Sorry for absence. Buried in some deep book-promotion & computer-crash problems here.
Spent last weekend at the Singularity Summit in NYC. (They have some videos up & will be posting more.) I’m working up a piece for the print NR, though not likely next issue, the way things are falling down around my head here.
It’s a bit odd, I must say, to be sitting in a lecture hall listening to speakers soaring on viewless wings of Poesy about Whole Brain Emulation and “AGI++”** while with the other half of your brain fretting about files you may have lost due to some damn computer virus. It’d be easier to swallow this Singularity stuff if someone could come up with an operating system that can terminate a malfunctioning program in less than five minutes of repetitive expletive-accompanied key-pressing.
Still, there was some good stuff. The believable, limited-function type of Artificial Intelligence — e.g. cars that can drive themselves in city traffic — got good coverage, and I’m sure this is what AI will mean in practice to most citizens for the next couple of decades at least. There was lots of calm good sense along with the hype, some of it from philosopher Dave Chalmers, who always comes up with something interesting to say. (Though I wish he’d cut down on the Matrix references.) I’d like to have heard more about the next generation of expert systems — the ones that will wipe out a good swathe of middle-class employment (lawyering, doctoring). Peter Thiel gave a great address, arguing that if the Singularity doesn’t show up soon, our economic problems will get mightily worse. A credit-based world economy, argued Peter, needs the kind of exponential technological growth the Singularity concept is premised on. We are not only riding a technological bike which, if we stop, will fall over; that bike needs to be accelerating. Currently, for all the proliferation of trivial gadgets, it ain’t.
The star performer, though, was Singularity Man himself, Ray Kurzweil. Ray’s been plowing this furrow for so long, and responding to skepticism from so many directions in so many forums, he can sell the Singularity in his sleep. (His book has a 60-page chapter taking on all the objections anyone has thought of; so if you want to pooh-pooh the Singularity, please don’t sent me e-mails without first going to see what Ray’s rebuttal is.) This was the first time I’d seen him in person, and he’s much more impressive than he is in print. (For heaven’s sake, Ray, get an editor.) He promised us that we shall soon have a computer that can tell a cat from a dog.
Was the Singularity Summit a geekfest? You bet. The audience (n ≅ 800) north of 95 percent male. Lots of Aspergery types with iPhones (pretty much a compulsory accessory in these circles) and odd-colored socks. Around two-thirds of them seemed to be named Avi.
On a skepticism scale of 0 (utter incredulity) to 10 (unquestioning faith) about the Singularity, I went in to the Singularity Summit a 4 and came out a 6. More in the print magazine.
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** That’s the artificial general intelligence that will be created by AGI+, which is the artificial general intelligence that will be created by AGI, when we’ve figured out how to create that. The “general” here indicates something comprehensively smart, like a human brain, as opposed to the limited-function smarts of, for example, a computer that can drive a car.