After the Singularity, humans will supposedly live for a very long time, if not forever. And we will build spaceships using nanobots that assemble it from carbon atoms on up. I am always suspicious of predictions that sound like religious myths. I’m not opposed to religion – it’s fine with me if you want to believe in God or dharma – but I am opposed to basing visions of tomorrow on fantasies from the past rather than what we can glean from factual accounts of history. (Newitz)
That’s from a surprisingly fun io9 piece about the singularity, and the second such piece by Analee Newitz. It’s a nice summary of some basic reasons why the dream of an AI-infused super-future sounds a hell of a lot like faith. I wrote about this back in May, but it’s nice to revisit. Like lots of things I wish were true – heaven and Santa Claus come to mind – I just don’t buy it. Neither does Ms. Newitz.
Singularity-level technology changes the world to the point where the things our ancestors wanted are not the same things we want. Today, we are trying to roll back the effects of industrialization. We are trying to undo the damage that penicillin did. If history, real history, teaches us any lesson it’s that new technologies do not cause us to transcend. They fix some things, and then cause new problems we hadn’t anticipated.
It’s not that we couldn’t anticipate these problems, and even generate some Plan B ideas for dealing with them. But it’s hard to plan for problems when our eyes are on Heaven – that place where finally, all our problems are solved and we live happily ever after. (Newitz)
So the hope attached to this stuff seems naive, but what about the tech? PZ Meyers has spilled a fair amount of words on this over the years. Just skimming from the top, you can find loads of valid criticisms.
This is one of those graphs that makes its way into discussions about the singularity. It's very cool looking and I wish it were a true reflection of a clear technological tragectory, but it isn't.
Kurzweil cheats. The most obvious flaw is the way he lumps multiple events together as one to keep the distribution linear. For example, one “event” is “Genus Homo, Homo erectus, specialized stone tools”, and another is “Printing, experimental method” and “Writing, wheel”. If those were treated as separate events, they would have inserted major downward deflections in his chart a million years ago, and about 500 to a few thousand years ago. (Myers)
But it’s fun to ponder all this if you’re hoping for super heaven. Do you like that? It’s my creation. It’s just like heaven, but futuristic. With science. There are no streets of gold, just hover-lanes, and everyone gets a robot. There are crates – filled with health-packs – stretching toward the horizon. But I digress.
If you want to learn more about all the juice back-and-forths, visit Myers’ blog our you can noodle around Futurismic, where the subject is periodically dusted off for further examination.
