“Linear versus exponential: Linear growth is steady; exponential growth becomes explosive.” ― Ray Kurzweil,
If I had to draw a line between humanist and scientist, I’d be firmly entrenched on the side of the former, as my way of engaging the world. Still, it got me thinking about our technological future and the rocket ride it’s gonna be, really taking off for those who will come after my brief sojourn here.
I was introduced to a word I have never heard before, at least in the futuristic context it is intended to define. I really like the sound of the word and coming from a marketing background, I love the power of the word and how it plays with our imagination. I know, you are on the edge of your seats, waiting for the word and it is: SINGULARITY.
In the scary world of AI, artificial intelligence, it defines the razor-thin edge that crosses all of us over to an irretrievable point, where machines advance beyond our intelligence and become self-sufficient. The term was coined in the 1950’s by a guy named Jon von Neumann. Ray Kurzwell, the fellow quoted above, grabbed this slippery, factoid football and raced unobstructed into the end zone of our future and spiked the damn thing.
For those of you with IQ’s in the stratosphere, who are familiar with all this stuff, don’t waste your time with this story, because it is not intended for you. This story is for people like me, regardless of age, who’ve got their hands full just getting by, not making complete fools of themselves along the way.
I did the idiot’s version of research, just enough to give my story some context, not pretending for one minute that I was like one of those kids in elementary school, with a pocket, pencil holder, ready to whip out his slide rule at a moment’s notice. For you youngsters, this tool was long before electronic utensils kidnapped our brains, imprisoned our fingers and permanently shifted our gaze downward.
A guy by the name of Herbert A. Simon wrote in 1965: “machines will be capable, within twenty years, of doing any work a man can do.” This was all Stanley Kubrick needed to create, “Space Odyssey 2001. If you have seen his futuristic, cinematic masterpiece, you certainly remember HAL. It could have won an Oscar for Best Performance by a Computer. At the time, Artificial Intelligence researchers believed that this could be our reality by 2001, hence its inclusion in the title.
Between you and I, I am one of those Neanderthals, who is not a fan of AI. In fact, if there is such a thing as The Singularity, I believe it will be the Hiroshima of our humanity. I also don’t think there is anyway to stop it from happening, owing to our insatiable, intellectual vanity. We think we are so damn smart and we will ultimately be outsmarted and spiritually devoured by these ice-cold, exponential “thinking” machines of our own creation. As linear thinkers, it is so easy for us to miscalculate predictions regarding these, stealth-like machines, able to teach themselves at a pace that is incogitable to us. I used incogitable on purpose, to make my point. HAL and all its bastard off-spring will likely take over the wheel of our future by 2075, if not sooner.
McKinsey, the world’s biggest corporate strategy consultancy, calculated that thinking robots will displace at least 45 million jobs by 2030. So, some of you are also thinking, “We don’t have to listen to these, hyper-intelligent machines, because we have free will.” Here’s the deal, HAL’s family is going to have all these obeisant, robot relatives, efficiently doing whatever they are told and we will be powerless, sitting in the cheap seats, rooting for the outmatched, Old Timer’s Team.
There are some incredibly brilliant people in the forefront of this dynamic destiny they’ve plotted for us all. It reminds me of how I’ve reacted to the well thought-out strategies relating to the climate change crisis, when all we have to do is cut it off at the knees, slowing down this catastrophic juggernaut, living happily ever after. Transforming global behavior is not even considered, let alone, deemed to be an insurmountable challenge.
You know, there are marauders in Mozambique decapitating young children? Dictators throughout eastern Europe are lining their pockets and imprisoning dissidents. The Amazon is burning. Third world countries are sitting on oil and gas reserves and who is going to tell them they can’t profit, because it is bad for the climate? The most powerful countries in the world are hell bent on undermining each other, oblivious to the consequences of their actions on the overall well being of the planet. In this country, we are making sure the poor and people of color have no say, even in their own future. It is naive and blind to history to expect more from us, than who we are and who we have been.
Science and engineering are very much in the now, preoccupied with quantifying the answers. A humanist looks at our behavior, our iron-clad repetitive patterns and our proclivities and quite simplistically, sees more of the same. We don’t live in a lab, forecasting possibilities, we live in our history, and that is our reality today and tomorrow, always has been, always will be.
This is not a fiction, it is the future.
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It would be hard for those uppity machines to get the best of us. As you alluded to, man is the ultimate killing machine and will not hesitate to respond when threatened. Luddites of the world unite!
Hey Jerry. First, this one laid an egg, because most people like happy endings and the further you look ahead, the less happy it appears. In terms of the uppity machines getting the best of us, I am not feeling real good about the outcome. You and I come from a time when the telephone was this heavy, black thing with a rotary dial and a receiver that didn’t allow you to move away. Radio was pretty good and television was a new phenomenon and in the beginning, there wasn’t even enough programming to keep them lit up all day. Look at where we are today with these machines and how they have taken over our lives, although, some like you have held their ground. These machines moves much faster than we do and by the time we realize the consequences, they will have moved further ahead of us. When my favorite journalist, Chris Hedges, writes about the horrific inequities we are living with, his bottom line ends up being the call for revolution, kind of like “Luddites of the world unite!” I am one of those, who doesn’t think it is going to happen. Actually, for most, the world is happening to them and I am careful not to exclude myself. When I think about all of this, I am reminded of the words of my favorite philosopher, Bobby McFerrin, “Don’t worry, be happy.” As a species, we have a history of being our own worst enemy and I ain’t the guy, who came up with “Past is Prologue.” So, the sun is shining, the winds have died down and it is time to tend to the garden. Love you, bro.
You’ve got a point there. How did these machines trick us into carrying them around with us everywhere we go, as in our cell phones. The real problem will arise when biology and technology merge. Right now I see the biological word as more threatening, especially the viruses who seem to come from another world and are so mean that they will kill their host even if it means their own demise. I deal with these unseen enemies every day on the farm .so I know how destructive they are. Still, the though of being hunted by a machine is terrifying.
It is a double threat, the natural world and the technological one, both caused by our vanity and selfishness, going under the shared name of progress.