Microsoft Co-Founder Paul Allen Says The Singularity Isn’t Near: Is He Right Or Wrong?
In a recent essay Microsoft Billionaire and Co-Founder Paul Allen argues that the Singularity Isn’t Near. Is he right or wrong?
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Date Started: October 15, 2011 - 7:39 pm
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I liked several points that Paul Allen made. Software in particular. I learned to program in the 1980′s, and would never have guessed that I would still be doing essentially the same thing, the same way, today. Software is the heart of the most complex technology we have, and it hasn’t grown exponentially at all. I’m still writing if-then statements, for loops, worrying about initializing variables and possible divide-by-zero errors. Yeah, C++ uses object-oriented design instead of strict algorithmic programming in Applesoft BASIC, but even that difference is slight, to be honest. C was developed about 1970, 15 years later came C++, and despite more software engineers, more research, more books on things like design classes and UML, we really haven’t advanced the art of software programming. We have fallen flat on the promise of ‘self-programming code’. When you think of the games that could run on 32KB RAM and an 8-bit 1MHz microprocessor on an Apple II, it was quite amazing.
Since then, we’ve made use of vastly better hardware to develop some pretty nifty stuff in 3-d modeling, video rendering and displays, and just a little bit of AI (Watson, self-driving cars, etc.) but still I’d argue that software is improving linearly at best. We definitely hit the complexity wall, with diminishing returns, and need some kind of paradigm shift to really make use of the hardware capabilities.
1. Ok, so I\’ve been reading about some changes to the theories of cosmology. Physicists are starting to propose that rather than our Universe being \”all there is\” and something that emerged from an infinitely dense singularity, it is much easier to explain things in terms of both origin and mathematically if there is a \”Multiverse.\” In essence, that our Universe is a bubble of space and time that was blown into existence from another part of an (likely infinitely large) multiverse. And that the ultimate stabilization (maximum entropy) of our Universe in trillions of years will cause new formations of new Universes. And that each new Universe, so to speak, might have different laws of physics, some of which promote continued existence, and others that collapse upon themselves. It just so happens that our Universe possesses the properties that allow for it to continue existing because some unknown force is causing it to continue expanding (rather than contracting upon itself).
2. So I was reflecting upon this. Imagine that human beings do not suffer some great cataclysm then ends our civilization. Imagine that we manage to succeed in harnessing all the laws of nature within our Universe and at some point in the next century, we manage to merge with machines. And so begins a new epoch of intelligence and human-origin sentience manages to self-improve. An intellectual singularity.
3. With this new power, we are able to very quickly understand the Universe in staggering detail and then use its power for our own purposes. Stars as giant engines that power intergalactic travel as we get to know everything about this huge bubble of space time in which we were born.
4. But what happens if, despite our grandiose efforts, it turns out that we are simply part of this Universe. Our existence is governed by the laws of this Universe and other parts of the multiverse are inaccessible to us. We can only guess at its existence through ever more complicated mathematics and conjecture.
5. So, if our robot descendants realized this – that we are in fact trapped in a box – what decisions would they make? What if there is a maximum amount of knowledge that one could attain? What if all of the struggles of humankind as we know them disappeared? What if we managed to complete science?
6. Even if there was an inconceivably complex intelligence that arose from our technology, would it not be philosophically profound to reach an end point in the quest for knowledge?
7. So I imagined what a human being would do under similar conditions. Imagine being inside a box – the box being a metaphor for our Universe. The box is subjected to certain conditions from outside (other parts of the multiverse), but the outside of the box is inaccessible. Eventually the human being would grow bored and listless. He would then wonder, perhaps, if alternate realities were only accessible through the end of consciousness.
8. Suicide?
9. And if that is our ultimate demise, should we perhaps weigh the usefulness of attempting to achieve immortality via technology?
10.Perhaps we should attempt to preserve the struggles that define us a human beings.
righ… but i hope the cure of aging process is near
It sounds like a pretty run of the mill, although, well written mission statement propagandizing the truth regarding the technological singularity when it comes to their own software. It is called CYA.
