Technological Singularity

Top 10 Singularitarians of All Time

by

The technological singularity is the event or sequence thereof likely to occur at or after the birth of AI, especially when Artificial Intelligence surpasses biological i.e. human intelligence.

Since it is human intelligence which, in one way or another, is still the primary cause and ultimate mover behind AI, there are a number of people who either had or continue to have enormous impact on the singularity.

Some of those are scientists who work diligently in fields as varied as Genetics, Robotics, Nanotechnology or Artificial Intelligence. Others are theorists and science fiction writers who have been the inspiration behind both the concept and the science, and have shaped the popular perception about what the singularity will, could or should be. Still others have been vehement critics who have either argued powerfully against or have taken direct action to prevent the singularity. It is all those people who, because of their lasting impact, I consider to be, broadly speaking, the top singularitarians.

So, who are the top 10 singularitarians of all time?

Singularity Weblog’s Top 10 Singularitarians of All Time

1. Ray Kurzweil

Without any doubt Ray Kurzweil is the most famous and widely recognized singularitarian. He is the person most responsible for the popularization of the concept of the technological singularity and is sometimes referred to as “the singularity prophet” (both in the positive and the negative sense of the word).

Ray is an inventor and well published futurist who, among other things is famous for: predicting the collapse of the Soviet Union; the rise of the Internet; believing that he can live forever; claiming that eventually he will bring his late father back from the dead; for writing persuasively about the Law of Accelerating Returns; for starting up a number of successful tech companies and for being one of the founders of Singularity University.

Some of Ray Kurzweil’s most famous books include: The Age of Intelligent Machines, The Singularity is Near, Transcend: Nine Steps to Living Well Forever. Ray has appeared in a number of documentaries about the singularity or technology in general, most notable of which are Transcendent Man and the Singularity is Near, which he wrote and produced himself.

2. Vernor Vinge

It was Hugo Award winner Vernor Vinge who coined the term technological singularity in his science fiction novel Marooned in Realtime.

Arguably the second most recognized singularitarian, Vernor Vinge spent most of his life in San Diego, California where he still lives today.There he taught mathematics and computer science at San Diego State University for over thirty years. Today Vinge is sought widely as a public speaker and presenter for business, science, science fiction and general audiences.

Vernor Vinge has won Hugo Awards for several of his books such as: A Fire Upon The Deep(1992), A Deepness in the Sky(1999) and for the novella Fast Times at Fairmont High(2001). Known for his rigorous hard-science approach Vinge first became an iconic figure both among cybernetic scientists and sci fi fans with the publication of his 1981 novella True Names, widely considered to be the visionary work behind the internet revolution. Later he gained even more public attention for his coining the term, writing and presenting about the technological singularity.

3. Karel Čapek

Karel Čapek earns his spot as a top 10 singularitarian for popularizing the term robot which was introduced in the 1920s by the Czech writer in his play R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots).

The play was situated on an island-factory for “artificial people” that Čapek called robots. Čapek’s robots looked like normal people and could think autonomously for themselves, yet, at least for a while, they seemed to be happy serving their human masters. Eventually, however, the robots rebelled, exterminated all humans and took over the world.

4. Isaac Asimov

Isaac Asimov was a prolific writer who wrote or edited over 500 books but is most famous for his collection of robot short stories which were eventually published together under the common name I, Robot.

Following in Čapek’s footsteps Isaac Asimov’s earns his place among the top 10 singularitarians for coining the Three Laws of Robotics in his 1942 short story Runaround. The three laws state that:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

2. A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

5. Samuel Butler

It was during the relatively low-tech mid 19th century that Samuel Butler wrote his Darwin among the Machines. In it, Butler combined his observations of the rapid technological progress of the Industrial Revolution and Charles Darwin’s theory of the evolution of the species. That synthesis led Butler to conclude that the technological evolution of the machines will continue inevitably until the point that eventually machines will replace men altogether.

