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November 26, 2003
The Singularity
Posted by Arnold
Another one from the MIT techreview weblog. Simson Garfinkel writes,
It’s bad news for us carbon-based life forms.
In the end, there are only four possible futures:
1 - We destroy our technical capacity to bring about The Singularity before it happens. (I don’t think that this will be the case, but a nuclear war might do the trick.)
2 - The Singularity isn’t technically possible --- computers will never get that smart. (I don’t think that this is the case either.)
3 - The Singularity happens, and the computers decide to keep us around out of pity.
4 - The Singularity happens, and within 20-30 years humans simply cease to matter.
Comments (3)
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1. David Thomson on November 28, 2003 08:47 AM writes...
Human beings aren’t going anywhere. A computer cannot compose a poem or write a sonata. It is merely a machine that can be programmed to deal with probabilities. That’s why a spell checker is merely a spell guider---and only a fairly good speller can actually use one successfully. A functional illiterate finds no value in a so-called spell checker.
Permalink to Comment2. Dan on November 28, 2003 09:40 PM writes...
For some unpleasant realities regarding "the economics of IT", see the following site. It was written/edited by a clinician computing specialist (medical informatics) on the rampant mismanagement that goes on of clinical IT.
http://www.hilbert.key-space.de/mismanagement.html
Lessons-learned repository on healthcare IT mismanagement
Some pretty scary stories here, and some good points about expertise raised.
Permalink to Comment3. Anton Sherwood on November 30, 2003 12:55 AM writes...
5 - Machines become ever more tightly integrated extensions of humanity.
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