Saturday, January 13, 2018

End of the World



The end of the world as we know it is approaching. But unlike doomsday proponents like Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking, I'm in the group of Ray Kurzweil and Steve Jobs. Artificial Intelligence is just another tool. 
The technological singularity is where our tools become smarter than we are. But that has already happened in many ways. Humans are not able to compute as fast as a basic computer. We cannot memorize the worlds entire knowledge. We are not able to  communicate across the world by yelling. Our machines and communication technologies are already smarter than we are at many things. Our cell phones make us smarter and safer.
So the next step is what has been called the technological singularity,  that point where machines are smarter than humans at reasoning. 
This idea of smart machines is not new. In the 1960s British mathematician I.J. Goode wrote the following,  “Let an ultra-intelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultra-intelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an ‘intelligence explosion,’ and the intelligence of man would be left far behind.”
But intelligence is not inherently evil. It is the opposite. Creativity and knowledge have moved man forward. But with he the singularity it will be the end of the world, for the better. It could be mans only hope of survival.
Can you imagine Mobile Apps connected to real artificial intelligence? We will finally learn to fly and explore beyond our wildest imaginations. But imagination is what is making this possible. 

The Dawn of Singularity