Technological Singularity: A Comprehensive Analysis

This article aims to present the concept of technological singularity, the contribution of artificial intelligence to the advancement of technological singularity, technological singularity and its contribution to scientific and technological advancement and the benefits and risks of artificial superintelligence for humanity.

2016

Professor Stephen Hawking recently warned about the growing power of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to imbue robots with the ability to both replicate themselves and to increase the rate at which they get smarter-leading to a tipping point or 'technological singularity' when they can outsmart humans. In this chapter I will argue that Hawking is essentially correct to flag up an existential danger surrounding widespread deployment of 'autonomous machines', but wrong to be so concerned about the singularity, wherein advances in AI effectively makes the human race redundant; in my world AI-with humans in the loop-may yet be a force for good.

Ubiquity, 2014

The state of the art in automating basic cognitive tasks, including vision and natural language understanding, is far below human abilities. Real-world reasoning, which is an unavoidable part of many advanced forms of computer vision and natural language understanding, is particularly difficult---suggesting the advent of computers with superhuman general intelligence is not imminent. The possibility of attaining a singularity by computers that lack these abilities is discussed briefly.

2021

Over the past 20 years, the idea of singularity has become increasingly important to the technological visions of posthumanism and transhumanism. The article first introduces key posthumanist authors such as Marvin Minsky, Ray Kurzweil, Hans Moravec, and Frank Tipler. In the following, the concept of singularity is reviewed from a cultural studies perspective, first with regard to the cosmological singularity and then to the technological singularity. According to posthumanist thinkers the singularity is marked by the emergence of a superhuman computer intelligence that will solve all of humanity's problems. At the same time, it heralds the end of the human era. Most authors refer to the British mathematician Irving John Good's 1965 essay Speculations Concerning the First Ultraintelligent Machine as the originator of the idea of superintelligence. Individual elements of the singularity idea such as the impenetrable event horizon, the frontier and the ongoing acceleration of progress are contextualized historically and culturally.

Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended.

Information, 2018

In the current discussions about "artificial intelligence" (AI) and "singularity", both labels are used with several very different senses, and the confusion among these senses is the root of many disagreements. Similarly, although "artificial general intelligence" (AGI) has become a widely used term in the related discussions, many people are not really familiar with this research, including its aim and status. We analyze these notions, and introduce the results of our own AGI research. Our main conclusions are that: (1) it is possible to build a computer system that follows the same laws of thought and shows similar properties as the human mind, but, since such an AGI will have neither a human body nor human experience, it will not behave exactly like a human, nor will it be "smarter than a human" on all tasks; and (2) since the development of an AGI requires a reasonably good understanding of the general mechanism of intelligence, the system's behaviors will still be understandable and predictable in principle. Therefore, the success of AGI will not necessarily lead to a singularity beyond which the future becomes completely incomprehensible and uncontrollable.

Evolving Systems, 2022

evolving systems, it also creates risks from such systems being used by adversaries against its original intentions. There is a growing concern caused by the increased adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) in predictive cybersecurity, triggering various discussions on the 'Skynet' becoming a reality. These fears are amplified by public figures (e.g., Stephen Hawkins) and tech gurus (e.g., Elon Musk) arguing that AI is a serious risk to humanity and could result in human extinction. We agree that if AI continues to be used in defence and security, it could eventually lead to a 'technological singularity' event, causing unpredictable changes to human civilisation 'that could signal the end of the human era' [1]. The aim of this article is to create complementarities between the topics of AI and cybersecurity, to promote adaptation (i.e., focusing on trust in AI systems) and to enable the categorisation of risks (which is necessary for quantifying the cascading effects of cyber risks). Since the rise of AI seems inevitable, the objective of this article is to forecast areas that we need to address to mitigate the probability of a 'technological singularity' event, not to prevent it from occurring, because following the existing speculation models, that presumption seems inevitable [2].

Kínesis - Revista de Estudos dos Pós-Graduandos em Filosofia

The men admired a way to swim the fish, but today they sail faster than anyone. They'd like flying like the birds, but have been a lot higher. They searched for wisdom, now they have all the knowledge accumulated in the story available in a few clicks. Human evolution is about to meet its peak through the Technological Singularity, which can be understood as the future milestone reached at the moment that a computer program can think like a human, yet with quick access to all information already registered by society. It will not be like a man, but more intelligent than all mankind in history. So we have a big question: will this new entity has consciousness? Through a study of the levels of intelligent agents autonomy and in a timeless dialogue with Alan Turing, René Descartes, Ludwic Wittgenstein, John Searle and Vernor Vinge, we show the possibility of an artificial consciousness and thatthe quest for intentionality, promoted by sophisticated algorithms of learning and machin...

Classical and Contemporary Essays on the Science, Technology, and Philosophy of the Human Future, 2013

This paper reviews different definitions and models of technological singularity. The models range from conceptual sketches to detailled endogenous growth models, as well as attempts to fit empirical data to quantitative models. Such models are useful for examining the dynamics of the world-system and possible types of future crisis points where fundamental transitions are likely to occur. Current models suggest that, generically, even small increasing returns tends to produce radical growth. If mental capital becomes copyable (such as would be the case for AI or brain emulation) extremely rapid growth would also become likely.