Another cutting-edge field of research with an exponential growth rate
is nanotechnology - the science of building “machines” out of atoms. A
nanometer is a distance one-hundredth-thousandth the width of human
hair. The goal of this science is to change the atomic fabric of matter
- to engineer “machine-like atomic structures” that reproduce like
living matter.
In this respect, it is similar to biotechnology, except that
nanotechnology needs to literally create something like the non-organic
version of DNA to drive the building of its tiny machines.
As University of Texas Professor Angela Belcher explains, “We’re
working out the rules of biology in a realm where nature hasn’t had the
opportunity to work.” Belcher is combining genetically modified
proteins with semiconductors in the hope of using proteins to do the
“building” of the non-living nanostructure. The technique is a hybrid
of biotechnology and nanotechnology. What would take millions of years
to evolve on its own, “takes about three weeks on the bench top,” says
Belcher.
Machine progress is knocking down the barriers between all the
sciences. Chemists, biologists, engineers and physicists are now
finding themselves collaborating on experimental research. This
collaboration is best illustrated by the opening of Cornell
University’s Nanobiotechnological Center and other such facilities
around the world. These scientists predict a breakthrough around 2005
to 2015 that will open the way to molecular-size computing - allowing
for exponential technologic progress to race toward infinity.
Signs of the ‘Coming Singularity’
By Gar Smith
Some of the scientific “breakthroughs” expected in the next few years
promise to make cloning and xenotransplantation (the introduction of
genes from one species into another) seem rather benign. At least when
scientists plant a spider gene in a goat or insert pig cells into a
human brain, they are dealing with all-natural ingredients.
In the Brave New World of the Coming Singularity, the merging of
technology and nature has already yielded some disturbing progeny.
Consider these examples:
Vernon Vinge’s Vision
By Gar Smith
The nonprofit Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence (SIAI) [www.siginst.org]
exists “to bring about the Singularity - the technological creation of
greater-than-human intelligence.” SIAI believes that the creation of
“computer-based ‘artificial intelligence’ [will]... result in an
immediate, worldwide and material improvement to the human condition.”
Vernon Vinge, the originator of the Singularity concept, is not so
sanguine. “When greater-than-human intelligence drives progress, that
progress will be much more rapid,” Vinge conceded during his famous
1993 speech at a NASA symposium. “We can solve many problems thousands
of times faster than natural selection.”
“How bad could the Post-Human era be?” Vinge wondered. “Well…
pretty bad. The physical extinction of the human race is one
possibility.” Another possibility he proposed was that, “given all that
such technology can do, perhaps governments would simply decide that
they no longer need citizens!
“The first ultra-intelligent machine is the last invention that
man need ever make (provided that the machine is docile enough to tell
us how to keep it under control).” Because ultra-intelligent machines
could design even better machines, Vinge predicted an “intelligence
explosion” in the near future.
“A central feature of strongly superhuman entities will likely be
their ability to communicate at variable bandwidths - including ones
far higher than speech or written messages.”
But there is more to the human being than mere computational
intelligence. Without emotion, empathy, compassion and a moral sense,
raw intelligence can be a dangerous thing. As Ishi, the last surviving
member of California’s indigenous Yahi nation observed: “White people
are clever, but they are not wise.”
When the Singularity occurs, Vinge said, it could happen “in the
blink of an eye - an exponential runaway beyond any hope of control….
It will probably occur faster than any technical revolution seen so
far…. Even if all the governments of the world were to understand the
threat and be in deadly fear of it,” Vinge warned, “progress toward the
goal would continue.”
“The problem is not simply that the Singularity represents the
passing of humankind from center stage,” Vinge concluded, “but that it
contradicts our most deeply held notions of being.
“There are other paths to superhumanity,” Vinge suggested.
“Computer networks and human-computer interfaces… could lead to the
Singularity.” Vinge call this alternative to Artificial Intelligence
“Intelligence Amplification.”
Ray Kurzweil’s Vision
By Gar Smith
Computer pioneer Ray Kurzweil is the winner of the world’s largest
prize for invention - the $500,000 Lemelson-MIT Prize - and was awarded
the National Medal of Technology by President Clinton in 2000. He is
the author of The Age of Intelligent Machines (MIT Press, 1990) and The Age of Spiritual Machines (Viking 1999). In his latest book, The Singularity Is Near,
Kurzweil predicts that the final merging of “biological” and
“artificial” intelligence will occur before the end of this century.
“The rate of technical progress is itself accelerating,” Kurzweil
observes. But while people are quick to recognize this fact, “very few
people have really internalized the implications of that prediction.”
Industrialized societies are now doubling their rate of technological
progress every 10 years. That means the 21st century will experience
the equivalent of “20,000 years of progress” in a century, Kurzweil
notes. “You get to a point where the rate of progress is so fast that
it’s virtually a rupture in the fabric of human history.”
“Human beings get our power from having a hundred trillion
inter-neural connections operating simultaneously,” Kurzweil writes. We
are approaching a time when computers will be programmed to create and
build even-more-intelligent systems. At this point, Kurzweil warns, the
acceleration of computer intelligence threatens to become exponential.
Within 20 years, computers will not merely be super-intelligent, “they
will be conscious, feeling beings deserving of the same rights,
privileges and consideration people give each other.
“I don’t think we can stop it. I think there are profound
dangers,” Kurzweil states. Still, he doesn’t agree with Bill Joy’s
argument that we must call a halt the acceleration of artificial
intelligence systems before we create a system that grows out of human
control. “The only way you can stop technology advancement,” Kurzweil
warns, “would be to have a totalitarian, state-enforced ban.”
The Need for a “Green” Singularity
By Gar Smith
We have arrived at one of history’s great watersheds,” writes Ervin Laszlo in his book, Macroshift: Navigating the Transformation to a Sustainable World [Berrett-Koehler, San Francisco, www.bkconnection.com]. The civilization of the modern age “is not sustainable; it is destined to disappear.”
Laszlo, the science director of the International Peace University
of Berlin, is an expert in the field of systems theory. Laszlo argues
that it is critical that the world “move from economic globalization to
a new and sustainable civilization.” Such profound and rapid changes in
human history are called Macroshifts. Previous Macroshifts occurred
with the Bronze Age, the Iron Age, the development of agriculture, the
Enlightenment and the Industrial Age.
According to Laszlo, the old order of humankind’s evolution “can
be encapsulated in three terms: conquest, colonization and
consumption.” The coming Macroshift will require a transformation to an
evolution that relies on “connection, communication and consciousness.”
Laszlo’s Macroshift represents the kind of fundamental social and
economic change that environmentalists have been championing. The
question now is whether the advent of an accelerating technological
Singularity will eclipse Laszlo’s envisioned Macroshift and usher in a
new world that leaves humankind diminished and alienated from life,
from joy and from the natural world.
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