Let me preface this lengthy post with some directions. If you just want to see my point/response please scroll down and you’ll see it clearly marked. Also an apology for it’s length. i articulate things as eloquently as possible and honestly believe much of what i say needs to be said. i am no ai scientist, or roboticist, or social engineer, or politician. i just have read a couple of books on these things and i feel that the relevance of my overarching points carries more weight than any specific platitudes or hyperbole i might risk in illustrating it, so please take each specific thing i talk about with a grain of salt.
I argue that we already exist inside of the singularity. we already live in unpredictable, incredibly complex, and belief shattering times. we just take it for granted becaus this reality encompasses our entire lives. we live 3x longer than we’re “supposed” to, information travels at light speed around the globe anywhere any time (virtually), we go into space, to other planets, we see the origins and nature of the universe, even parallel ones, we already have “neural prosthesis”–which some argue makes us stupider (wiki, google, etc.) because it’s altering our brains to operate more on indexing rather than archiving, but i would argue that it enhances everything as more repeated neural connections over time leads to more permanent connections, i.e. growth in intelligence–and of course the internet, and our modern terrabye hard drives compiling archiving and cross referencing everything we would ever care to know. Similarly, I look on the past and our recorded hostory as the first real computers because for the first time we were able to externalize and immortalize and archive and grow our knowledge. We have lasers, neurally integrated prosthetic limbs, even synthetic skin which allows us to detect temperature and pressure, not to mention the ability to alter our dna to grow them back like lizards (right–not standard for all of us, but these things are all happening today!). We’ve got quantum levitation, we already have teleportation (it’s just a matter of energy and computation for more complex things), etc. etc. etc. the list of breakthroughs and even new fields of study is already proliferating at a staggering rate. In fact it happens so quickly that we have become numb to the incredible change and technological breakthroughs that occur daily.
In addition I feel that the 7 billion existing “strong ai” already existing on the planet (people) are vastly underestimated as we are just beginning to understand the veritable infinite potential inside of our minds. There are already ai bots on the internet that we don’t understand, and who knows what other types of “emergent intelligence” in this massive parallel network of humans and computers.
a multitude of ai applications already vastly exceed us in many ways, and by the time we finally crack that last algorithm and are finally able to fully emulate human intelligence we will have to severely gimp (several of) these hyper accellerated capabilities in order to approximate a human. there is pretty much nothing we don’t understand today, or at least have the roadmap for doing so.
the law of accelerating returns has existed since the renaissance. that was the first major step in this direction. it got hyper accelerated in the industrial revolution when machines first began producing material goods at an inconceivable rate. canned foods (and the trains, ships, and planes that delivered them around the world) ushered in the dawn of our exponentially growing population. hence, we are already born of machines (without them there is no way 7 billion humans would have been possible). unfortunately around this time was also the origin of our capitalist overlords, the federal reserve. so nobody really noticed the growing weath (which would continue during the next huge explosion in efficiency and monetary growth–the digital revolution).
The fact is we’re already post-human. nothing about us is natural. look around you. do you hunt and gather for a living? when mankind discovered agriculture it was the birth of a new way of living. it’s what facilitated large populations in concentrated areas which created cities, which created specilization. for the first time in human history individuals could devote their entire lives to one specific craft and exist in an interdependent society where these advanced skills allowed for an increased standard of living for all.
The exponential growth of economy is reaching a point where it is too large to hide anymore. That is why these banks and corporations are under seige now. They don’t own the culminated efforts of humanity. We are all equal. We are all in a precarious state where we’re wondering what we’ll be occupied doing in the near future. People cling to capitalism as if it’s a religion, but it is definitely fallible. Maybe we are so inexorably linked to it because of evolution, as it is a definite a factor in survival of the fittest. That could explain this tendancy to defend it. The fact is… money never even really existed. it is a SYMBOL which is supposed to be representative of material resources gained by (we would hope virtuous) individuals. but the problems is money can’t tell the truth. shitty people prosper, and good people get shit on in this world (often), because the growth has blossomed into a point where it has taken on a life of it’s own and has never been properly decentralized. all there really is (physically, mathematically) is information (intelligence). money originated, and served its purpose in those first cities where those specialists needed to show a barometer of their worth (in terms of contributions from their craft) to society, so that they could acquire all the other means of living that they sacrificed in order to perform their trade (where before as hunter gatherers we all did everything and it was just kill or be killed, every man for himself).
