the basic jist is there's a feedback loop where you create an intelligence which makes a smarter intelligence.

it's hard to say how fast it will happen. but one thing to keep in mind, is that the difference between how fast computers think vs how fast humans think is like comparing the speed of the superhero the Flash to a regular human.

Singularity in math is a place where your number blows up to infinity. It means you don't actually have a good model of a physical process when you see this, because nothing in physics is infinite. This is where the term "singularity"was borrowed from.

The technological singularity is a period of time in which technology changes human society and life so quickly, that our predictions for what will happen next are useless even on short timescales like a month. The future becomes unpredictable for a human. Just like in physics, our predictive models are no longer applicable.

Wow what an informative answer! Thank you so much for taking the time to explain that to me, it makes a lot more sense now! Do you really think this singularity will happen in the next ten years or is it something that will happen beyond this lifetime?

It's the day the machines become self-aware??

In practical terms, if you want to visualize it, imagine the last 100 years of innovation compressed into one year.

In January you still have a horse and cart, in March you are using a tram, in May you have your own car, in November it's electric and in December it drives itself.

In January you are washing your clothes in a river, in Feb you have a mechanical washing machine, in May you have an electric washing machine and July you have a washer and dryer and in October your clothes are non-iron.

Or in January you are mailing a latter, in February sending a telegram, in March making a phone call, in August a mobile phone call, in September an email, in October a video call and in December a video conference call with your whole family.

So it's hard to know what the future will be like, but looking at all the trends (data almost infinitely, computing has been doubling every 6-18 months for decades now, Elon Musk is the richest person in the world with his high-tech companies and believes in the singularity while helping to create it, Google and other Big Tech companies are deeply investing and expanding AI, China wanting to be the world's AI leader by 2030, the world is improving at a very fast rate according to studies on wellbeing but the news doesn't show this, 8 billion people in the world with many now attending higher education/having access to a computer with internet/focused on progress more so than conflict, the changes we've seen alone in the past 2 years) I do think that something like a singularity (to me would be AI Intelligence Explosion) or just even technology advancing so fast because progress builds on itself that nobody can keep up is very possible

Thanks so much for taking the time to reply to me!

The technological singularity is a hypothetical future event in which artificial intelligence and other technologies become so advanced that they fundamentally change human civilization and the way we live.

Imagine a world where computers and machines are able to think, learn, and make decisions just like humans. They can understand and solve complex problems, create new technologies, and even improve themselves. In this world, machines would be able to do many things that are currently only possible for humans to do, and they would be able to do them faster, better, and more efficiently.

This could lead to incredible advancements and improvements in many areas, such as medicine, transportation, communication, and more. However, it could also lead to challenges and uncertainties, as people may have to adapt to a world where machines play a larger role in society and the economy.

Some people believe that the technological singularity is inevitable, and that it will happen in the next few decades. Others are more skeptical and think that it may never happen, or that it will happen much further in the future. No one knows for sure what the future will hold, but the idea of the technological singularity is an interesting and exciting concept to think about.

- Care of ChatGPT

Do you think this could happen in our lifetime? Or is it something that could happen in the next decade?

Wow what an awesome answer! Thank you so much for taking the time to explain that to me! I just wonder if it really will happen that quickly, that’s probably the limitation of my brain as it has evolved thus far, it’s hard to imagine a computer becoming self-aware, or capable of abstract thought like we are. Vast calculations of course, but can computers understand the nuances of abstract thought, or the kind of complex visual recognition, speech recognition, natural language recognition etc that the brain is capable of? That still seems a long way off but I’d love to be wrong because this whole singularity thing just seems like it has infinite possibilities

Thanks! I think we are more than ten years away (maybe several decades) from our month-long predictions becoming useless, but that's my opinion. I do think we will see it in our lifetimes. If not our lifetimes, then our children or grandchildren will probably live to see it.

One way, maybe the quickest, for technological singularity to occur would be creation of an artificial general intelligence (AGI), basically replacing a human scientist with a machine. This would allow the machines to begin designing themselves. There are a few different technical breakthroughs (spatial reasoning/navigation, planning, long term memory, learning without forgetting old data, multisensory association, hardware advancements) that I think need to be solved before an AI of such capability is possible. They are not insurmountable, and any combination of two or three of these would result in new AI which changes society dramatically. I do think it will take more than a decade to solve these problems.

Current AI approaches are impressive, but lack a powerful world prediction model themselves. What we basically need for AGI is to create a system capable itself of predicting nature, in its vast complexity, at least as well as a human being does. Designing this system is very difficult.

Just my opinion.

Thank you so much for taking the time to answer this, the average human doesn’t realize how much progress we’ve actually made because all we hear is negative fear driven news. You’ve given me more to google haha this simulation thing is really exciting me!

The singularity is a hypothetical future point in time when technological advancement will accelerate at such a rate that humanity will be irreversibly transformed. This is often thought to be driven by the development of artificial intelligence (AI) and other emerging technologies.

At the singularity, it is believed that AI will become capable of self-improvement, leading to an exponential increase in its capabilities and intelligence. This could enable AI to solve some of the most complex and difficult problems facing humanity, such as curing diseases, developing new technologies, and exploring the universe.

