Singularity, and Why We Should Be Wary of It

It’s time my friends for us to talk about singularity, and it’s not the point of being single or solitary, but it’s about something a tad related to that. To be precise, “the Singularity is the hypothetical future creation of super intelligent machines. Super intelligence is defined as a technologically-created cognitive capacity far beyond that possible for humans.” So it’s exactly what it sounds like – robots become smarter than humans and enslaves us all… Flashback: Matrix, Terminator, and other artificial intelligence movie to grace us in the past century. I reckon I’m going to be exploring this subject more and more as we progress. However, why should we be wary of this? I’ll let our YouTube friend, Rob, get us up to speed on the basics:

So yeah, let’s recap:

1. Life in general sucks, especially if you don’t know how to live it right.
2. Artificial intelligence may gain more leverage come year 2045.
3. Singularity is a serious threat to humanity.
4. We may be in the Matrix already.
5. Google is Skynet.

Sufficed to say, these are some points that need to be kept in mind, and however hilariously phrased, should be considered with more gravity. If you’re not sure singularity is even a real thing, just fairly recently all the news with regard to AI will divert you on another direction – something like…

Most of the issues with singularity stems with transhumanism. Say what now? Transhumanism is the ethical use of all kinds of technology for the betterment of the human conditions. This essentially decides the boundaries we should all be wary of when exploring AI. I get it, you know. Artificial intelligence can help us in more ways than one. However, not everyone is impressed. Meet Dr. Michael Brant Shermer, an American science writer, historian of science, founder of The Skeptics Society, and Editor in Chief of its magazine Skeptic, which is largely devoted to investigating pseudoscientific claims.

According to him, the reason so many rational people put forward hypotheses that are more hype than high tech is that being smart and educated doesn’t protect anyone from believing in “weird things.” In fact, sometimes smart and educated people are better at rationalizing beliefs that they hold for not-so-rational reasons. The smarter and more educated you are, the better able you are to find evidence to support what you want to be true.

Woah, that’s something to think about. I leave you with this nifty little piece by exurb1a, one of my favourite twats out there, on how singularity can work (possibly).