New Singularity Essays
Posted on 10. Jun, 2008 by Cameron in singularity
IEEE Spectrum has a series of new essays on the singularity from the likes of Vernor Vinge and Rodney Brooks (who have both been on this show in the last year).
My favourite quote so far comes from Vinge’s new essay “Signs of the Singularity“:
“The best answer to the question, “Will computers ever be as smart as humans?†is probably “Yes, but only brieflyâ€.”
Four More Years Before Machines Surpass Humans
Posted on 09. Jun, 2008 by Cameron in science, singularity, transhumanism
Hans Moravec has suggested that the human brain has a processing capacity of 10 quadrillion instructions per second (10 billion MIPS). In comparison, it was announced today that the fastest supercomputer in the world, called Roadrunner and devised and built by engineers and scientists at I.B.M. and Los Alamos National Laboratory, is capable of handling 1.026 quadrillion calculations per second.
In 2007, it was announced the previous fastest supercomputer, IBM’s Blue Gene /l, had been upgraded to achieve 478 TFLOPS sustained and 596 TFLOPS peak. So in less that 12 months, we’ve doubled (hey, I should create a law around that prediction).
So, if Moore’s Law holds out:
2009 – 2 QIPS
2010 – 4 QIPS
2011 – 8 QIPS
2012 – 16 QIPS – which puts it 6 QIPS above the suggested ability of a human brain.
Are you ready for that? Do you think the human race is ready for that?
We have NO IDEA what the consequences of that are. On one hand, it could be nothing. On the other hand, what if sentience is nothing more than massive computation?
Either way, here we are, a mere 4 years before a machine is likely to be built which will have a bigger brain than a human and we aren’t even discussing what that means for the human race.
Well, that’s not exactly true – Tyler’s Singularity Institute are discussing it, but where is the debate in mainstream media, in the government, in polite society?
It reminds me of a chat I had with Australian SF author Damien Broderick over dinner about ten years ago. I asked him when he thought these subjects would be discussed by the general populace. He replied “when it’s way too late to do anything about it”.
Vernor Vinge’s “Rainbows End” Wins ‘Best Novel’ at Hugo Awards!
Posted on 06. Sep, 2007 by Cameron Reilly in singularity, transhumanism
Via Simon Sharwood’s twitter, I just learned that Vernor Vinge’s “Rainbows End” has just won the coveted ‘Best Novel’ award at the Hugo Awards! A massive congratulations from all at TPN to Vernor. If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend getting yourself a copy of RAINBOWS END. It is a brilliant imagining of what the net will probably look like in 2025.
Vinge was recently on G’Day World and I guess this is as good a time as any to give it another plug! Listen to my July 2007 interview with Vernor Vinge here.
G’DAY WORLD #272 – Prof Rodney Brooks, MIT
Posted on 02. Aug, 2007 by Cameron Reilly in Podcast, singularity
Rodney Brooks is Panasonic Professor of Robotics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is also Chief Technical Officer and sits on the Board of iRobot Corp. From July 1, 2003 until June 30, 2007, he was director of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory; prior to that, he was director of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.
He chatted with me this morning about my deep-seated obsession to have a humanoid robot and HAL-like AI.
Prof Brooks will be speaking at the Singularity Summit in California next month. Get your tickets here.
For more reading about the current state of robots:
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