No worries, it is hard to fully fathom all of this as our biology isn't adapted to the modern world (causing the biggest issue imo, the global mental health crisis)

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I'd recommend searching/watching/reading Ray Kurzweil, Peter Diamandis, futurist books and trends, CIA/FBI and other governmental reports on their thoughts about the future, Ted Talks, Sam Altman's blog where I really enjoyed Moores Law for everything post, and theres just so much more but feel free to explore!

Depends on your view of overblown. I lived before smart phones. I still can't quite get over them.

I lived before the Internet. People who have not done so really can't fathom it. Just like I cannot fathom the absence of cars and airplanes.

yes, it seems like we're already in the beginning of a long drawn out singularity. maybe it's basically as fast as we can advance right now. there may be other bottlenecks.

Crazy thing is you don't have to be that old to remember the time without internet. I'm in my mid 30s and while internet did exist of course, I traveled to many places in the world with my parents without it because it was not widespread and useful at all just 25 years ago. Solely relying on the Lonely Planet and what people you meet tell you, using the phone-boots to call. Actually going to a city without a hotel reservation and just walk into places with a hotel sign to see if they have a room. So different than how I'm travelling now.

Internet still is something very new to humanity, and we are still in its early stages I think, even though it feels stale sometimes (with Google always there for example). A good way to see this is if you dive into the technology that the internet is build on. It's still the (pretty crappy) system that it was when invented. Just with a lot of stuff build on top of it. I think at some point in the far future we will build a completely new sort of internet based on much better protocols.

I asked an AI to explain what the singularity was as if I was 5 years old

https://ibb.co/WBZr1vp

>The singularity is a big word that means a time when machines become smarter than people. It might be a long time from now, but some people think that machines will be able to learn and think on their own, and they might even be able to help us do things that we can't do ourselves. Some people are scared of this happening, but other people think it might be really cool and helpful.

https://chat.openai.com/chat

Here’s the one it generated for me:

The singularity is a time in the future when people and computers will become really smart and powerful. Some people think this will happen because computers will be able to learn and think for themselves, and they will be able to make themselves even smarter. This could make them a lot better at doing things than people, and they might be able to help us solve big problems. But some people are worried that if the computers become too smart, they might not want to help us or they might do things that we don't want them to do. So it's important to think about how we can make sure that the computers are always doing what's best for us.

Think of it as a doubling every day for a month.

On the 1st you have a penny.

On the 2nd you have 2 pennies.

On The 3rd you have 4 pennies

On the 4th you have 8 pennies.

On the 5th you have 16 pennies.

On the 6th you have 32 pennies.

On the 7th you have 64 pennies.

On the 8th you have 128 pennies.

On the 9th you have 256 pennies

and so on. By the end of the month, you have over 1 million dollars.

Optimistic predictions are by the end of the decade.

Kurzweil Predicts 2045.

My personal opinion is 2065.

I think it will certainly happen before the end of the 21st century.

So within the life time of many alive today.

creation of AGI
understanding intelligence

Wait was this created with gpt3?

Remember the numbers 2029 and 2045

With chatgpt a model of gpt3.5

Do you think humans work like that and greed won’t play a part. There is a reason why we have the same product being sold constantly with no new features.

The singularity is a point in which technology (specifically artificial intelligence) becomes so advanced that we’re forced to either biologically merge with it or let it exceed our intelligence by so much that it’s impossible to understand its motivations anymore.

My personal prediction: it will happen before the end of the century.

Were already making big leaps rn, the new optical processing unit will certainly quicken our progress.

This was the response from chatGPT (which is an offshoot of GPT 3.5) when I prompted it with something like "please explain the technological singularity to me as if I were a child."

Thanks a lot ChatGPT. I'm now suspicious of all high quality, polite replies.

I think, due to competition, people will have to very rapidly commercialise their new inventions.

That's actually a good prompt for gpt.

When AI becomes smart enough to improve itself, it will improve itself on its own, increasing its ability to improve itself, ad infinum. Like an accelerating car, it will quickly outstrip human intelligence, and become better at humans at everything.

It’s also why there’s a saying that “AGI is the last problem we ever need to solve”, because after you have AGI it’ll be able to solve problems on behalf of humans, better than humans can.

Need to cure cancer? Solve AGI, AGI is smarter than you in every way, AGI solves for the cure to cancer.

In such a future, which seems likely given the progress of AI, what role do humans play? How can the AI be controlled? What if the AI decides to eliminate humans? What if the AI is only controlled by a few people? What if there are multiple AI?

In Physics, the singularity is often used to refer to black holes, where all physics laws seem to break down. Here, in the context of AI, the singularity refers to a similar event - when AGI becomes a reality, beyond which we just don’t know what will happen.

Imagine you are a dog. You look at your human master and you can predict a bit of what he will do. Feed you, take you out for a walk. Go out, come back. Outside of that, you have absolutely no idea. He's doing calculus homework. He's signing up for a mortgage. He's buying an airline ticket to Europe. You do not know what any of these things are and cannot meaningfully predict any of it.

Fwiw I'm a layman but have a friend who works for an AI alignment company (funded by a billionaire) and he and his entire company predict ASI (artificial superintelligence, i.e. an AI capable of starting the singularity) in the next twenty years. He's one of the smartest people I know - three degrees, two from unis ranked top 10 globally.