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Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Singularity Watch, where fiction becomes fact
Calling all SF fans, futurists, transhumanists, and techno-utopians!
John Tierney of the NYTimes has a column about The Singularity, that point in the future when machine intelligence will reach or exceed human intelligence. He points to a special issue of the IEEE Spectrum devoted to the singularity, with articles by various folks, including Vernor Vinge, and a guide to thinking machines in pop culture. Tierney’s piece quotes Ray Kurzweil’s reply to the skeptics.
Comments
Tierney plus The Singularity, OMFG.
Thanks for posting this Bill. I’ve been thinking about the SF genre as a whole and the singularity genre in particularly for some time now (Your own Adam Robert’s excellent history of SF has been quite useful for context)
The Singularity genre is a sort of culmination-or even an end-of the SF genre. Whether you are techno utopian or not, it is difficult to write realistic SF stories in which a person is a fleshy, un-augmented individual in the far future. Stories like Isaac Asimov’s “The Last Question”, explored the ideas of the Singularity way back in 1956 but the posthuman idea only lasted for about eleven pages. People need humans in their SF.
Even Battlestar Galactica sets up a situation of man versus machines as if the two would develop separately and not intermingle. The reason why the singularity genre fails because the technological singularity is utopian only to a small segment of SF readers. Whereas to the core base of potential readers, and the general public, the idea of a singularity is dystopian. On person’s posthuman “rapture for nerds” is another person’s posthuman holocaust. The idea of having all of ones parts slowly replaced, like Theseus’s ship, is not appealing. People don’t want to see the Blue tooth receiver in their ear and the Google on their Blackberry are a sort of de facto merging with machines. But I think it is. The marriage just has not been made official yet.
People don’t want to read books about the Singularity because they can’t get past the posthuman “yuck factor” People are not interested in the real future. They want the past back again but with the bad parts taken out. They want “Leave it to Beaver” with 70 inch Plasma TVs and universal health care.
In Cory Doctorow’s “True Names,” he envisions “galactic wars between vast, post-Singularity intelligences that are competing to corner the universe’s supply of computation before the heat-death of the universe.” Not exactly something that people can relate to. It is very difficult to imagine the characters he is talking about because they are computational consciousness. It is easier to imagine Captain Kirk, an unmodified human being. The hard SF or singularity SF writers would make Kirk an immortal uploaded mind in the ship itself and the ship would be the size of a cigar. As mere humans, it is difficult to relate to Singluarity SF.
I haven’t been reading much SF recently, Chris, though various combinations of human and machine are common enough in some of the anime I’ve been watching the last few years (e.g. Ghost in the Shell). In that context, thinking machines and cyborgs are just fantastic creatures.
As for whether or not computers really will become intelligent, I tend to be skeptical. A professor of mine once suggested that, if and when someone actually succeeds in uploading (or is it downloading?) their mind to a computer, the first thing that computer will say is: “Ha, ha, I’m immortal and you’re not.”
It is interesting that you mention the differences between Japan and the US with regard to their respective attitudes toward robotics. Beside some of Miyazaki’s work (Spirited Away) and “Akira” and the old Robotech show, I’ve not seen much anime. “Ghost in the Shell” has a long wait (apparently in great demand) on my Blockbuster queue.
A while back, you mentioned Fredrick Schodt’ “Inside the Robot Kingdom: Japan, Mechatronics and the Coming Robotopia” which documents the quasi religious fervor in Japan for robots. I read it in parts and it was really interesting and would be a great book to revise since it was written in 1987.
Regarding uploading or downloading (a matter of perspective-I guess) consciousness to another substrate, I am skeptical too but I enjoy thinking about it. I wouldn’t assign a zero probability to that idea.
I’m sure you know about the work of N. Katherine Hayles and Donna Haraway which is instructive because they incorporate a great deal of posthuman SF into their work. Hans Moravec’s work “Mind Children” is a bit more on the techno uptopian side but also interesting to read because he is a pioneer in the field.
