Abstract
The concept of the technological singularity is frequently reified. Futurist forecasts inferred from this imprecise reification are then criticized, and the reified ideas are incorporated in the core concept. In this paper, I try to disentangle the facts related to the technological singularity from more speculative beliefs about the possibility of creating artificial general intelligence. I use the theory of metasystem transitions and the concept of universal evolution to analyze some misconceptions about the technological singularity. While it may be neither purely technological, nor truly singular, we can predict that the next transition will take place, and that the emerged metasystem will demonstrate exponential growth in complexity with a doubling time of less than half a year, exceeding the complexity of the existing cybernetic systems in few decades.
Highlights
What we can say is that the universal evolution will continue, and metasystems transitions will take place leading to cybernetic systems of much greater complexity than that of a single human without tools
One might choose to define a scenario with the creation of autonomous artificial superintelligence as Singularity, but others could define a Singularity as any scenario with the creation of any kind of superintelligence
I do not defend claims about AI here ( I found it necessary to mention some of them), and mainly focus on what we can say about Singularity, namely: some metasystem transition will most likely take place within a certain time range, and the emerged metasystem will demonstrate exponential growth of its complexity with the doubling time less than half year exceeding the complexity of the existing cybernetic systems in few decades
Summary
Some speculations may seem to go too far (e.g., [2]) with strong but ungrounded statements and predictions This should not devalue the idea itself, and criticism of such ungrounded claims should not be considered an argument against the Singularity correctly understood. The responsibility for such misconceptions lies with the adepts of the Singularity themselves, since they not infrequently assert all their beliefs and desires simultaneously, assuming that they can reinforce each other. Their critics seek the weakest points assuming that refuting them will render the whole concept invalid. They are usually biased by their desires which can be expressed as “Singularity is impossible because we do not want humans to disappear.”. I will give a definition of Singularity in terms of metasystem transitions as an objective phenomenon without referring to any particular technology
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