From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Jason Resch
Sent: Saturday, December 13, 2014 10:11 AM
To: Everything List
Subject: Re: real A.I.
On Sat, Dec 13, 2014 at 10:44 AM, John Clark <[email protected]> wrote:
On Sat, Dec 13, 2014 meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote:
> And deniers are luddite morons who think we can fix global warming on short
> notice when it gets a lot worse but we can't screw it up in the meantime.
For heaven's sake, by 2100 we'll have full Nanotechnology and Quantum Computers
at our disposal, or rather the human race's AI successors will. Global warming
is small potatoes.
On this I agree with John. If anyone can be accused of luddism, its the
"technological singularity deniers", who believe technology progresses at a
constant linear rate and are ignorant of projections of the coming intelligence
explosion. The technological singularity will happen well before 2100, and if
it doesn't, it will be because we've already wiped ourselves out.
Jason, I first got into Kurzweil around a decade ago and my thinking on this
has become more nuanced over the years. Would like to make two related points.
The first being that there are two races going on concurrently, with one being
the race of the increasing pace of technological/scientific development that
will – act together in concert in a synergistic manner, according to the
Singularity hypothesis – to accelerate the pace of change. But there is another
race occurring on our planet, which is the race towards planetary scale
resource depletion, biodegradation, and overpopulation. Which race will win the
race? The pace of Singularity could falter and collapse if the industrial
scale, supply chain linked networks of vertically integrated systems, upon
which technology ultimately depends, begins to fall apart at the wheels, due to
the cumulative effects of multiple resource bottlenecks… of food system
collapse due to high dependence on petrochemical inputs (which will become
priced out of reach for more and more farmers), top soil loss, evolution of
super-weeds, resistant insects and other pests (due to overuse of pesticides
and petro-chemical enabled industrial scale mono-cropping practices).
Our current situation is highly complex and multi-factor-dependent. It is not
as simple – IMO – as Singularity is inevitable. As I have argued above there
are many ways large scale collapse could be triggered… a large scale war in
Eurasia could do the trick for example.
Secondly singularity is not proceeding at an equal – or even a geometric pace
-- across all facets of technology. I work in IT, and am looking at multi-core
laptops with TB solid state HDs etc. so I am right smack in the middle of
Moore’s Law land. It is a constant learning process to keep up with the rapid
pace of change in my field. But Moore’s Law does not apply equally across the
landscape of technology. For example the pace of battery technology as measured
say by gravimetric capacity. If we base line capacity at 1859, when Gaston
Planté first invented the lead acid battery and graph the pace at which
capacity has improved we will not see the geometric curve we see with Moore’s
Law, rather it will look much more linear and be comparatively flat. Similarly
for ICE engines (the very best ICE engines still only get about 20%-25% useful
work with the rest being wasted in a thermal tailpipe). Graph improvements to
ICE efficiency from the Model T to today. We do not get Moore’s Law; we get an
almost flat linear progression of incremental improvements. There is a long
list of critical technologies which have proven quite resistant to Moore’s Law.
Technological progress and the pace of technological progress is lumpy; in some
areas it is racing ahead along the Moore’s Law vortex towards Singularity (one
of these areas is Solar PV, which does follow a Moore’s Law geometric doubling
graph). But in many other areas – areas that are also of critical importance to
overall system performance – the pace has been stubbornly linear and the slope
of change has remained painfully flat.
When I was a kid I thought we would have Mars Colonies by now. Are the rocket
engines we make today all that much improved over the Apollo rocket engines?
How is Singularity coming along in rocket engine technology?
Perhaps, in the end this does not matter and some disruptive technology will
arise and change the landscape; I am agnostic. Am intrigued about additive
manufacturing as being that disruptive technology, but that is a whole other
thread.
My second point can be summarized with the word lumpy. The pace of change is
lumpy. In some areas it is rapid and graphs along a geometric curve; while in
others it is linear and often the linear slope is not much more than flat.
-Chris
For those unfamiliar with the concept, I recommend this as a good primer:
http://www.kurzweilai.net/the-law-of-accelerating-returns
An analysis of the history of technology shows that technological change is
exponential, contrary to the common-sense “intuitive linear” view. So we won’t
experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century — it will be more like
20,000 years of progress (at today’s rate). The “returns,” such as chip speed
and cost-effectiveness, also increase exponentially. There’s even exponential
growth in the rate of exponential growth. Within a few decades, machine
intelligence will surpass human intelligence, leading to The Singularity —
technological change so rapid and profound it represents a rupture in the
fabric of human history. The implications include the merger of biological and
nonbiological intelligence, immortal software-based humans, and ultra-high
levels of intelligence that expand outward in the universe at the speed of
light.
Jason
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