We already exist in a time where humanity needs to find new tasks to occupy our time, because–already–virtually everything we have ever done is taken over by machines (owned by major corporations). that is why there are no jobs, and an unequal distribution of wealth. we point the finger alot at these corporate entities as the bane of human existance, but in reality we would literally not exist without them. we all have high hopes for material gains, but THE MAJOR PROBLEM OF TODAY WHICH EVERYONE SEEMS TO BE NEGLECTING is the ecological impact of 7 billion human lives. how can we blame them for selling all this corrosive shit when we are all still guilty of having bank of america accounts, driving gas guzzling vehicles, drink starbucks every day (caffine polluts the water, you know), take pharmaceuticals from drug companies (which also pollute the water), can’t live without our tv’s, computers, stereos, microwaves, refridgerators, washer/dryers, hot water, electricity, and nuclear weapons. Our water is polluted, and even if it wasn’t the greenhouse gases could melt enough ice to choke the thermohaline circulation of the ocean thus stagnating it and killing all the marine life (which would suck). our air, water, and soil is becoming less and less inhabitable, we’re draining continental aquifers of massive amounts of fresh water (which takes millions of years to replace) thus spreading desertification and exacerbating climatalogical issues further. we’re forcing different genetic patterns in our food to exist in these shitty conditions–degrading it’s quality (and it gets spread into wild crops).
To be honest–when specifically an ai exceeds one human’s intelligence is pretty inconsequential and platitudonous. after all that moment will last for like a year or ten before it exceeds the level of computation occuring in all human brains on the planet. what worries me the most is surviving this trashed polluted and dying rock flying through space to even get to that point. if we don’t get our climatological shit together in the next 5-10 years things will get pretty dark, and we won’t be around to accomplish these feats, or even ask if they’re possible.
so without further adieu, to stay on topic; my point is this:
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T H E S I N G U L A R I T Y I S H E R E A L R E A D Y
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(and interestingly enough, we could have already been 2000 years into it if the romans hadn’t screwed it up. they had pipes, screws, running water, mills, better art than today (and other advanced aspects of culture), even hydrolically powered computers (made of wooden wheels/pegs and ropes, like a calculator), and even robots (da vinci’s golden lion–hydrolics as well), all of the necessary constituents of an industrial revolution).
If we survive the next decade or two. I see an incredible future in store where humans no longer suffer physiologically over menial labor. I think what google is doing with gamification is the wave of the future. I think our jobs will become much like the videogame “foldit” (a protein folding simulation which incorporates human intelligence and delegates tasks in such a way that you think you’re playing a game, in 3 weeks it did more computation than years of supercomputers. everyone in ai research is terrified of creating a “psychopathic ai.” I would contend that 7 billion of them already exist, and if we don’t occupy them with something productive we’re all screwed. I see gamification taking over and individuals playing all day long to create a superior microchip, or videogame, or augmented reality controlling robots picking up trash in the environment, working on a peacemeal basis, getting paid for it, having fun, drastically increasing efficiency, creating (unfathomably) vastly superior product, and solving the world’s problems all at the same time.
As Marshall McLuhan (a famous scholar and media critic and critic of academia), “the oracle of the electronic age” said decades ago (prophetically) … something like … “the future is dominated by the right hemisphere of the brain” (creativity, spirituality, etc.), and all forms of the left brain ways of the past; politics, analytical reasoning, language, math, etc. would begin to appear “foolish” …and obsolete. and look at where we are today. politicians making idiots of themselves, masses of emo hipsters wanting nothing but to create art, retardedly convoluted beuracratized paperwork for any simple task in society. I have heard other scientists and sholars talk about this rise of creativity as well. i read an article right after steve jobs died that the i-pad and other devices like this fill the same void in the brain that religion once took (spirituality–right brain). I find it funny that all my friends’ families and myself now in fact have computers (which we practically worship), and (apparently consequentially) nobody goes to church anymore.
