2040s: The Singularity

Brian Buntz

January 28, 2016

1 Min Read
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By 2045, Kurzweil makes one of his boldest (and possibly most harrowing) predictions, known as The Singularity. It essentially asserts that nonbiological intelligence will surge past human intelligence at a rate so fast that unenhanced human intelligence will be unable to follow it. That point, known as the Singularity, will mark the moment when artificial general intelligence will be capable of recursive self-improvement -- meaning it can progressively redesign itself to become autonomously more powerful and intelligent.

In this sense, the term singularity is comparable to the same term used in the physics community. Physicists say that the center of a black hole contains a region of space where the density of matter becomes infinite, and the concepts of space and time cease to have any meaning -- this space is known as singularity.

Similarly, Kurzweil suggests that by 2045 we will have reached Technological Singularity, where the autonomous, self-improvement nature of AI technologies eventually yields an intelligence that surpasses all current human control or understanding. Because these capabilities extend beyond human comprehension, this point of singularity marks when future events could become not only unpredictable, but possibly incomprehensible.

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