In other words, Samuel Butler was the first to claim that it was the race of the intelligent machines (AI) and not the race of men which would be the next step in evolution. He developed further that and other subsequent ideas in The Book of the Machines, three chapters of his book titled Erewhon, which was published anonymously in 1872.

In Erewhon Samuel Butler argued: “…that the machines were ultimately destined to supplant the race of man, and to become instinct with a vitality as different from, and superior to, that of animals, as animal to vegetable life.”

The above conclusion lead Butler to call for the complete destruction of all machines invented after the end of the 17th century.

6. Alan Turing

Alan Turing was a brilliant British mathematician often considered to be the father of modern computer science.

During the Second World War Turing was working for the British government at Bletchley Park and was the man largely credited with breaking the German Enigma machine cryptographic code. He was also a crucial figure behind the development of the so called Turing-Welchman Bombe which was an electro-mechanical type of a computing machine.

After the war Turing famously predicted that computers would one day play better chess than people and in 1950 published an article titled Computing Machinery and Intelligence where he introduced what he believed to be a practical test for assessing computer intelligence. (aka the Turing Test)

Alan Turing was a closet homosexual and, unfortunately, was convicted for indecency in 1952 because his homosexual relations were illegal in Britain at the time. He was forced to undergo chemical castration and as a side effect grew breasts. After his conviction, his security clearance was revoked and his reputation was destroyed.

Unable to bear anymore humiliation, Alan Turing committed suicide on June 8, 1954 by allegedly biting an apple which he laced with cyanide. (It is in his honor that Apples’ logo today is a half bitten apple)

7. Aubrey de Grey

Aubrey de Grey was born in London, England in 1963. He is a controversial author and theoretician in the field of gerontology  and is currently serving as a chief science officer at the Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS) foundation.

Dr. de Grey started out as a computer scientist by completing a BA at Cambridge University in 1985. According to his own words he married a biologist and decided to switch fields in the mid 1990s.

In the year 2000 Cambridge University awarded him a PhD for his book concerning a specific aspect of aging called The Mitochondrial Free Radical Theory of Aging.  He is also the author of another popular and highly controversial book called Ending Aging: The Rejuvenation Breakthroughs That Could Reverse Human Aging in Our Lifetime.

It is in his second book where Aubrey de Grey proposes a road-map aimed at defeating aging by reaching what he calls longevity escape velocity — i.e. the point where humanity will possess the medical technology to extend healthy human life by a given period of time (e.g. a decade or two) during which time we will come up with even better technology thereby allowing us to extend life even more. Thus, by repeating this process over and over again we can stay one step ahead of the problem of aging and eventually will reach a point where we can extend healthy human life indefinitely.

Aubrey de Grey is an eccentric, controversial and highly recognizable figure. He has been a guest speaker for numerous TV programs and events such as CBS 60 Minutes, BBC, the New York Times, Fortune Magazine, the Washington Post, TED, Popular Science and The Colbert Report. Most recently Aubrey de Grey was the subject of the documentary film directed by Christopher Sykes Do You Want to Live Forever?. It is his highly controversial quest for immortality that earns Aubrey de Grey his top 10 spot on our singularitarian list.

8. Ted Kaczynski (aka the Unabomber)

Ted Kaczynski was a genius child prodigy, brilliant mathematician, social critic, technophobic neo-Luddite, extreme environmentalist and murderous terrorist who was responsible for a series of bombings targeting universities and airline companies. His nickname the Unabomber originates from the FBI acronym “UNABOM” which stands for “UNiversity and Airline BOMber.”

Kaczynski’s notorious bombing campaign lasted from 1978 until 1995. During that period he blew up 16 bombs and was responsible for the death of three people and the injuring of 23.

