Scott Aaronson: The singularity is far "Where Kurzweil sees a steady march of progress interrupted by occasional hiccups, I see a few fragile and improbable victories against a backdrop of malice, stupidity, and greed.."
The most common flaw in many anti-Singularity arguments, this one included, is that they are misinterpreting the definition of the The Singularity. If we take Kurzweil's definition then:
The Singularity is the point in time when the total processing power of all computers vastly outweigh the total processing power of all humans.
According to Kurzweil, that's expected to happen around 2045. And that's based on Moore's law. Now, according to this definition, there is no mention of mind uploads, living forever, or even Strong AI. And although these things will probably happen at some point if technological progress continues, they are not the definition of the Singularity and they'll probably happen at some point afterward.
akkartik1 votesSunday, September 14, 2008 at 1:52 AM
The assumption there is that the neuron is the unit of computation. If you consider instead microtubules in neuron cytoskeletons as roger penrose has suggested in Shadows of the Mind, the processing power in a brain can be many orders of magnitude higher.
Even with argument, if the processing power of the brain turns out to be, say, a million times more than currently estimated, then that would push the Singularity by about 20 years,assuming processing power per $1 doubles every year, or 40 years of the processing power per $1 doubles every two years.
rmijic1 votesSaturday, September 13, 2008 at 2:06 AM
Wal: I'd say that your definition of the snlingularity is a poor one, because we may reach the point where total silicon based computing power exceeds the computing power of the human brain without anything particularly interesting happening.
I would stick with the yudkowsky definition: the singularity is smarter than human intelligence.
The Singularity is the point in time when the total processing power of all computers vastly outweigh the total processing power of all humans.
According to Kurzweil, that's expected to happen around 2045. And that's based on Moore's law. Now, according to this definition, there is no mention of mind uploads, living forever, or even Strong AI. And although these things will probably happen at some point if technological progress continues, they are not the definition of the Singularity and they'll probably happen at some point afterward.