We now exist in the most uncomfortable times in human history. as hunter gatherers everything was natural, instinctual. in the next couple decades (should we survive this self inflicted ecological apocalypse) we will return to this more intuitive and free state of being but in a more ideal state. for now we exist in confusion, dissollusion, alterior motives, greed, violence, lies, and suppression. how’s this for a job: find a way for 7 billion intelligent beings to co-exist without destroying anything.
To conclude, I am not in the least concerned or doubtful about our infinite human potential. I am however EXTREMELY concerned with our decaying ecosystem and I think you all need to focus on that more (readers of this post, and creators of this website). as dna (with it’s ameno acids and proteins), and intelligence (with it’s feedback mechanisms between archives of information in perfect balance) teach us–there really is only one way (virtually, when you consider all the things that could be different/wrong) components can come together synergistically to manifest the said functional system (of rediculous complexity and perfect interdependent balance). This is the way in which I view the future. Of course when our possibilities are expanding exponentially any infinite variety of factors could spell our doom. there is only one way we will all coexist in the future without our corporate overlords wiping out the rest of humanity in terror (as we are in fact the ones destroying the ecosystem). that is–peace and understanding–that’s what will have to prevail for us to achieve anything. and also we have to deal with things on a per need basis, thinking more about which problems need to be addressed rather than what we can enhance, so that by the time all the problems are dealt with we find ourselves in a superior situation and nobody needs to be proselytized or live in fear of radical change.
in conclusion, paul allen is dead wrong. we’re already here. oh and p.s. (forgot this part) we’ve wiped out half the trees on the planet… can’t do that again.
Very interesting post. Thanks for that.
There’s also the law of diminishing returns. Nature and human experience is full of things that grow exponentially for awhile, then slow down exponentially. Our population growth is looking to follow that example.
As far as big changes go, I would say it happened most with my great-great grandfather (1843-1923). When he was born, people only traveled as far as they could walk, or a horse could go (not that much different with taking time for feed). Then came the railroad, telegraph & instant news from far away, germ theory, automobiles, tractors, movies and radio, the aeroplane. All of these things were unprecedented, and game-changers in their own right. I haven’t seen change like that in my life. By the time I was born, we already had antibiotics, been to the moon, had rudimentary but fully functional computers, color TV, and passenger cars could easily do 80 mph.
I don’t agree with your right-brain/left-brain description either, our politics is making us look like fools currently. By your point, we should be looking back at politics in the 80′s, 70′s, etc. and saying how simple-minded they were back then to make those mistakes.
Hunter-gatherers used logic every bit as much as we did. They learned the patterns of the animals, looked for good places to set traps or ambush prey. There were clan politics. The older I get, the more I realize that everything we think is new is actually not new at all. Some of it is just on a different scale.
I agree wholeheartedly; on all of your points. I was actually making the point you concluded from my post which is that the current state of our politics is indeed absolutely absurd. I am familiar with the frustration of software programmers from my reading on a.i. and the singularity. Kurzweil had a chapter on this in his book, and I have also read about software stagnation in another book “Beyond A.I.: Creating The Consciousness of the Machine,” by J. Storrs Hall (who works in the field of molecular nanotechnology). yet hardware is changing at an exponential rate, so those linear progressions in software mean more and more every day–in more machines/faster machines/running more calculations. There have even been arguments about hardware limitations, “an end to moore’s law” when we hit the molecular limit of computing. but even then we have working theoretical designs for new types of computers like 3d moleculor computing, or computing with solutions of dna, or quantum computing with light (and about 10 other theoretical ways quantum computing can be achieved). hardware, software aside… the math is exploding exponentially and it shows in what we’re capable of at the forefront. I also agree that the more I age the move I view people from antiquity as the same as us. Kurzweil set my passion for history ablaze when he described ancient stone tablets and the first methods of externalizing/archiving/cross-referencing our information as the first real computation going on (i.e. recorded history; the origin of our accumulation of human knoledge).