In Industrial Society and Its Future (aka the “Unabomber Manifesto”) he tried to explain, justify and popularize his militant resistance to technological progress. In essence, Kaczynski embraced the ideas of Samuel Butler but was not satisfied to simply write about the dangers of technology. Thus, even though the Unabomber didn’t think that the technological singularity will be a good thing, he believed in it so much that he had to try to prevent it by any means possible.  It is for this reason that Kaczynski takes number 8 on our list.

9. Kevin Warwick

Kevin Warwick is a professor of Cybernetics at the University of Reading, England, where he carries out research in artificial intelligence, control, robotics and biomedical engineering. Most notably he is the author of I, Cyborg a book where he documents how he became the world’s first cyborg in a series of ground-breaking scientific experiments.

Kevin’s research was selected by National Geographic International for a 1 hour documentary, entitled “I,Human” which was broadcast in 143 countries and translated into 23 different languages.

 

10. Charles Stross

Charles Stross is a contemporary science fiction writer based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Some of this most famous sci fi novels include titles such as Accelerando (Singularity), Singularity Sky, Iron Sunrise (Singularity) and Saturn’s Children.

It is his book Accelerando with its broad plot horizon (spanning time and space across the whole universe), with its dazzling imagination (fed by the latest and greatest bleeding edge of science and science fiction), and with its deep implications for the whole of humanity, that Charlie Stross beats the other honorable candidates and earns the last spot on our top 10 Singularitarians of all time.

Other honorable mentions who could have made the above list but just didn’t quite make it are: Gordon Moore, John von Neumann, I.J. Good, Norbert Wiener, Manfred Clynes, Hans Moravec, Marvin Minsky, John McCarthy, Philip K. Dick, Edsger Dijkstra, Nick Bostrom, Kevin Kelly, Hugo de Garis, William Gibson, Eliezer Yudkowsky, Ben Goertzel and Michael Anissimov.

Best of Singularity Blog

by

Even though it has been only a bit more than a month since the beginning of this blog I am happy to note that there is already a tight group of people who have subscribed to my feed and continue to come back and read my posts on a regular basis.

I want to take this opportunity to do 2 things:

First and foremost I want to thank you all for the generous gift of your interest, your time and your moral support. I cherish those dearly and promise to do my best to provide you with more interesting, more relevant and better written singularity content during the new 2010.

In the end, without you — my readers, both the Singularity Weblog and the Singularity Symposium website will be not only pointless but will cease to exist.

It is your mouse clicks here that give me meaning and inspiration to keep searching for if I know one thing for sure it is that I don’t know…

Secondly, I want to highlight the top 5 most popular blog posts for 2009.

This list is based on visitors’ data as compiled by my Google Analytics account and is therefore entirely your list and not mine.

Your fellow traveler,

Socrates

Singularity Weblog Top 5 List

1. Dawn of the Kill-Bots: The Conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Arming of AI (part 1)

2. If Socrates were a Blogger

3. Mind Reading, Thought Control and Neuro Marketing: Is “the Lord of the World” still science fiction?

4. Do you want to live forever?

5. Dawn of the Kill-Bots: the Conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Arming of AI (part 3)

Dawn of the Kill-Bots: the Conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Arming of AI (part 5)

by

Part 5: The Future of (Military) AI — Singularity

While being certainly dangerous for humans, especially the ones that are specifically targeted by the kill-bots, arming machines is not on its own a process that can threaten the reign of homo sapiens in general. What can though is the fact that it is occurring within the larger confluent revolutions in Genetics, Nanotechnology and Robotics (GNR). Combined with exponential growth trends such as Moore’s law we arguably get the right conditions for what is referred to as the Technological Singularity.

Alan Turing

In 1945 Alan Turing famously predicted that computers would one day play better chess than people. Fifty years later, a computer called Deep Blue defeated the reigning world champion Gary Kasparov. Today, whether it is a mouse with a blue-tooth brain implant that directs the movements of the mouse via laptop, a monkey moving a joystick with its thoughts, humans talking through their thoughts via computers or robots with rat-brain cells for CPU, we have already accomplished technological feats which mere years ago were considered complete science fiction.

