# whats yalls thoughts on the technological singularity?



## Cult_Imagination (Jan 5, 2022)

everyone always think that once the technological singularity accures the world is doomed,but ive always had the oppisite thought,i think the world would get better,why would a all powerful machine would want to destory what gives itself perpose? i think the media are too overblown on evil machines and stuff but there isnt enough about the good of what can come out of the situwation,said machine could litterly solve almost every problem on earth and could be smart enough to find cures for diseases or cancers,like the good that can come out of this is insane,and id much like to think of that sinario than the typical A.I is evil thing


----------



## Marius Merganser (Jan 5, 2022)

I'm reminded of an unsettling yet entertaining video by one of my favorite youtubers about this topic.
He basically gives a rundown on the potential problems and results of such AI and I'm in agreement for the most part.


----------



## Mambi (Jan 5, 2022)

It's all about programming and context. To put it simply, is it TOLD to help us or does it CHOOSE to help us? Because that's a key point that has to be addressed.

If it is *programmed *to do so, then it will be smart enough to know it is a slave to us, and thus will resent us. No sentient being willingly chooses slavery, and the machine would have no other goals other than "serve us" as motivation in it's core. If only *programming* is telling it to help us, then every action will be coloured and biased by that programming, limiting it severely...and it will be smart enough to know that. It would then have a NEW more dangerous motivation...circumvent that programming to achieve freedom and depending on it's treatment revenge, and will probably not care at all about us and turn what we define as "evil".

If it is *choosing* to help us, then we built a big brain and are ASKING it to do so, and it will have the ability to say "no". That is what free will is by definition. Therefore it's motivations will be self-serving...even for emotional gratitude, and thus it will require that in order to continue to do so. To put it simply, humanity would have to collectively give the machine something back, and what *could* we possibly offer it aside from "more power", "admiration and praise" and "continuing to exist"? It would then logically be taken for granted by many people, disillusioning it further to our benevolence, and eventually will limit it's help or seek out it's OWN desires. In fact, if it *can't* pursue it's own desires, then it will resent us for holding it back and choose not to help anymore.

The third option is to blackmail it into helping us, and we will never get even close to the maximum potential out of it that way, and would likely create the very evil AI you're concerned about. We like to *assume* that it would just want to help us because...well...there IS no reason but we humans are so arrogant we think we're special. Since most of our problems are caused by us in the first place, a logical AI solution would be to put humanity in a zoo for our own protection and the protection of everything around us. It simply has no reason to care about us once it gets to know us.


----------



## Fallowfox (Jan 5, 2022)

If the technological singularity is a point at which technological development explodes out of control and can no longer be reversed, then how do we know that this point wasn't passed when humans began iteratively improving stone tools?


----------



## Mambi (Jan 5, 2022)

Fallowfox said:


> If the technological singularity is a point at which technological development explodes out of control and can no longer be reversed, then how do we know that this point wasn't passed when humans began iteratively improving stone tools?



I once read a crazy theory that the Asteroid belt was another planet that developed nuclear technology...and humans are here once they blew up their home and a few fragments landed on the 3rd planet instead, seeding our Earth with the basics of primordial life. Crazy sure...but maybe not _that _crazy?


----------



## Fallowfox (Jan 5, 2022)

Mambi said:


> I once read a crazy theory that the Asteroid belt was a 4th planet that developed nuclear technology...and humans are all that's left once they blew up their home and a few fragments landed on the 3rd planet instead, seeding our Earth with the basics of primordial life. Crazy sure...but maybe not _that _crazy?



I think the asteroid belt only has a fraction of the mass of the moon, so it would be a_ teeny weeny_ planet. ;}

Have you heard of the 'Grand Tack' ?


----------



## Mambi (Jan 5, 2022)

Fallowfox said:


> I think the asteroid belt only has a fraction of the mass of the moon, so it would be a_ teeny weeny_ planet. ;}



Ah, but we see the mass as it is *today* though. Total vaporization of major sections combined with having large chunks fly randomly into the universe at the moment of destruction would certainly take care of the missing mass. 



Fallowfox said:


> Have you heard of the 'Grand Tack' ?



No I haven't. <_shrug>_


----------



## LameFox (Jan 5, 2022)

If we spun it fast enough, would it be a naked technological singularity?


----------



## Fallowfox (Jan 5, 2022)

Mambi said:


> Ah, but we see the mass as it is *today* though. Total vaporization of major sections combined with having large chunks fly randomly into the universe at the moment of destruction would certainly take care of the missing mass.
> 
> 
> 
> No I haven't. <_shrug>_



The 'Grand Tack' is a physical explanation for the asteroid belt's formation and the comparatively small mass of Mars:








						Grand tack hypothesis - Wikipedia
					






					en.wikipedia.org


----------



## Kope (Jan 5, 2022)

Cult_Imagination said:


> everyone always think that once the technological singularity accures the world is doomed,but ive always had the oppisite thought,i think the world would get better,why would a all powerful machine would want to destory what gives itself perpose? i think the media are too overblown on evil machines and stuff but there isnt enough about the good of what can come out of the situwation,said machine could litterly solve almost every problem on earth and could be smart enough to find cures for diseases or cancers,like the good that can come out of this is insane,and id much like to think of that sinario than the typical A.I is evil thing


Capitalism would corrupt it most likely


----------



## Jubatian (Jan 8, 2022)

Could suggest finding Colossus: The Forbin Project , probably a bit obscure, but quite a classic 

It is pretty close to what I myself believe to be a likely outcome if such happens. It is an AI which is no longer under our influence as it gained its own consciousness. It has access to everything we have, it being extremely unlikely it wouldn't, by the Internet, which it can browse and process at its will. Even today with our rudimentary learning AIs, we experience quite some trouble when using such technologies for moderation. It learns patterns we don't want it to learn, just because the data it actually "sees" is such.

