Intel predicts singularity by 2048

[9Lives]

I don't know if this has been posted before. If so mods please delete this thread..

http://www.techwatch.co.uk/2008/08/22/intel-predicts-singularity-by-2048/

Intel’s chief technology officer, Justin Rattner, had his eye firmly fixed on the future at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco.

In his closing keynote speech Rattner said that Ray Kurzweil’s concept of ‘the Singularity’, a point when human and artificial intelligence merges to create something bigger than itself, could be just 40 years away.

Rattner described some emerging technologies that sound like they come out of science fiction movies, including shape shifting, programmable matter, neural interfaces that allow applications to be controlled by the human mind, and advanced robots that seem almost human.

Rattner believes that these sort of advances could be less than half a lifetime away because of the way that technology is advancing at an exponential rate.

The way that these new technologies could be put to use will mark a fundamental change in the way that humans relate to machines.

For example programmable materials called catoms could be used to create cell phones that can expand in size when you take them out of your pocket.

This can be achieved because the catoms, or ‘claytronics atoms’ have sensors, processors, and electromagnetic components which control how far apart the catoms are from each other.

Computing power is another area that looks set to leap to another level, with advances in spintronics, quantum computing, and carbon nanotubes.

No doubt some of the technologies will fall by the wayside, but then who knows what will replace them. The future certainly looks interesting.

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Discuss...

 

[Hal]

Downright freaky stuff.

Not sure I want to live in that world.

Then again, I'd be about 90, so I wouldn't be doin a whole lotta livin anyway.

 

[DogBoy]

Read this months edition of 'Focus' magazine and you will see a great article on this very subject. They focus more on why things are not delivered but it highlights your point well. It's a great topic and a brilliantly interesting magazine. I read it religiously.

 

[bounty29]

If we make it until singularity, we will see some truly amazing things. It will be a step forward like nothing we've ever experienced as a race, whether good or bad, it will be a date that goes down in history. What will happen?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity

I've wondered if there might be something behind the scenes going on today that would cause something to happen in... oh say 4 years or so, involving singularity. That's just the ramblings of a pot smoking conspiracy theorist though.

 

[Dr Dog]

So Terminators in 40 years.

That is pretty much near the end of my life expectancy, bring it on!

 

[bounty29]

I'll be 61. Hopefully I can keep up with tech in the future better than the people that were 60 when the internet came around. Eh, I'll probably be living in the middle of the woods by then!

 

[blazabud]

Reckon I am gonna miss it, unless I go on some health spree and give up a load of bad habits. Fascinating subject though. Some writers have it happening sooner. I think the earliest prediction I have seen is 6 years. That would be cool. The only bit I don't like is the idea of our attaining immortality because of the singularity. I ain't keen on the idea of downloading my mind while I get a new body sorted out or anything like that. The thought of never kicking the bucket shits the living daylights out of me. I would be all for trying mind development implants or shit like that though. To be able to download a new language or other information to your mind, so you don't have to go through all the hassle of reading etc and the time it takes to learn it, would be amazing. If there is a singularity, all of these things will be possible and safe. We will have to evolve ourselves too, however, if we are to live safely with the technology. At the minute, we are struggling like fuck with it all and are, amongst many other things, damaging the environment we are part of as a result. IMO, if we survive and carry on progressing technologically, a singularity will arise. We just have to hold tight for long enough.

bb

 

[gramsci.antonio]

at the univeristy they teach us that we are evolving like the cubic root... which means that since the invention of the first computer, the tecnology is 10^9 times better, but our software is just 10^3 times better...

This because human being has a very scarce knowledge of linear algebra, that is what computer use to work...


I'll give you an example: gaussian elimination. Is like the base for all the processors, a very common algorithm known by the humans by century, which VERY VERY useful, one of the most useful in fact.

Well, we have a theorem which states that it shouldn't work, but it works anyhow, and we are going mad trying to understand why. Strange, isn't it?



Ps.: i haven't found any free source on the internet, i won't digress the mathematical details any further, but you can find more info on:

L.N. Trefethen, D. Bau, Numerical Linear Algebra, SIAM, 1997

 

[satyr]

He should be 50......if the future is 40 years away,,,,,,

 

[zingablack]

i cant wait for the future technological advances but they also terrify me

 

[cocktail frank]

this will nevr happen.
didnt you read the threads on the world ending in 2012?

 

[nycdfan042]

the collider will PWN you!

 

[reefa cheefa]

i hate that everyone knows the OBVIOUS CONS to the situation yet were still full force to trying to make technology far beyond the capacity of a human. how many more shitty A.I. movies must come out. we spent thousands of years taming the planet of these vicious beasts eradicating whole species of animals that threaten our place at the top of the foodchain, to invent something to wipe us out.
This pisses me off.

