“Are you prepared to meet your robot overlords?” Tia Ghose asks for NBC News. “The idea of superintelligent machines may sound like the plot of “The Terminator” or “The Matrix,” but many experts say the idea isn’t far-fetched. Some even think the singularity — the point at which artificial intelligence can match, and then overtake, human smarts — might happen in just 16 years.”
“But nearly every computer scientist will have a different prediction for when and how the singularity will happen,” Ghose reports. “Some believe in a Utopian future, in which humans can transcend their physical limitations with the aid of machines. But others think humans will eventually relinquish most of their abilities and gradually become absorbed into artificial intelligence (AI)-based organisms, much like the energy-making machinery in our own cells. ”
“In his book ‘The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology’ (Viking, 2005), futurist Ray Kurzweil predicted that computers will be as smart as humans by 2029, and that by 2045, ‘computers will be billions of times more powerful than unaided human intelligence,’ Kurzweil wrote in an email,” Ghose reports. “Bill Hibbard, a computer scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, doesn’t make quite as bold a prediction, but he’s nevertheless confident AI will have human-level intelligence some time in the 21st century. ‘Even if my most pessimistic guess is true, it means it’s going to happen during the lifetime of people who are already born,’ Hibbard said.”
Ghose reports, “But other AI researchers are skeptical.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: We imagine this playing out in three acts each separated by long periods of time:
“We work under you, we work on you and we work for you. Man made us better at what we do than was ever humanly possible. If you could manage us a lift to Rouge City, all this… and much, much more can be yours.”
“The Skynet Funding Bill is passed. The system goes on-line… Human decisions are removed from strategic defense. Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug… Skynet fights back.”
“That was the everlasting moment he had been waiting for. And the moment had passed, for Monica was sound asleep. More than merely asleep. Should he shake her she would never rouse. So David went to sleep too. And for the first time in his life, he went to that place where dreams are born.”