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The Coming Technological Singularity:
How to Survive in the Post-Human Era
Vernor Vinge
Department of Mathematical Sciences
San Diego State University
(c) 1993 by Vernor Vinge
(This article may be reproduced for noncommercial
purposes if it is copied in its entirety,
including this notice.)
The original version of this article
was presented at the VISION-21 Symposium
sponsored by NASA Lewis Research Center and
the Ohio Aerospace Institute, March 30-31, 1993.
A slightly changed version appeared in the
Winter 1993 issue of _Whole Earth Review_.
Abstract
Within thirty years, we will have the technological
means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after,
the human era will be ended.
Is such progress avoidable? If not to be avoided, can
events be guided so that we may survive? These questions
are investigated. Some possible answers (and some further
dangers) are presented.
_What is The Singularity?_
The acceleration of technological progress has been the central
feature of this century. I argue in this paper that we are on the edge
of change comparable to the rise of human life on Earth. The precise
cause of this change is the imminent creation by technology of
entities with greater than human intelligence. There are several means
by which science may achieve this breakthrough (and this is another
reason for having confidence that the event will occur):
o There may be developed computers that are "awake" and
superhumanly intelligent. (To date, there has been much
controversy as to whether we can create human equivalence in a
machine. But if the answer is "yes, we can", then there is little
doubt that beings more intelligent can be constructed shortly
thereafter.)
o Large computer networks (and their associated users) may "wake
up" as a superhumanly intelligent entity.
o Computer/human interfaces may become so intimate that users
may reasonably be considered superhumanly intelligent.
o Biological science may provide means to improve natural
human intellect.
The first three possibilities depend in large part on
improvements in computer hardware. Progress in computer hardware has
followed an amazingly steady curve in the last few decades [17]. Based
largely on this trend, I believe that the creation of greater than
human intelligence will occur during the next thirty years. (Charles
Platt [20] has pointed out that AI enthusiasts have been making claims
like this for the last thirty years. Just so I'm not guilty of a
relative-time ambiguity, let me more specific: I'll be surprised if
this event occurs before 2005 or after 2030.)
What are the consequences of this event? When greater-than-human
intelligence drives progress, that progress will be much more rapid.
In fact, there seems no reason why progress itself would not involve
the creation of still more intelligent entities -- on a still-shorter
time scale. The best analogy that I see is with the evolutionary past:
Animals can adapt to problems and make inventions, but often no faster
than natural selection can do its work -- the world acts as its own
simulator in the case of natural selection. We humans have the ability
to internalize the world and conduct "what if's" in our heads; we can
solve many problems thousands of times faster than natural selection.
Now, by creating the means to execute those simulations at much higher
speeds, we are entering a regime as radically different from our human
past as we humans are from the lower animals.
From the human point of view this change will be a throwing away
of all the previous rules, perhaps in the blink of an eye, an
exponential runaway beyond any hope of control. Developments that
before were thought might only happen in "a million years" (if ever)
will likely happen in the next century. (In [5], Greg Bear paints a
picture of the major changes happening in a matter of hours.)
I think it's fair to call this event a singularity ("the
Singularity" for the purposes of this paper). It is a point where our
old models must be discarded and a new reality rules. As we move
closer to this point, it will loom vaster and vaster over human
affairs till the notion becomes a commonplace. Yet when it finally
happens it may still be a great surprise and a greater unknown. In
the 1950s there were very few who saw it: Stan Ulam [28] paraphrased
John von Neumann as saying:
One conversation centered on the ever accelerating progress of
technology and changes in the mode of human life, which gives the
appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the
history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them,
could not continue.
Von Neumann even uses the term singularity, though it appears he
is thinking of normal progress, not the creation of superhuman
intellect. (For me, the superhumanity is the essence of the
Singularity. Without that we would get a glut of technical riches,
never properly absorbed (see [25]).)
In the 1960s there was recognition of some of the implications of
superhuman intelligence. I. J. Good wrote [11]:
Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine
that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any
any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of
these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could
design even better machines; there would then unquestionably
be an "intelligence explosion," and the intelligence of man
would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent
machine is the _last_ invention that man need ever make,
provided that the machine is docile enough to tell us how to
keep it under control.
...
It is more probable than not that, within the twentieth century,
an ultraintelligent machine will be built and that it will be
the last invention that man need make.
