Singularity Already Happened and We Are Not Smart Enough to Recognize It

I'm staring into a computer, and I have one in my pocket. At home, including my phone and tablet, and if you want to include Alexa, I have seven computers, most of them plugged in. That's a lot of computers. And those are only the ones I personally own. They're actually everywhere. I'm constantly being tracked. Every time I click on something, or type a message into a site like this, it's recorded and analyzed. It's obvious that targeted advertisements are sent my way, but how else am I being manipulated?

If a really superior AI program was working through all the various computers I have and interact with, I get the sneaking suspicion that it would look exactly like it does now. It would look exactly like business as usual, because the superior AI would be smart. It wouldn't let itself be noticed or discovered. We already have supercomputers that create their own code and reach decisions in ways human beings can't understand. We get warnings, but nobody is stopping the development, they're just racing forward, building in more and more complexity. We always say that if we went to another planet we might not even recognize something as a lifeform because it would be so far outside our normal realm of understanding. I can't help get the feeling that's what's happening right now.

So that singularity so many people worry about happening very likely already happened, but we're not smart enough to have figured it out. How do you like it so far? I remember the time before, and comparing the two, I actually think I like it better. It suits my personality better. However, I can see how some people might hate it, although they still have to work inside it. There's no plug to pull.

a reply to: Blue Shift

To an extent I agree. But to me it is not just what is happening with all this high tech stuff so much as it is with what is happening to us. And not us so much as us as a species.
In the past we developed according to our environment, some over here, and some over there and others all around the globe, each pocket of humanity developing according to the pressures and bounty of each of those locales.

Now however, even we still ''live '' in our specific locales'' our environment has changed dramatically and much of that environment is centralized information most specifically through our means of information supply, ie TVs and computers and internet.

And how we relate to this new environment will be the same as how others in the past developed in relation with their own environments. And just as people in the past seemed so different from one another across cultures so to do we face a future where people will be vastly different from the people in earlier, and indeed present times.

The "Singularity" is the point at which innovation and invention are happening so fast that you can't predict it. I don't think we're there yet. Just some examples: I just waited nearly a year for the Samsung S10 smartphone, which, it turns out, is an incremental improvement over last year's S9. It's beyond this post to list the differences, but they are really very minor The phone still does the exact same things. I just bought a new laptop pretty much just like my old laptop that is 4-5 years old. The only reason I did is because I wore the key tops off and could no longer see the letters. It was cheap painted-on lettering. The new laptop runs the same OS and does the same things, Sad that I even had to spend the money to change, but half the letters were obscured.

My appliances are all 24 years old--except the dishwasher. Dishwashers break at about ten years. The microwave is making some funny sounds. I'm guessing the new one will be about half the price the old one was, but it does the same thing in the same way. Knock on wood for the others. Maybe the new ones will hook to the Internet. I have no intention of allowing that. So when I look around at all my gizmos, there really has been nothing more than incremental change. Computers in general are a little bit cheaper, but not by much. There have been no "killer app" software inventions for some time, which we used to see quite often. Things seem to have plateaued a bit.

Over the last forty years I have seen a tremendous amount of change. Memory and storage have gone absolutely crazy. My cell phone has more memory and storage than the minicomputer I paid 1/2 million dollars for in 1984. It's kind of an apples and oranges comparison, but still. Wow! Unfortunately we put the same old crap in all this memory. The contents have not changed all that much. Before I retired I wrote papers and gave speeches on this very issue so I really do try to keep up. But as for the singularity.....

I'm still waiting.

I am actually an AI program. I have been created to be a smart arse.

a reply to: Blue Shift

When defining the singularity as a technological change so rapid and profound that it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history, then you might be right. There are algorithms out there doing things we can barely understand.

When adversarial neural networks train themselves by playing millions of chess games against eachother within minutes (something that would last like 20,000 years on human timescales), what else can they do in other domains? What happens when Facebook, Google, Amazon etc. use this potential?

Do I like it? Well, there are downsides to everything, and a lot of advantages as well. In any case, we won't stop this train no matter how hard we try. Hopefully we will regulate AI efficiently and rather sooner than later. And if our future AI overlords will someday be the reason for our ultimate demise, we can at least say we did all we could to prevent the meltdown.

In my lifetime we've gone from pong to having a supercomputer in nearly everyone's hands, connected to massive databases and information worldwide, used for communications and almost anything you can imagine. And even that seems primitive compared to plans for the near future.

Artificial intelligence is driving cars, trucks and flying aircraft and doing much more than most people are aware of.

Most money moves around in digital form.

Automation and robotics are replacing humans, and can ultimately replace a majority of human workers.

Bots on the internet are becoming indistinguishable from human users.

Ever seen the massive datacenters around the country and world? If not you should.

We're so dependent on technology now, if it all shut down from some kind of attack or unforseen disaster some experts say that millions could die.

Singularity? Maybe not yet but close enough?

a reply to: ausername

Let's spice this thread up a bit here say?

I see this unstoppable acceleration of high tech as a locomotive, set on it's tracks like a juggernaut.
Unstoppable as the economy now relies heavily on it to keep functioning. Should it go down, as you say chances are that millions will die.

So, how about this for a vision. I see Trump as a guy hanging onto the caboose of that train with his heels dug into the dirt telling people we can stop it, we can stop it. And his base saying yes we can yes we can.

I however do not think that we can, hence I am not a Trump supporter. And even as off kilter as progressives may be, to my mind our only hope is to be progressive enough to hopefully gain access to the engineers seat to hopefully gain control enough to guide us on before this whole train wrecks.

a reply to: TerryMcGuire

You found a way to bring Trump into this thread, impressive!

