modern. For it is that artificial notion of the modern and idea of human being separate and at war with nature that is the root cause of the current challenges that we face in considering pressing world issues and also the concern of how technology might overthrow its human ruler.
Human BioAugmentation as a Singularity Event
What’s truly revolutionary is that the whole notion of what it means to be civilized, modern, advanced, evolved and developed is being remade with our new ecologically augmented mindsets. Emerging from all this chaos and uncertainty is the birth of a new postmodern/post-industrial human consciousness with a new and enlightened ability “to think like an ecosystem” and to in this process create a truly new of living on this planet.
The reality of Singularity in our ever increasingly complex worlds and systems is just too powerful and obvious to ignore. Collectively we are beginning to see ourselves in the forest amongst the trees, but we still are slow to see that singularity goes way beyond our perception of it and/or modification of nature that we extrude and evolve into the modern world.
The Evolution of Silicon Valley through the Paradox Conferences
At Arcosanti a concept similar to Singularity emerged as early as 1997 when the first Paradox Conference was held there. Paradox was distilled from Paolo Soleri’s idea that within the development of technology was a series of human paradoxes. The conferences were seen as a way to raise funds from the SV community to support Arcosanti’s development as a center of innovation for the future.
How we addressed these paradoxes determines our future. Soleri described the rising influence of technology as most likely eventually rivaling and overtaking humanity’s ability to govern itself. Soleri referred to the age of homo siliconis and predicted that human technology inventions would eventually exceed human beings in general intelligence. Kurzweil, has estimated 2029 as the approximate time for this transformation.
Bay Area Social Networks Build on the Paradox Theme
The Paradox theme was evolved by Michael Gosney and Ron Anastasia. It and similar Bay Area events like Planetwork, and the recent 5th International Symposium on Digital Earth are attempts to visualize the most important component of Singularity, which is not AI but rather the practical and wide scale deployment of technology augmentation tools in the service of human collective intelligence. A common misconception among the technologists is that we need to invent and develop technologies to make the world more sustainable. What’s needed is a mindset shift to focus on collaborative efforts to channel individual intelligence towards the greater social good – Collective Intelligence. Such a approach is the only way we can effectively address the rising tide of world urgent issues that seem to increasingly be interconnected with each other.
Technology, Singularity and Human Scale Social Architectures
A key component of building a sustainable human civilization is the consideration of human scale. We might see human scale technologies as a way to build sustainable built environments and production systems that involves the leapfrogging of existing inefficient industrial models of development, creating a sustainable world that balances high tech with some residual historic and cultural precedent of what it means to be human. The term social architecture considers how we design technology to serve human needs with specific regards to the architecture of the mind and how that interacts with the architecture of the mass mind on a collective level.
We must if we are truly committed to democracy continue to strive to design of human habitats and governance systems that validate the human potential of every human being. An important question is whether we are driving technology or technology is driving us? Indeed that really begs the question: does AI already exist on some organic level with the rise of complex systems and technologies increasingly seamless linked by the Internet?
The Challenge of AI vs Ecological Sustainability
It is likely that various ecological “shocks to the system” will probably affect our ability to reach 2029 as stipulated in Krzweil’s AI thesis. Thus the real challenge may be not so much dealing with AI, but about learning to design sustainable and highly integrated bio-cybernetic systems.
Singularity though, because it goes beyond AI and embraces the idea of integration and convergence of human knowledge, could involve exploring how technology can augment the human ability to solve complex and interconnected challenges at the small scale. That focus on the small scale is important to develop a authentic process to scale up from the bottom of humanity and firmly root real reform in the governing dynamics of modern systems in the everyday realities that humans face.