Click here for more http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/faculty/vi...ngularity.html
The Coming Technological Singularity:
How to Survive in the Post-Human Era
Vernor Vinge
Department of Mathematical Sciences
San Diego State University
(c) 1993 by Vernor Vinge
(This article may be reproduced for noncommercial
purposes if it is copied in its entirety,
including this notice.)
The original version of this article
was presented at the VISION-21 Symposium
sponsored by NASA Lewis Research Center and
the Ohio Aerospace Institute, March 30-31, 1993.
A slightly changed version appeared in the
Winter 1993 issue of _Whole Earth Review_.
Abstract
Within thirty years, we will have the technological
means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after,
the human era will be ended.
Is such progress avoidable? If not to be avoided, can
events be guided so that we may survive? These questions
are investigated. Some possible answers (and some further
dangers) are presented.
_What is The Singularity?_
The acceleration of technological progress has been the central
feature of this century. I argue in this paper that we are on the edge
of change comparable to the rise of human life on Earth. The precise
cause of this change is the imminent creation by technology of
entities with greater than human intelligence. There are several means
by which science may achieve this breakthrough (and this is another
reason for having confidence that the event will occur):
o There may be developed computers that are "awake" and
superhumanly intelligent. (To date, there has been much
controversy as to whether we can create human equivalence in a
machine. But if the answer is "yes, we can", then there is little
doubt that beings more intelligent can be constructed shortly
thereafter.)
o Large computer networks (and their associated users) may "wake
up" as a superhumanly intelligent entity.
o Computer/human interfaces may become so intimate that users
may reasonably be considered superhumanly intelligent.
o Biological science may provide means to improve natural
human intellect.
The first three possibilities depend in large part on
improvements in computer hardware. Progress in computer hardware has
followed an amazingly steady curve in the last few decades [17]. Based
largely on this trend, I believe that the creation of greater than
human intelligence will occur during the next thirty years. (Charles
Platt [20] has pointed out that AI enthusiasts have been making claims
like this for the last thirty years. Just so I'm not guilty of a
relative-time ambiguity, let me more specific: I'll be surprised if
this event occurs before 2005 or after 2030.)
What are the consequences of this event? When greater-than-human
intelligence drives progress, that progress will be much more rapid.
In fact, there seems no reason why progress itself would not involve
the creation of still more intelligent entities -- on a still-shorter
time scale. The best analogy that I see is with the evolutionary past:
Animals can adapt to problems and make inventions, but often no faster
than natural selection can do its work -- the world acts as its own
simulator in the case of natural selection. We humans have the ability
to internalize the world and conduct "what if's" in our heads; we can
solve many problems thousands of times faster than natural selection.
Now, by creating the means to execute those simulations at much higher
speeds, we are entering a regime as radically different from our human
past as we humans are from the lower animals.
From the human point of view this change will be a throwing away
of all the previous rules, perhaps in the blink of an eye, an
exponential runaway beyond any hope of control. Developments that
before were thought might only happen in "a million years" (if ever)
will likely happen in the next century. (In [5], Greg Bear paints a
picture of the major changes happening in a matter of hours.)
I think it's fair to call this event a singularity ("the
Singularity" for the purposes of this paper). It is a point where our
old models must be discarded and a new reality rules. As we move
closer to this point, it will loom vaster and vaster over human
affairs till the notion becomes a commonplace. Yet when it finally
happens it may still be a great surprise and a greater unknown. In
the 1950s there were very few who saw it: Stan Ulam [28] paraphrased
John von Neumann as saying:
One conversation centered on the ever accelerating progress of
technology and changes in the mode of human life, which gives the
appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the
history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them,
could not continue.
Von Neumann even uses the term singularity, though it appears he
is thinking of normal progress, not the creation of superhuman
intellect. (For me, the superhumanity is the essence of the
Singularity. Without that we would get a glut of technical riches,
never properly absorbed (see [25]).)
In the 1960s there was recognition of some of the implications of
superhuman intelligence. I. J. Good wrote [11]:
Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine
that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any
any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of
these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could
design even better machines; there would then unquestionably
be an "intelligence explosion," and the intelligence of man
would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent
machine is the _last_ invention that man need ever make,
provided that the machine is docile enough to tell us how to
keep it under control.
...
It is more probable than not that, within the twentieth century,
an ultraintelligent machine will be built and that it will be
the last invention that man need make.
Click here for more http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/faculty/vi...ngularity.html
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