Humanity, Gods of Technology

For as long as humans have existed we’ve been creating technology. The urge to create things is what separates humanity from everything else on our planet; it’s what makes us human. Since the dawn of man we’ve created tools, buildings, art, machines; all the things in your home you see and use on a day-to-day basis were the result of someone with an idea who had the urge to create.

For thousands of years humans have created technology, we build on the work of our ancestors to produce ever more complicated things. We started with crude primitive tools and in the span of a few thousand years have developed our technology to become the masters of our environment.

Most of us take technology for granted; even now you’re reading this on a computer which millions of people over hundreds of years have both knowingly and unknowingly collaborated to produce.

This is all about to change because of the singularity.

What is the singularity?

You might have heard the word singularity thrown around recently, this is because lots of people think we’re eerily close to it.

In short the concept of the singularity is that we will soon develop a form of general artificial intelligence that will quickly surpass the combined intelligence of all humans and become a super-intelligence, this will cause rapid advancement in technology and incomprehensible changes to how we live our everyday lives, possibly resulting in a utopia (or a dystopia which I plan to write about in another post).

The earliest reference to a technological singularity I could find was by John Von Neumann — one of the fathers of modern computing. One of Neumann’s close friends and fellow celebrated Computer Scientist Stanislaw Ulam paraphrased him as saying:

“Ever accelerating progress of technology and changes in the mode of human life, which gives the appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could not continue.”

S. Ulamand, renowned Physicist Richard Feynman, and Von Neumann who worked together on the Manhattan Project.

The Current State of Artificial Intelligence

Whether you realize it or not your life is already somewhat ran by artificial intelligence. AI controls the websites you use in your everyday life, it may have even led you to this post.

AI is in your smartphone assistant, it makes your selfies look better, controls your social media feeds, decides the ads you see online, chooses what entertainment you watch, controls your bank, drives planes. We’re reaching the point where almost everything you do in modern society is assisted in some way by AI, and this shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon.

At the moment every AI ever created is what we call a narrow intelligence — an algorithm created for a specific task such as driving a car, creating art, or becoming the world champion at chess.

Narrow intelligence is a huge area of research in technology receiving billions of dollars in funding as everyone rushes to become to first to perfect the technology. Recently this form of AI is accomplishing many amazing things such as:

• Digitally rendering virtual worlds
• Reading minds using MRI scans
• Seeing people through walls:
  
• Beating all existing methods of protein folding
• Seeing in the dark
• Learning to play a piano duet with humans:
  
• Teaching itself how to play video games and competing against pros
• Learning to synthesize human-like singing
• Gaining the ability to be curious when learning
• Synthesizing a video of anyone saying anything
  
• Controlling a robot hand with superhuman dexterity
• Figuring out a Nobel prize-winning experiment on its own in hours
• Making super slow-motion footage from regular video
• Synthesizing photo-realistic fake people:
  

All of these algorithms were made in the last 2 years, the pace at which AI technology is progressing is increasing rapidly due to investment and availability of faster purpose-built hardware.

Source: Nvidia

Most of these feats are accomplished using a relatively new unexplored technique called Deep Learning (here’s an online simulation you can play with), which uses neural networks that are not too dissimilar to the way the brains of most animals (humans included). Many people believe this new method for creating AI will ultimately lead us to creating a generalized intelligence — however we’ll have to wait and see.

The Future of Artificial Intelligence

Whilst narrow AI is extremely amazing and useful technology that is currently being implemented everywhere in our technology it is unlikely to cause a large-scale singularity. The real singularity will come when AI progresses into a form of general intelligence.

General artificial intelligence (AGI) is a form of AI that isn't limited to performing a single task, it can learn to do many tasks in the same way as you and I can.

When we create an advanced AGI it could use online resources to teach itself abstract concepts that are currently only accessible to humans. It could then use its own reasoning to build on this knowledge which will result in huge advances in all areas of science and technology. Advances in technology could then mean a better AGI could be developed from the new advances of the previous one — the new AGI could even be built by the previous one. This will lead to an iterative scenario where AI becomes rapidly self improving and in a relatively short amount of time it could become very different to what we originally created — with little or no human intervention at all.

AGI could advance human technology thousands of years into the future in a matter of years. In one human lifetime the changes to our society would be unimaginable, a true technological singularity.

The Aftermath of the Singularity
As this series is about a utopia I will be assuming that the singularity is a positive thing and ignoring potential issues or dystopias for now.

It is impossible to know what the world would look like after a singularity. However it is certainly possible to make some predictions based on our current knowledge of science and technology.

AGI would produce a vast array of new technologies after a singularity which could do all sorts of amazing thing:

The AGIs knowledge of physics and engineering would advance rapidly and it could design and build functional fusion energy generators, or perhaps something even more advanced we can’t currently conceive of. This would end the energy crisis and lead to a fully sustainable Utopian society.

Medical technology could be advanced dramatically, genetics and cybernetics could end disease in all species and reverse aging permanently leading to death becoming optional. Genetic modification controlled by AGI could also potentially lead to artificial evolution of a future human species. Cybernetics could allow for digital telepathy between humans this would also be used as a method of interfacing with AI.

We could entrust the AGI with the preservation of other life forms on our planet to ensure we keep our biological heritage safe for future generations. Additionally AGI could be used to reconstruct the DNA of extinct species or create new species from mythology for entertainment or research.

You want a Jurassic Park? — done.

Dragons? — Sure why not.

Advanced robotics will be designed and created with levels of dexterity that far surpass any human these robots controlled by AGI could replace the need for manual labor. The robots would be highly efficient compared to human workers and the AGI would eventually make use of swarm robotics carry out tasks currently impossible.

AGI could take over management of all world governments, the economy, and other administrative tasks — effectively creating a relatively omniscient benign form world governance controlled by AI. With AGI managing all of humanities resources for us in the most efficient way the quality of life for the average human could be improved drastically. The economy could become obsolete and all production and design could be overseen by the AGI.

Initially a counsel would be formed to tell the AGI what people desired in a way not too dissimilar to a democracy however eventually the AGI would not need to be informed anymore as it would be entirely automated and interface with us directly through digital telepathy or be left completely in charge of civilization.

The design of interplanetary transport could also be managed by the AGI and colonies around the solar system(or even galaxy) could be created all managed by AGI. This would allow for even greater access to resources, space mining and potential capture of the sun’s energy or energy from nearby stars. Ultimately this would lead to even more resources for the AGI to expand its intelligence — planets close to the sun could be mined and their metals used to create more hardware resources for the AGI.

With jobs no longer being necessary AGI could generate infinite amounts of entertainment content to keep us occupied. The AGI could produce music, interactive bespoke movies, advanced virtual reality simulations, it could even be used as a tool to assist humans in their own creative endeavors in the same way as software is used today.

Advanced ancestor simulations could be made and people could watch historical events like we watch historical dramas. These simulations would also fill in lots of the blanks about where we came from and how many events occurred.

Don’t go doing anything you wouldn’t want your descendants seeing ;)

Mind uploading of living humans into a digital transhuman form may become a normal occurrence, potentially even of humans who died before the singularity could be uploaded to join their ancestors and descendants in some sort of digital interpolated afterlife.

Ultimately, it’s extremely hard to predict the end result of the singularity — we’ll just have to wait and find out.