You’ve been told that uniqueness is coming. It’s that long-awaited moment, in our very close long term, when advances in synthetic intelligence lead to the creation of a device (a technological way of life?). Smarter than humans.
If Ray Kurzweil is going to be d, the singularity will occur in 2045. If we take our hats off to Louis Rosenberg, then the day will come a little earlier, probably in 2030. MIT’s Patrick Winston would say probably a little closer to Kurzweil’s prediction, though he puts the date at 2040, more precisely.
But what difference does it make? We are talking about a difference of only 15 years. The genuine question is: is the singularity on its way?
At the World Government Summit in Dubai, I spoke with Jürgen Schmidhuber, co-founder and lead scientist of corporate AI NNAISENSE, director of the Swiss AI lab IDSIA, and announced him through some as the “father of synthetic intelligence” abroad.
He is convinced that the singularity will happen, and soon. Schmidhuber says that “there are only 30 years left, if the trend is not broken, and there will be reasonable computing devices that have as many connections as your brain but are much faster. “” he said.
And that’s just the beginning. Imagine a reasonable little device that is not only smarter than humans, but can calculate as much knowledge as all human brains put together. Well, it may be true in just 50 years. “And there will be many, many. There’s no doubt in my brain that AIs are going to be super smart,” says Schmidhuber.
Today, the world faces a number of incredibly complex challenges, from global warming to the refugee crisis. These are all disorders that, over time, will affect everyone on the planet, deeply and irreversibly. But the real seismic shift that will influence how we respond to each of those crises will take place elsewhere.
“This is much more than just a business revolution. It is all that transcends humanity and life itself. “
“All this complexity pales in comparison to this vital progression of our century, which is much more than just a commercial revolution,” says Schmidhuber. Of course, the progression he’s referring to is the progression of those synthetic superintelligences, whatever Schmidhuber says. “it is all that transcends humanity and life itself. “
When biological life emerged from chemical evolution 3. 5 billion years ago, a random mixture of simple, lifeless elements triggered the explosion of species that populate the planet today. Something of comparable magnitude would possibly be about to happen. “Now the universe is taking a similar step forward, moving from less complexity to greater complexity,” schmidhuber says. “And it’s going to be incredible. “
As with biological life, there will be a detail of possibility in this leap between a rugged device and synthetic life. And while we can’t wait exactly when, all the evidence indicates that the singularity will occur.