Technological singularity

In future studies, a technological singularity (also referred to as just the Singularity) is a predicted future event when technological progress and societal change accelerate due to the advent of superhuman intelligence, changing our environment beyond the ability of pre-Singularity humans to comprehend or reliably predict. This event is named by analogy with the breakdown of modern physics knowledge near the gravitational singularity of a black hole.

Kurzweil's law of accelerating returns

In his 2001 essay, The Law of Accelerating Returns, Ray Kurzweil proposes a generalization of Moore's law that forms the basis of many people's beliefs regarding the Singularity. Moore's law describes an exponential growth pattern in the complexity of integrated semiconductor circuits. Kurzweil extends this to include technologies from far before the integrated circuit to future forms of computation. He declares that whenever a technology approaches some kind of a barrier, a new technology will be invented to allow us to cross that barrier. He predicts that such paradigm shifts will become more and more common as we approach the singularity. He believes that the exponential growth of Moore's law will continue beyond the use of integrated circuits into technologies that will lead to the Singularity, which he defines as the technological change so rapid and profound it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history.

Related Topics:
2001 - Ray Kurzweil - Moore's law - Paradigm shift

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The law described by Ray Kurzweil has in many ways altered the public's perception of Moore's law. It is a common (but mistaken) belief that Moore's law makes predictions regarding all forms of technology, when really it only concerns semiconductor circuits. Many futurists still use the term "Moore's law" to describe ideas like those put forth by Kurzweil.

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Kurzweil elaborates on his views in his books The Age of Spiritual Machines and The Singularity Is Near. His predictions differ from Vinge's in that he predicts a more gradual ascent to the Singularity involving all of human society, rather than Vinge's rapidly self-improving superhuman intelligence. The distinction is often made with the terms soft or hard takeoff.

Related Topics:
The Age of Spiritual Machines - The Singularity Is Near

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According to Kurzweil, since the beginning of evolution, more complex life forms have been evolving exponentially faster, with shorter and shorter intervals between the emergence of radically new life forms, and all of evolution has been leading up to human beings, who have the capacity to engineer (to intentionally design with efficiency), a new trait which replaces relatively blind evolutionary mechanisms of selection for efficiency. By extension, the rate of technical progress amongst humans has also been exponentially increasing, as we discover more effective ways to do things, we also discover more effective ways to learn, i.e. language, numbers, written language, philosophy, scientific method, instruments of observation, tallying devices, mechanical calculators, computers, each of these major advances in our ability to account for information occurring increasingly close together. Already within the past sixty years, life in the industrialized world has changed almost beyond recognition except for living memories from the first half of the 20th century. This pattern culminates in unimaginable technological progress in the 21st century, leading to a singularity and after that, presumably, the replacement of biological life as obsolete in the face of entirely self-engineering intelligences.

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