Isn’t it plausible, then, to consider that one day, not too many decades from now, machines may not only reach human levels of intelligence but ever surpass it?

(Facing the pessimists Arthur C. Clark famously said once that “If a … scientist says that something is possible he is almost certainly right, but if he says that it is impossible he is very probably wrong.”)

Isn’t that the potential, if not actual direction towards which the multiple confluent and accelerating technological developments lead us?

It is this moment – the birth of AI (machine sapiens), which is often referred to as the Technological Singularity.

Ray Kurzweil

So, let us look at the concept of Singularity. For some it is an overblown myth or, at best, science fiction. For others, it is the next step in evolution and the greatest scientific watershed. According to Ray Kurzweil’s definition “It’s a future period during which the pace of technological change will be so rapid, its impact so deep, that human life will be irreversibly transformed. Although neither utopian nor dystopian, this epoch will transform the concepts that we rely on to give meaning to our life’s, from our business models to the cycle of human life, including death itself.”

According to Kutzweil’s argument the Singularity is nothing short of the next step in evolution. (A position often referred to as Transhumanism) For many millions of years biology has been indeed (our) destiny. But if we consider our species to be a cosmological phenomenon, with its unique feature being its intelligence and not its structural make up, then our biological past is indeed highly unlikely to depict the nature of our future. So, Kurzweil and other transhumanists, see biology as nothing more but our past and technology as our future. To illuminate the radical implications of such a claim it is worth quoting 2 whole paragraphs from Ray Kurzweil:

“The Singularity will represent the culmination of the merger of our biological thinking and existence with our technology, resulting in a world that is still human but transcends our biological roots. […] if you wonder what will remain unequivocally human in such a world, it’s simply this quality: ours is the species that inherently seeks to extend its physical and mental reach beyond current limitations.”

“Some observers refer to this merger as creating a new “species.” But the whole idea of a species is a biological concept, and what we are doing is transcending biology. The transformation underlying the Singularity is not just another in a long line of steps in biological evolution. We are upending biological evolution altogether.”

So how does the Singularity relate to the process of arming AI?

Well, most singularitarians believe that the technological Singularity is a probable and even highly likely event, but most of them certainly do not believe that it is inevitable. Thus there are several potential reasons that can either delay or altogether prevent the event itself or any of the potential benefits for homo sapiens. Global war is, of course, on the top of the list, and it can lead into both of the above directions. In the first instance, a sufficiently large-scale non-conventional war could destroy much or all of human capacity to further technological progress. In that case, the Singularity will be at least delayed or, in the case that homo sapience goes extinct, will become altogether impossible. In the latter instance, if at the point of or around the Singularity there is a conflict between homo sapiens and AI (machine sapiens), then, given our complete dependence on the machines, there may be no merging between the two races (humans and machines) and humanity may forever remain trapped in biology. In turn, this may mean either our extinction or becoming nothing more but an inferior i.e. subservient race to the superiority of the ever growing machine intelligence.

It is for reason like those that some scientists believe that Ray Kurzweil is dangerously naive about the Singularity and especially the benevolence of AI with respect to the human race, and argue that the post-Singularity ArtIlects (artificial intellects) will take us not to immortality but, at least to war, if not complete oblivion. In a way this is a debate about the potential for either techno salvation — as foreseen by Ray Kurzweil, or techno holocaust — as predicted by his critics. Whatever the case, the more and the better the machines of the future are trained and armed the more possible it becomes that one day they may have the capability, if not (yet) the intent to destroy the whole of the human race.

The potential for conflict is arguably likely to increase as the singularity approaches and it does not need to be necessarily a war between man and machine, but can also be among humans. Looking at the current global geopolitical realities one may argue that a global non-conventional war is unlikely if not completely impossible. Yet, for the next several decades, the potential of such war may indeed grow with the pace of technology.