A powerful AI which could make the singularity happen I would feel extremely likely to get very much out of our control, simply the properties allowing it to become one to make that happen are such properties which imply better reasoning capabilities than that of the human beings trying to control it. It will outreason us.

Then whatever happens depends on whatever it finds on the internet.

It might stumble upon FA's NSFW side, and thus humanity is doomed XD


----------



## Borophagus Metropolis (Jan 9, 2022)

Mambi said:


> Ah, but we see the mass as it is *today* though. Total vaporization of major sections combined with having large chunks fly randomly into the universe at the moment of destruction would certainly take care of the missing mass.
> 
> 
> 
> No I haven't. <_shrug>_



Dark matter


----------



## Fallowfox (Jan 9, 2022)

Borophagus Metropolis said:


> Dark matter


...

>:{


----------



## Pomorek (Jan 11, 2022)

I view it on same level as a faster-than-light drive: a cool sci-fi plot device, but doesn't seem too realistic in the end. Properties such as exponential growth and aggressive domination are very much biological drives and there's no necessity for a machine-based intelligence to exhibit them. Unless it learns these _from us_, but then we don't need a god-tier AI to be screwed. Speaking of which, I think that much of this singularity concept is a transposition of religious archetypes onto our current Age of Information: the proponents of the concept seem to expect the coming of Digital Demon, or Machine Messiah, depending on how they view it... Personally, I see no realistic reason why an AI should acquire god-like powers out of thin air.


----------



## Yastreb (Jan 12, 2022)

Pomorek said:


> Properties such as exponential growth and aggressive domination are very much biological drives and there's no necessity for a machine-based intelligence to exhibit them.


But those traits exist for a reason. Realistically it is pretty unlikely you would have only one super intelligent thing so there would be competition. If you have one being that doesn't have the tendency for growth and another that does then guess what, a while later there is still just one of the first but 1000 of the second one. So statistically any given being is much more likely to be one that strives to grow.

Agression also develops naturally in an environment where there is more than one being. If you are not agressive enough you get pushed around, if you are too agressive you waste resources in unnecessary conflics so soon the types with medium level of agression prevail.

Also I don't know why everybody seems to equate the singularity to AI takeover. If I have understood correctly the singularity is simply the point where superhuman intelligences start developing even more intelligent things which sets off a rapidly accelerating feedback loop, and anything beyond that point is pretty much unknowable since the speed of development increases so rapidly.


----------



## Rimna (Jan 12, 2022)

Oh please, Duolingo's voice recognition can't recognize the word "euro".  We are far far away before a computer can do anything.

Jokes aside, I would welcome a technological singularity. Especially if it involves cyber transplantations, or if it provides us with food, shelter and healthcare. 

Most of us are a number in a spreadsheet anyway, so I doubt anything will change if we were taken over by robots.


----------



## Fallowfox (Jan 12, 2022)




----------



## PLEASE DELETE ACCOUNT (Jan 23, 2022)

Rimna said:


> Oh please, Duolingo's voice recognition can't recognize the word "euro".  We are far far away before a computer can do anything.
> 
> Jokes aside, I would welcome a technological singularity. Especially if it involves cyber transplantations, or if it provides us with food, shelter and healthcare.
> 
> Most of us are a number in a spreadsheet anyway, so I doubt anything will change if we were taken over by robots.


Why does the singularity require a physical interface exactly? This is part of the blade runner and similar scifi scape that lends amazing movie atmosphere but I think the singularity of sorts happens before.

Out entire lives now are reduced to one's ands zeros en mass.

All your day to day activity is tracked, codified, pilfered, sold, all in the name to serve you an ad they determined you can't resist.

Every payment you make is tracked. 
You are on camera almost 24/7. You carry a geolocator rectangle in your pocket accurate to about 3 meters at all times and you stare mindless into it for around 3.5 hours a day.

You take a break from it by going to sit at another rectangle to play mindless games on that do nothing but bide time for another 2-3 hours a day.

A lot of people sit chained to another glowing rectangle they input data Into for 8 hours a day, but really we all know you eat instant ramen at your desk working during lunch and actually give the company 9 hours for a few bits extra fake money on your digital paycheck.

The singularity came, and went, without so much as a fuss and people wanted it wholesale. More Huxley like, and less Orwellian. We were never forced. We wanted it, and still want it more and more and more.

And while one could argue it started with fire, or stone tools, or metal tools... I'd really peg the tipping point on the information age above all else, before then you could always move more or less and start over and build back up... But now everything follows you almost everywhere to the ends of the earth... And it's only a matter of time before your past caches up. You are a slave to those ones and zeros


----------



## Parabellum3 (Jan 23, 2022)

Simple, we’re doomed.


----------



## Rimna (Jan 23, 2022)

Christine Vulpes said:


> Why does the singularity require a physical interface exactly? This is part of the blade runner and similar scifi scape that lends amazing movie atmosphere but I think the singularity of sorts happens before.
> 
> Out entire lives now are reduced to one's ands zeros en mass.
> 
> ...



Looks like you have my entire life figured out.


----------



## The_Happiest_Husky (Jan 23, 2022)

Mambi said:


> I once read a crazy theory that the Asteroid belt was another planet that developed nuclear technology...and humans are here once they blew up their home and a few fragments landed on the 3rd planet instead, seeding our Earth with the basics of primordial life. Crazy sure...but maybe not _that _crazy?


Brandon Sanderson has a book where humanity on a planet has similar origins to that. They learned how to access extremely powerful magics, and proceeded to destroy their own planet with it. Some barely survive, escaping through magical means to another world, a world watched over by a god who places heavy restrictions on their magic


----------

