The Future of the Singularity

May 10, 2011

The Future of the Singularity logo

Club of Amsterdam | According to the Singularity Institute, (technological) singularity is the technological creation of smarter-than-human intelligence. So simple the definition may look like, it signals the end of 5 million years of human evolution with the emergence of super intelligence as a result of exponential technological development. Although different technologies are also suggested, artificial intelligence and brain interfaces are thought to be the likely ones that would first match the level of acceleration necessary to provide such an enormous change. With approximately 100 billion neurons, the human brain easily surpasses today’s computer forces. However, this does not change the fact that the human brain has only tripled its capacity during the entire evolution while the computing benchmarks increase exponentially, doubling every one or two years. This information hypothetically provides us with necessary variables to create a timetable for closing the distance of capacity between the human brain and the foreseen technologies. The arrival to such a threshold will create a loop, or an explosion like the big bang some would say (Ray Kurzweil), which, in turn, will make it possible for instance artificial intelligence to improve its own source code, automatically capsizing the superiority of human intelligence as we have known.