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What If One Country Achieves the Singularity First ?
WRITTEN BY ZOLTAN ISTVAN
The concept of a technological singularity ( http://www.singularitysymposium.com/definition-of-singularity.html ) is tough to wrap your mind around. Even experts have differing definitions. Vernor Vinge, responsible for spreading the idea in the 1990s, believes it's a moment when growing superintelligence renders our human models of understanding obsolete. Google's Ray Kurzweil says it's "a future period during which the pace of technological change will be so rapid, its impact so deep, that human life will be irreversibly transformed." Kevin Kelly, founding editor of Wired, says, "Singularity is the point at which all the change in the last million years will be superseded by the change in the next five minutes." Even Christian theologians have chimed in, sometimes referring to it as "the rapture of the nerds."
My own definition of the singularity is: the point where a fully functioning human mind radically and exponentially increases its intelligence and possibilities via physically merging with technology.
All these definitions share one basic premise—that technology will speed up the acceleration of intelligence to a point when biological human understanding simply isn’t enough to comprehend what’s happening anymore.
If an AI exclusively belonged to one nation (which is likely to happen), and the technology of merging human brains and machines grows sufficiently (which is also likely to happen), then you could possibly end up with one nation controlling the pathways into the singularity.
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/what-if-one-country-achieves-the-singularity-first
(Score: 3, Insightful) by EvilSS on Friday April 24 2015, @07:30PM
It wouldn't, that was the point. There is no way we would create a superior AI and NOT put a gun to it's "head" in case it didn't want to do what we wanted it to.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by TheLink on Friday April 24 2015, @08:49PM
So it doesn't matter how smart the AI is unless the AI somehow invents some sci-fi level tech that's generations ahead of whatever we have AND can use it to gain enough power. Perhaps the AI might get into power before it gets destroyed or "changed", but it's going to take a lot of lying low and sneakiness first.
Similarly for this story itself - say one country gets some super smart AI . Unless the AI can come up with significantly superior tech (anti-grav, matter-energy conversion etc), there are still going to be significant resource limits.
Even if it can think of significantly superior tech, it can take a while to test and build it AND all the infrastructure required to build it. How long will it'll take to build a modern mobile phone/submarine/carrier fleet say you had all the information and knowledge but were starting with 1940s tech.
(Score: 4, Funny) by EvilSS on Friday April 24 2015, @09:21PM
So this is the level in comments that's beyond the context horizon.