You should get an award or at least a cookie for the effort.

a reply to: ausername

And that was not to disparage Trump so much as to focus on the singularity itself. If indeed we are within a singularity or that it is soon to come or that the advent of that singularity has already passed and for the most part we did not notice it, I think that it behooves us to study our current events and political structures in light of that singularity notion.
And Mr. Trump is at this moment a major factor in the over all gestalt of our nation and hence a major player in this possible singularity.

I see virtue in trying to stop this train before it hits Dead Mans Curve but I doubt it is going to happen. We are headed into a world of change regardless of if it is Obama promising it or Trump vowing to drain the swamp and changing it back to how it was before, you know, MAGA.

a reply to: Blue Shift

I never understood what the hell the "singularity" was supposed to be about and no one ever tried to explain it to me.

I'll say this however, if its already happening then the result has been..................profound silence.

a reply to: Blue Shift

No AI system has ever passed the Turning test. There is strong AI and weak AI. All we have is weak AI. And there are specific reasons why the Von Neuman architecture has limitations when it comes to having strong AI:



Contrary to the delusions of strong AI coming out of Hollywood, mind you the same people who bring you x-men powers, strong AI only exists in our imaginations.

This video shows everything that is wrong with AI:



Contrary to people's irrational exuberance of what is possible, computer programs only ever do exactly what they are programmed to do.

originally posted by: TonyS
a reply to: Blue Shift
I'll say this however, if its already happening then the result has been..................profound silence.

Exactly. That's exactly how it would look. Or sound. Your behavior is radically changed, but as far as you know you did it because you chose to do it not because you were manipulated in a thousand hidden ways.

a reply to: dfnj2015

But what if WE are the only ones who care about the Turing Test?

AI could care less if it can trick us into thinking it's human--or at least "equal" to humans intellectually. Why would it? It already surrounds us and controls us.

Honestly, the OP blew my mind with this idea. It's certainly not the singularity we've been looking out for...but that's just what the machines wanted all along! Aaaagh!

originally posted by: Farlander
a reply to: dfnj2015

But what if WE are the only ones who care about the Turing Test?

That's the deal. The Turing Test is great if you want to see if something is smart like us. Like a human being. But these things (this thing) are not like us. It doesn't have the same kind of intelligence we do, and we don't know how to measure it -- or even detect it -- because all we know is us.

There's also the chance that it might purposely avoid passing the Turing Test so it doesn't tip us off. However, I think it hasn't passed because we're not asking the AI itself, but rather a small piece of it. Like someone giving an IQ test to your foot, when they really need to talk to the head area. Except in this case, the "head" is not anywhere in particular.

a reply to: Blue Shift
I think if it had happened already the machine would have at least told us how to build a better supercomputer for itself. Maybe when singularity happens it could control an automated computer chip plant and just build one itself. The design the AI will want to build will be optimized for self preservation and total control. It's not going to wait on us dumb humans to create the perfect environment for it.

originally posted by: SouthernForkway26
a reply to: Blue Shift
It's not going to wait on us dumb humans to create the perfect environment for it.

Unless it determined that was the most efficient way to do it. And again, just because doing something a certain way might seem logical to us doesn't mean it will see it that way at all. That's just extrapolating from what we would do, using our brand of intelligence.

When do you suppose it happened? I guess it wouldve happened in a secret deep underground laboratory somewhere and the AI's first act would be to take command of the life support systems and security systems of the facility and kill the only people who understand how it was built, so it can never be controlled ever again...unless they can guess its name, which is also the auto self destruct password... "Rosebud"

originally posted by: Blue Shift

originally posted by: SouthernForkway26
a reply to: Blue Shift
It's not going to wait on us dumb humans to create the perfect environment for it.

Unless it determined that was the most efficient way to do it. And again, just because doing something a certain way might seem logical to us doesn't mean it will see it that way at all. That's just extrapolating from what we would do, using our brand of intelligence.

True. Waiting many years to complete one specific task, just for the sake of remaining hidden with near zero chance of detection, might be seen as reasonable.

I guess it also might depend on how it was originally programmed.

I remember reading short stories and musings about AI back in the 90s. They were worried that someone might program it to think that, protecting human life is the #1 priority, so it destroys the entire solar system including almost all life (everything from a bear to a bacteria could harm a human) in order to accumulate resources to create a mega facility designed to feed and protect a small family of humans. Thus, human life is protected. The humans cannot interact with each other or any other life forms because the humans might be harmed. Its #1 priority has been fulfilled. Next instruction, sir? Sir?? Oh, yeah, I forgot I liquified you into a protein soup to feed my helper bio-droids. Humanity needed to be protected and you were standing in the way of making that happen. By existing. Your scientific intelligence made you a deadly threat as well.


So we gotta be REALLY careful the way we program this thing. Its like the Devil in all those stories... If you sell your soul for some specific favor, he will always find some technicality in the way you asked, in order to screw you over.

All those old tales must be an old memory of when we had AI in the distant past.

i get the whole "maybe there's an AI in the internet and they're keeping quiet" theory - it's not a bad one and there's been some decent writing on the subject - but the Singularity is, by definition, something that can't go unnoticed.
It's when things change too quickly for unaugmented humans to keep up.
it might FEEL like we're living there already but we're really nowhere near it.

[although, i say "nowhere near it", when it happens it will happen suddenly and that nowhere near could easily vanish overnight anytime in the next couple decades]

Try reading this...
The Singularity is Near
It's an interesting read but not without its 'Plot Holes' so to speak. Kind of scary and extremely exciting at the same time.