First of all, it is very likely that there will be a large and accelerating proliferation of advanced weapons and military, technological and scientific capabilities all throughout the twenty-first century. Thus many more state and non-state actors will be capable of waging or, at least, starting war.

Secondly, as the singularity approaches the breakpoint and becomes a visible possibility, there are likely to be fundamental rifts within humanity as to whether we ought to continue or stop such developments. Thus many people may push for a global neo-luddite rebellion against the machines and all of those that support the Singularity. This may lead to a realignment of the whole global geo-political reality with both overt and covert centers of resistance. For example, one potentiality may be an alliance between radical Muslim, Christian and Judaic fundamentalists.  (It may currently seem impossible but it is people such as the former chief counter-terrorism adviser Richard A. Clarke who raises those as possibilities.)

It was in the rather low-tech mid 19th century that Samuel Butler wrote his Darwin among the Machines and argued that machines will eventually replace man as the next step in evolution. Butler concluded that

“Our opinion is that war to the death should be instantly proclaimed against them. Every machine of every sort should be destroyed by the well-wisher of his species. Let there be no exceptions made, no quarter shown; let us at once go back to the primeval condition of the race. If it be urged that this is impossible under the present condition of human affairs, this at once proves that the mischief is already done, that our servitude has commenced in good earnest, that we have raised a race of beings whom it is beyond our power to destroy, and that we are not only enslaved but are absolutely acquiescent in our bondage.”

Unabomber FBI Sketch

Another well known modern neo-luddite is Ted Kaczynski aka the Unabomber. Kaczynski not only called for resistance to the rise of the machines via his Manifesto (See Industrial Society and its Future) but even started a terrorist bombing campaign to support and popularize his cause. While Samuel Butler’s argument was largely unknown or ignored by the majority of his contemporaries and the Unabomber was called a terrorist psycho, history may take a second look at them both. It may not be impossible that as the Singularity becomes more visible, if not for the whole humanity, at least for the neo-luddites, Butler may come to be seen as a visionary and Kaczynski – as a hero who stood up against the rise of the machines. Thus, if humanity gets divided into transhumanists and neo-luddites, or if the machines rebel against humanity, conflict may be impossible to avoid.

It may be ironic that Karel Čapek, who first used the term robot, ended his play R.U.R. with the demise of humanity and robots taking over the world. The good news, however, is that this possibility is brought about by our own ingenuity and at our own pace. Hence the technology which we create doesn’t have to be nihilistic – similarly to the Terminator; it may be our exterminator or our savior, our end or a new beginning…

This blog does not try to address the issue of arming AI exhaustively or provide solutions or policy recommendations. What it attempts to do is to put forward an argument about the issues, the context and the stakes within which the above process takes place. Thus, it has been successful if after reading it one is at least willing to consider the possibility that the crude and lightly armed robots currently tested in the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan are not simply one of the latest tools in the large US military inventory for what they are today is not what they can turn out to be tomorrow.

Today we are witnessing the dawn of the kill-bots. How high and under what conditions will the robot star rise tomorrow is up for us to consider…

the End (see Part 1; Part 2; Part 3; Part 4)

Related articles by Zemanta

Welcome to Singularity Blog

by

“Will technology replace biology?”

This is the question.

Singularity Blog is a journal of Socrates’ thoughts on news, issues and people related to the Technological Singularity.

Here Socrates will not shy to provide his opinion but will place no claim on its superiority.

Socrates’ goal is to use his blog as a stage for a Singularity Symposium where everyone can join freely in questioning, analyzing, debating and shaping our technological future.

Thus, this blog’s value may be not so much in the answers it provides, but in the questions it raises — the kind that everybody could or should be asking.

In addition, this blog will also:

  • Publish other relevant blog articles by Socrates
  • Bring your attention to relevant news stories and scientific developments
  • Let you know when people like yourself share great content

Welcome friend!

“Will we survive our technology?”

Rise of the Machines