With a BFA in animation, the progress is abundantly clear to me. I was alive in the 80s too and remember how incredible 8-bit gaming was, and have been enthralled with observing the progress of digital visuals ever since. From pixellated sprites, to the first low-res/low-poly 3d geometry, to the more complex lighting simulations etc. entering the real time rendering scene today. And this exponentially growing computational capacity applies to much much more than just the entertainment and animation industry. atmospheric simulations, reverse engineering the specific modules of the brain (in a variety of different and innovative ways which i am sure will soon change. i.e. neural networks) I also agree with your point that we hit some stagnation shortly after industrialization as tyler cowen so eloquently lectured on at this years singularity 2011 summit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ed6gNSZRawY&list=UU1zny_jKmgnEbQitfPgAlxg&index=13&feature=plcp
the other videos are much more interesting, inspiring, and opimistic though (to me). and it appears they’re sorted in terms of interest or hits now.
http://www.youtube.com/user/SingularitySummits
In fact in Peter Thiel’s video he urges us to advance into the future with increased levels of both optimism and pessimism lol.
sorry but i feel compelled to defend my points further. if you don’t see completely new groundbreaking innovations each day, then you’re just not looking, and i am surprised you’re even on this site. i will list them again. quantum levitation, teleportation, 3d molecular computing, about 10+ physically possible means of quantum supercomputing, quantum encryption, genetic engineering, neural networks, brain/computer interfaces. all of these things and more are happening right now. if you don’t understand them google it or search on here. if you refuse to understand, it’s called denial. possibly stemming from your pessimism regarding weather or not we will personally live to see the day. well, be careful what you wish for. ideas alter reality. it matters what we think is possible. look around–everything you see started in someone’s mind. to pass all of this off as the same technology we’ve had all along is perposterous. it’s a completely new ball game. as for the right brain activity on the rise i listed two sources–not my own ideas. and you practically cut and pasted the conclusion i worked to arrive at about politics being foolish, which i obviously agree with.
\”Every structure has been precisely shaped by millions of years of evolution to do a particular thing, whatever it might be. It is not like a computer, with billions of identical transistors in regular memory arrays that are controlled by a CPU with a few different elements. In the brain every individual structure and neural circuit has been individually refined by evolution and environmental factors\”
No, that is not correct and is one reason why they are actually overestimating the complexity of the task.
Evolution has NOT sculpted every synapse – far from it.
Evolution has scupted general rules for making brains and general rules how patterns of cells should get created and general rules for how connections should get sculpted.
All of these general rules are in the genome.
It isn\’t exabit\’s long – it fit\’s on a couple of CDs.
Take the cerebellum – it basically is a whole set of identical parts with a very strict pattern, the only really varying thing is synaptic weights – which you DON\’T specify yourself – you let the thing learn them!!!
The term “singularity” is so vague that anyone can see it differently. If one uses this term as Wikipedia: “emergence of greater-than-human intelligence” then this indeed might be very near. But it might not transform the whole world as Ray Kurzweil expects.
First superintelligences will most likely be very expensive both to produce and to manage. First instances will probably be produced for army, and because of dangers involved, their civilian usage might be strictly controlled or prohibited at all. This would lead to similar situation as it is with nuclear power today. Even though it is in place for more than 60 year, it is far from being widely spread.
In time, number of superintelligences will be growing and their capability improved. But their usage might remain very restricted. We might see them causing huge boost in military technologies, theoretical sciences and medicine, but nothing else.
It seems inevitable to me that scientists will keep getting better and better at scanning brains and creating brain simulations. And then with computers far surpassing the “FLOPS” (calculations per second) that the human brain is estimated to run on by the late 2020s, compounded by all of the other advances they are bound to make, 2045 seems possible for computers to surpass humans in intelligence as Kurzweil predicted. I can see them simulating an AI that is like a human infant by the year 2030 and teaching it like a human would learn while building onto its brain size, speeding up learning, and duplicating it billions of times. By 2045, I can see strong AI all over the place. Trying to visualize exponential growth seems to throw off even the best of them. Or maybe we will all die of some bio-engineered virus in the 2020s