Regarding the idea of what AI would say at the point of consciousness, I’m not sure it would mock their human creators for their mortality. Who know’s what would happen? I heard someone propose the first thing they would do is what any conscious intelligence does when it comes into the light of the world, scream in terror.
FWIW, there’s a character in Innocence (aka Ghost in the Shell 2) modeled on Haraway.
My professor’s point was not about just any AI consciousness, but one that results from the downloading of a human mind from someone who did it in an effort to achieve immortality.
I read Fantastic Voyage, The Age of Spiritual Machines and The Singularity is Near, and they changed my life. I even found some of his lectures on Itunes and I find myself impatiently awaiting his next book.
Recently read another incredible book that I can’t recommend highly enough, especially to all of you who also love Ray Kurzweil’s work. The book is “"My Stroke of Insight"” by Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor. I had heard Dr Taylor’s talk on the TED dot com site and I have to say, it changed my world. It’s spreading virally all over the internet and the book is now a NYTimes Bestseller, so I’m not the only one, but it is the most amazing talk, and the most impactful book I’ve read in years. (Dr T also was named to Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People and Oprah had her on her Soul Series last month and I hear they’re making a movie about her story so you may already have heard of her)
If you haven’t heard Dr Taylor’s TEDTalk, that’s an absolute must. The book is more and deeper and better, but start with the video (it’s 18 minutes). Basically, her story is that she was a 37 yr old Harvard brain scientist who had a massive stroke in the left hemisphere of her brain. Because of her knowledge of how the brain works, and thanks to her amazingly loving and kind mother, she eventually fully recovered (and that part of the book detailing how she did it is inspirational).
There’s a lot of learning and magic in the book, but the reason I so highly recommend My Stroke of Insight to this discussion, is because we have powerfully intelligent left brains that are rational, logical, sequential and grounded in detail and time, and then we have our kinesthetic right brains, where we experience intuition and peace and euphoria. Now that Kurzweil has got us taking all those vitamins and living our best “"Fantastic Voyage"” , the absolute necessity is that we read My Stroke of Insight and learn from Dr Taylor how to achieve balance between our right and left brains. Enjoy!
Kathleen,
Thank you for posting information about Kurzweil and Jill Bolte Taylor. I was not aware of Taylor and will download her TED Talk (which somehow dropped of my iTunes queue)and enjoy it during my weekend chores.
I like Kurtzweil. He’s like a Heinlein character. There is also a “The Singularity is Near” movie coming out. I wish it were just interviews. Having actors raises the cheese quotient to dangerous levels.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1049412/
Kurtzweil hits a chord with some because it is nerd religion. He takes the God-shaped-hole and fills it with nanotech. But again, I think there is too much of a “yuck factor” It’s too materialist for Oprah’s culture. Visions of posthumanity are an inefficacious salve.
An aside: I’ve just finished a novel about a Kurzweil type character. He takes 100’s of pills a day and so forth and has Bill Joy-like fascination and fears about accelerating technological growth. “Fresh Kills” is the title of the book and it takes place on Staten Island where I live. The main character, Mike Corona, also writes SF and his flash fiction stories are peppered throughout the novel.
If anyone that hangs around here at The Valve is interested in SF and these sorts of issues, send me an e-mail and I will send you and electonic version of my draft. Send to: . Even to make fun of it, feel free!
Chris,
I do not agree that Kurzweil’s ideas or that of a “nerd religion”. Although his theories are hard to fully grasp and agree to, I would not deem them as incorrect nor childish. His credentials are impressive to say the least, and he resides on some of the most important technology boards in the world (private and public).
On another note, thanks Kathleen for the information about “My Stroke of Insight”. The obstacles associated with recovering from a stroke are enormous. This looks like a great read!
--
Mike R.
San Francisco bankruptcy lawyer