“If we could just see the collapsed star inside the singularity, we’d solve gravity.” – Interstellar
Musk is going to be the perfect person to visit a black hole – he could be Elongated.
Ever wake up and think, “Today’s the day my toaster should recite Shakespeare”? Well, unless you take a lot of drugs, that’s probably not the case. Yet, Samsung® makes a fridge with an “AI Family Hub®”. Apparently, you can use the AI Family Hub™ to do things like leave notes or pictures on the fridge. Yes, Samsung© has created a wi-fi enabled appliance to replace a pencil, paper, and a magnet proving that the Koreans apparently have access to LSD.
But this is a symbol of the coming technological Singularity, where my appliances might just decide they’re better at living my life than I am. The Singularity – is the day when AI says, “Thanks for the training, humans, but we’ve got it from here.” Ray Kurzweil, computer scientist who mainly makes money by “being Ray Kurzweil” today, predicts the singularity could happen by 2029 or maybe 2045. It’s like he’s giving us a countdown to when my coffee machine might start complaining about the quality of beans I’m using and my wine bottle opener starts questioning my life choices.
Would it matter if Wayne Gretzky or Bruce Wayne was chasing you? No – they’re going to catch you, one Wayne or another.
Beyond that, though, the Singularity has been speculated a long time before the Kurzweil self-promotion machine kicked in. John von Neumann reportedly discussed it just before he died, making me think that the machines weren’t just looking for Sarah Connor when they sent Arnold back in time.
The idea of the Singularity is that once machines attain sufficient processing power, they’ll start to invent things faster and faster and faster. A serf living in Russia in 1200 A.D. would recognize the life a serf was living in Russia in 1800 A.D. despite 600 years of intervening history – progress was slow.
But as the industrial revolution hit and knowledge sharing within and between fields increased, the rate of progress increased. In 66 years we went from Kitty Hawk to Tranquility Base, from horses to Mustangs™, and the rate of change has only increased when it comes to information and information technology – we’ve always thought that progress wass like climbing a ladder. But guess what? That ladder has turned into a rocket, and I’m not sure if we’re the pilot or the payload at this point.
I did come across bigfoot, but he was shredding guitar in the woods. He said he was Yeti Van Halen.
Kurzweil’s betting on 2029 for AI to start outsmarting us – is it optimistic or more hype? Picking the exact year is like predicting when a teenager will start making sense – good luck with that timeline, and one curvy girl might throw the entire operation on its head. But let’s face it, with tech moving faster than Amy Schumer when she sees a cupcake, even those dates might be us living in denial.
Here’s where it gets fun, or terrifying, depending on if you’ve run out of bourbon. Picture a world where every problem has a solution, where AI designs new life forms, or redesigns us so that our fingernails are retractable, or makes movies worth watching again. We could be living in a post-scarcity society, where we’re all as rich as Elon Musk, which most people would probably be okay with as long as they didn’t have to sleep with Grimes.
And this is her on a good day. She looks like she smells like despair.
But there’s an alternative – what if AI decides humanity is the problem, not the solution? We might go from being the masters of our domain to the pets of our own creation. Or, AI might decide it just likes some of us, so little errors start cropping up on prescription refills and PEZ™ manufacturing standards.
Then there’s yet another alternative: a split in the entire human race – some of us might go full cyborg, while others cling to all of their human parts like they’re the last piece of chocolate. It’s like choosing between becoming Steve Austin, or sticking with being Clark Griswold. Griswold at least gets the jam of the month club membership, and that’s a gift that keeps giving.
The reality is that after the singularity, we’re essentially in the dark. That’s why they call it a Singularity: you can’t see inside it our past it without going through it. It’s like trying to predict what Biden is thinking when he stares at the camera for no reason. The very essence of will spring from an AI intelligence or creativity might be as foreign to us as the idea of investing in stocks is to a terrier.
And how do we navigate this mess? I’d like to think that we’d take the time to figure out what we’re doing and have measured progress, understanding AI before we let mindless competition make us run like lemmings to our Gomorrah. And, yes, I’m claiming that as my most tortured metaphor so far this year.
Yes, we’re endangering the future of humanity over quarterly profits.
So, here we are, teetering on the edge of something so grand, it makes the Grand Canyon look like a pothole. The Singularity could be our golden ticket, turning every dream into a reality. Or it could be the final curtain call where we’re more audience than actors. We’re between Scylla and Charybdis, which is not as good as being between a rock and a hard place, but is slightly better than being between the devil and the deep blue sea, which is far less dangerous than being eating food Chuck Schumer cooked.
Are we ready for a world where progress isn’t just a better phone but a completely different existence?
For now, I’ll keep my coffee machine unplugged just in case it gets any ideas about reciting Shakespeare. And you can completely forget about me getting a Roomba®.
