There is someone shouting a message. "The Singularity is Nearer" (2024). he being - an old [Strong] AI proponent and technology futurist called Ray Kurzwell and he is shouting louder than ever. Seeing as the book was only available in hardback I decided Audible was the best way to get my hands on it and also head round it. I was intrigued that this is a follow on book from his (2005) The Singularity is Near, so at the same time I picked it up cheap in a paperback format (see below, the new - a message of hope, ambition in the technology convergence of AI and perhaps a naïve sense "That it will all right on the night" - something that Geoff Hinton would totally disagree with):
The old (The Singularity is Near) is a very chunky book too - so reading it in 2025 to see how close he was to getting predictions right in 2025 will be interesting (see below - shiny black and with clichéd graphics, but packed with information and speculations):
You will only appreciate it's size/thickness when you see it end on (see below, one thing a book gives that Audible cannot, is lovely diagrams - so sigh, sometimes you need both, well that's my excuse):
Part II of my study is to be time travelling back and forth to 2005 and 2025. Watch this space! I suspect a but of confusion and wry humour .. be careful what you wish for.
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2 comments:
I read the Singularity book more than 10 years ago, as preparation for a university-wide talk about whether machines could ever out-think humans. As a Computer scientist, my answer (and discussion point) was "yes", but many of my colleagues in the humanities didn't agree, objecting with the same arguments that were also used during the decades before.
Anyway, the topic struck a chord, because I was invited to many places (in Belgium) to give my view on the "future of thinking machines" ;-)
That is fascinating Phil - my feeling, and I too am a Computer Scientist by first training, is that we either ask or mean the wrong thing when we say "intelligence". It seems a fluid term and society falls into the trap of only calling a skill intelligent when only a few people know how do to it, when it becomes common - then it is not intelligent (that don't impress me). I have seen very intelligent people use a clever sophisticated tools badly where a simple one would have worked better. They feel good - but produce bad results, but call it clever science. As for Musk being intent on hooking up Gen AIs to robots .. without the benefit of evolution killing off the Darwin award losers! Interesting times lay ahead ..
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