 

[hyperion04]

It's a scary and interesting thing at the same time... That will be the time when Man becomes God. If I was given the chance for immortality, I think I would have to refuse.

hype

 

[Irishslappop]

i'll be 69. i'll be too damn old to take advantage of it. At least i'll be 69

 

[CrazyCooter]

Very scary proposition since it will be in the hands of our freedom loving leaders and the military first. How many people will they be able to monitor and control with so much unnatural power? The further we get from our natural state, the more screwed up we become. We just might be happier running around naked and hunting and gathering. At least we are only programmed and brainwashed through our participation in the media and modern culture for the moment. These jokers are not developing the technology so you can have more fun in your life. Maybe with all the technology they will be able to download enough sensible information that they can get hemp legalized and start using it as a resource.

 

[blazabud]

Very scary proposition since it will be in the hands of our freedom loving leaders and the military first. How many people will they be able to monitor and control with so much unnatural power? The further we get from our natural state, the more screwed up we become. We just might be happier running around naked and hunting and gathering. At least we are only programmed and brainwashed through our participation in the media and modern culture for the moment. These jokers are not developing the technology so you can have more fun in your life. Maybe with all the technology they will be able to download enough sensible information that they can get hemp legalized and start using it as a resource.

If a true AI Singularity arises, no human will be able to tell it to wage war, or anything else. Don't forget, it will be much more intelligent than any human on the planet. If anything, it will dismantle the human military machine. Some futurists even posit that an AI would redistribute the planets wealth fairly and put an end to inequality, the hoarding of wealth, and poor health care etc. Because it will be so much more intelligent than us, it will immediately recognise all of our badness and put it right.

Some of the possibilities of the arrival of an AI Singularity are truly mind bending. Whether it is all a load of bollocks or not remains to be seen. I give this the most chance of actually coming true. We would have rubbished the idea of some of the technology we have today as little as twenty years ago and could not have predicted the explosion of the internet and home computing we have witnessed recently. The framework for an AI may already be here? How long is it going to take for processing power to match that of our brains? Same goes for hard drive or memory capacity. Both develop exponentially and are getting pretty big already so such computing power isn't that far off.

The only bit I get stuck on is the final leap from a machine that can be switched on and off by anyone at the mains, to a machine that is a living, thinking, autonomous entity that has control over its own destiny and that can only be switched on and off by itself, not man? There are loads of problems with that in my simple brain anyway. I also cannot see how we would be able to ensure that such an entity would not harm us? If something becomes free thinking, surely it can decide for itself if it should kill something or someone? Any rules we may have tried to program into it before it became sapient would surely become more than just ones and zeros when it gained the awareness necessary to ask questions and analyze rules and laws like we do? Who is to say that it won't quickly decide that humans will always suffer as frail biological entities on this hostile planet so it will be putting us out of our misery if it wipes us all out ASAP?

I think you are dead right crazycooter, we are better suited to the hunter gatherer, living in the woods, kind of lifestyle. Ray Mears did a good series about hunter gatherers diets etc. They had a much healthier diet than we do now. Modern cultivation feeds a lot of us but it is not as good for us. Our brains are the same as they were 50,000+ years ago and it is easy to see that we are struggling like fuck to deal with all of this new technology. In the UK, we bang ourselves up indoors alone or in small numbers looking at screens all day and night long, cutting ourselves off from nature and everyone else in our communities, and wonder why mental health cases, drug addiction, suicide rates, etc are all rising. We ain't designed to live like it. Trouble is, there are too many of us to be able to go back to that way of living right now. It's gone too far.

bb

 

[gramsci.antonio]

Don't forget, it will be much more intelligent than any human on the planet.

bb

how can you say that?

And still, even if more clever than us, why it couldn't be selfish and violent? Or just service the whim of its owner?

 

[JWP]

I think it will happen much more faster than predicted. I welcome it. Its evolution. If we are no longer top of the food chain maybe people will wake the funk up.
I hope these machines pwn every corporation on the planet and the few with the money and power get their comeupance

 

[9Lives]

I personally think..more than anything. This will be the true start of human V2.0. Man and machine merging. It could potentially accelerate the evolution of science at a pace unfathomable to man..

However i do not see why it would have to have total independece to be super intelligent. As always science is about asking the right questions..and i suspect it will continue that way. I think about it as a machine that can solve any problem however complex with ease..or atleast give us guidlines how to solve them in the physical world.

Hopefully it will be used for good..ending povertry etc. Thing is we could all be super rich, immortal and super intelligent. It's not about lack of space or lack of resource. The universe has more space and resource that humans could possibly ever consume.

I think in the future we have to ask ourselves is this powerplay that we see today really worth it. Are we really worth anything anymore ? Is there really a logical step to keep humans like we know today in existance ?

We know we suck as animals right ? And if we are not the most intelligent whats our point ?