are we already living in the technological singularity

Search

Are we already living in thetechnological singularity?Science fiction's most radical vision of the future, with humanityredundant, is becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy

Are we already living in the technological singularity? | Books | theguardian.com http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2014/feb/28/are-we-already-living-in-the-techno...

1 of 5 3/21/2014 6:26 PM

'Wait, did that computer just blank me?' thinking robot. Photograph: Blutgruppe/Corbis

The news has been turning into science fiction for a while now. TVs that watch the

watcher, growing tiny kidneys, 3D printing, the car of tomorrow, Amazon's fleet of

delivery drones so many news stories now "sound like science fiction" that the term

returns 1,290,000 search results on Google.

The pace of technological innovation is accelerating so quickly that it's possible to

perform this test in reverse. Google an imaginary idea from science fiction and you'll

almost certainly find scientists researching the possibility. Warp drive? The Multiverse?

A space elevator to the stars? Maybe I can formulate this as Walter's law "Any idea

described in sci-fi will on a long enough timescale be made real by science."

The most radical prediction of science fiction is the technological singularity. As author

and mathematician Vernor Vinge put it in his 1993 essay The Coming Technological

Singularity, "Within 30 years, we will have the technological means to create

superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended." Blimey. Sounds a

bit serious.

Imagine a graph charting the growth in modern computing power. Place the mechanical

calculator at one end and the Cray XE6 supercomputer, capable of analysing 240 full

human genomes in 50 hours, at the other. Moore's law that computing power doubles

every 18 months means that the curve of the graph grows exponentially steeper until it

"spikes" upward.

That spike is the singularity. And for decades now, science fiction authors and assorted

types of futurist have been trying to predict what a post-singularity world would look

like. Ray Kurzweil has been preaching future utopia for decades and in The Singularity

Is Near (2005) made concrete predications about the arrival of machine intelligence,

predictions he adapted in his recent interview with the Guardian to claim that machines

would outsmart men by 2029.


2 of 5 3/21/2014 6:26 PM

Today as director of engineering at Google, Kurzweil is developing concrete policy based

on those predictions. He is using the tech giant's vast resources to buy up leading

players in robotics and artificial intelligence. Will Google's robot army soon be fighting

Amazon's drone airforce for dominance of the future? It may sound like science fiction,

but people with immense resources are treating the singularity as something very real.

The most successful exploration of the singularity to date remains Accelerando by

Charles Stross, a linked series of nine stories, first collected in 2005. Accelerando

follows three generations of one family through a speculative history of the 21st century.

But while its predictions of technology are compelling, it's Stross's unwavering vision of

the human cost of these technologies that sets the work apart from more blithely

utopian visions.

Stross begins by rooting the reader in a relatively familiar near future. In the character

of "venture altruist" Manfred Macx we encounter an augmented human intelligence,

whose interface with computers allows him to outsmart the brutal capitalist reality that

Stross depicts. But it's a temporary triumph of the human spirit, as Stross takes us in to

a post-singularity reality where humans survive only as resources to be exploited by the

super-intelligences that have eclipsed us.

Stross's fellow SF author Ken Macleod began the dissection of the singularity as a

political vision when he popularised its renaming as "The Rapture of the Nerds". The

singularity has gained a quasi-religious status among transhumanists those who

believe technology can end human causes of human suffering such as poverty, disease

and ultimately even death itself. But as Macleod explains in his essay The Ends of

Humanity, this utopian vision comes worryingly close to the far-right excesses of

fascism and the Nazi vision of a master race.

There's nothing new in the argument that technology can be co-opted for unsavoury

purposes. It's the same argument we have when protestors highlight inhuman working

conditions on iPhone production lines at Foxcon. Or when historians remind us of


3 of 5 3/21/2014 6:26 PM

NextPrevious

IBM's role in computing the Holocaust. The same argument was laid out by Karl Marx

when he demanded that the workers should own the means of production, or by the

Luddites when they smashed the machines that were disrupting their industry. How do

we relate as humans to machines of our own creation when they threaten our humanity?

In this sense at least we are already living in the singularity, and have been living in it

since early humans first wielded tools and made fire. The question is not whether the

singularity will arrive it seems certain technological progress will continue but

whether we can continue to nurture human value in the face of inhuman forces. If the

imagined visions of science fiction continue to conform to Walter's law, we need to keep

human life front and centre in the equation.

More from the guardian

Get the Guardian book club email

Hosted by John Mullan, be the first to find out aboutforthcoming events and featured authors.

Sign up for the Guardian book club email

Blog home

Landlords HMRC isclosing in on yourundeclared lettings income15 Mar 2014

We need more AsianAmerican kids growing up tobe artists, not doctors16 Mar 2014

Things you wanted to knowabout trans people and wererude enough to ask19 Mar 2014

US authors take the literaryprizes but British writers stillpushing boundaries14 Mar 2014


4 of 5 3/21/2014 6:26 PM

More from around the web

2014 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

7 Bestsellers from the DwellStore(Dwell)

Team India accused offavouritism by SunilGavaskar(The Indian Republic)

6 Red Hot Tips To Get YourArticles Read(Article Rewrite)

My Search for the Best Free& Cheap eBooks: Findingthe Needles in theHaystacks(Senior Planet)


5 of 5 3/21/2014 6:26 PM

are we already living in the technological singularity

Documents