22
Jan

The Singularity Is Near

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I have a new baby so I don’t come out from under my mommy rock much these days, but even I can sense a dawning popular interest in the Singularity phenomenon. The term, first coined by SF author Vernor Vinge, refers to a hypothetical future state in which computers become smarter than the human mind, and people use computers to enhance their brain capacity – essentially creating Human 2.0.

Or, in a scarier scenario, the Singularity is where we get to “kiss our asses goodbye.” The new Terminator show, the Sarah Connor Chronicles, gets into the idea of a hard takeoff into Singularity, and a recent PBS special (first aired in 2006 by the BBC) also looked at the potential dangers of the rise of an unfriendly AI.

What I’ve always wondered is how to square the idea of uploading human consciousness with the concept of the human soul. Are we anything more than an incredibly complex electrochemical synaptic system? Can the ineffable mystery of something like love live on a computer interface? 

 These questions are the ones I explore in my March release, NETHERWOOD: in what I like to think of as a Singularity love story.

This is also the kind of stuff I think about while waiting on the carpool line or testing melons for ripeness at the supermarket. Yes, in the immortal words of Anne Lamott, my mind is a bad neighborhood where I try not to go alone.

:-)

~Michele

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008 at 2:03 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

4 comments so far

Sarai
 1 

I believe that we will come to the point where machines are smarter then us. I don’t however, believe we will be able to download emotions or the human soul in a robot. One thing that seperates us from other mammals in our intelligence. So if machines have more then us I have no doubt that they may one day take over. However I feel the reason they will be able to is the loss of emotion. They will think logically and be smarter but we will have the emotions. Could they evolve over time… yes, maybe at first but I doubt they will develop emotions.
GREAT POST!

January 29th, 2008 at 9:15 am
Michele Lang
 2 

Thanks, Sarai! I am obsessed with this question, and in NETHERWOOD I explore it in some detail. I think in our techno-oriented culture, factual knowledge and intelligence is sometimes prized over less measurable, or less profitable, motivations like kindness, morality, or love. Without some kind of a moral compass to guide decision-making, what kinds of decisions would artificial intelligences make?

It would be cool if souls could live in a virtual world…truly, ghosts in the machine. Thanks for your thoughtful comment!

Best wishes,
Michele

January 29th, 2008 at 10:02 am
Sarai
 3 

I thought I-robot brought up some interesting points about the ghost in machines but can something like kindness, morality and love be taught to a machine who may or may not comprehend what it is being taught. As children we learn these things by watching and being coached but we are told what they are to associate them with the feelings that go along with it.
For example serial killers are taught how to act, look, appear to have kindness and that normal I understand what you are feeling but they really don’t understand the emotion. They are dead inside, because they can not associate the act of kindness with a feeling. So could we in essence call a serial killer a robot?
These are the thoughts that haunt me in lines ;) LOL poor DH!

January 30th, 2008 at 3:15 pm
Michele Lang
 4 

I think about this stuff, too…it gets right back to the question of what makes us human in the first place.

Very cool…I will be blogging a lot more about this, I think!

:)

February 1st, 2008 at 10:26 am

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