The Singularity - Official Thread

[Tadasuke]

It's trendy to see the future either as 99.9-100% perfect or the worst possible. It's quite often portrayed as either 1 or 0. Binary thinking. Either 100% white or 100% black. No shades of gray. This isn't motivating or helpful at all in my opinion.

If the future is 100% perfect utopia with everything you wish for and you don't need to do anything to get to it, then you just sit idly, waiting for it to happen. If the future is 100% apocalypse or dystopia, then you have no incentive to do anything, because things are going to hell anyway and you alone aren't going to change that.

It's religious thinking. Either salvation or perdition.

Compared to the 17th century, we live longer, faster, richer, more comfortable, more varied, more enlightened, more fun lives. But it's not utopia. Why do people expect the 25th century to be 1 or 0?

We might for example experience four hundred years of 1% yearly global population growth, 3% total GDP growth and 13% computing/price growth. Therefore, in the year 2423, this would mean 428 billion people, 136 000x larger total product of human-machine civilization and 1.7*10^21 more computing for a constant price adjusted for inflation. This wouldn't be Singularity, it would just be gradual (and exponential) growth over centuries accumulating to huge changes over time. I find that more likely. And this doesn't go against reversing aging. I still think aging is going to be solved this century.

[Vakanai]

Ray Kurzweil's idea and prediction for a 2023 $1000 laptop : 20 petaflops of FP32 (3D carbon nanotube lattices processors), 10 TB of RAM (40 TB/s), 1 PB of SSD

real 2013 $1000 laptop : 1 teraflops, 16 GB of RAM (30 GB/s), 1 TB of HDD, 1920x1080 60Hz

real 2023 $1000 laptop : 10 teraflops, 16 GB of RAM (90 GB/s), 1 TB of SSD, 1920x1080 144Hz

Therefore, facts show that Technological Singularity is just fiction. A made-up idea. Good for books or movies. Not for real life.

For real life, I advocate and promote thinking, talking and writing about protopia, instead of dystopia or utopia (which is very common among singularitarians).

Strong disagree - just because yet another fallible human failed to predict one aspect of the future on time doesn't negate the basic concept of singularity - that at some point technology will reach a point where we can't predict what's going to happen next because of how fast it advances. Arguably we're almost in a mini-singularity already that's just solely focused on AI. Who in 2016 really thought we'd have the AI advancements of the last couple years? Not me.

[Powers]

Ray Kurzweil's idea and prediction for a 2023 $1000 laptop : 20 petaflops of FP32 (3D carbon nanotube lattices processors), 10 TB of RAM (40 TB/s), 1 PB of SSD

real 2013 $1000 laptop : 1 teraflops, 16 GB of RAM (30 GB/s), 1 TB of HDD, 1920x1080 60Hz

real 2023 $1000 laptop : 10 teraflops, 16 GB of RAM (90 GB/s), 1 TB of SSD, 1920x1080 144Hz

Therefore, facts show that Technological Singularity is just fiction. A made-up idea. Good for books or movies. Not for real life.

For real life, I advocate and promote thinking, talking and writing about protopia, instead of dystopia or utopia (which is very common among singularitarians).

Strong disagree - just because yet another fallible human failed to predict one aspect of the future on time doesn't negate the basic concept of singularity - that at some point technology will reach a point where we can't predict what's going to happen next because of how fast it advances. Arguably we're almost in a mini-singularity already that's just solely focused on AI. Who in 2016 really thought we'd have the AI advancements of the last couple years? Not me.

No offense but I thought you were the same user lol. Must be the avatar, same with funkervogt and wjfox.

[Tadasuke]

In 2016, I thought that in 2023, two billion people would go around all-day everyday, wearing AR glasses or AR contact lenses or brain implants, each with approximately the power of the current Nvidia DGX H100 workstation. In reality, we just have slightly better smartphones, slightly better laptops and slightly better AI.

I am currently 99% convinced, that Technological Singularity won't happen, it's just a mistaken idea in my opinion, like many other mistaken ideas of the past (i.e. all the "end of the world" predictions). Exponential growth ≠ Singularity.

Acceleration of computing growth and of GDP growth has diminished in the last 15 years. Supercomputers, servers, tower PCs, laptops, smartphones, single board computers, gaming consoles ← wherever you look, specs/price and performance/energy consumption are rising at a lower acceleration than in the past. For example, instead of 5.5% yearly GDP growth we see 3%, instead of 60% specs/price computer improvement we see 15-20%, instead of 40% performance/energy consumption advancement we see 15-20% every year. And AI is mostly very dumb, I tried various AIs this year. It's still a positive improvement of course, for example if you compare Zen 2 to Zen 4 or Zen 5. Or if you compare RDNA 1 to RDNA 3. Or CDNA 1 to CDNA 3. But you know what I mean.

[wjfox]

In 2016, I thought that in 2023, two billion people would go around all-day everyday, wearing AR glasses or AR contact lenses or brain implants, each with approximately the power of the current Nvidia DGX H100 workstation. In reality, we just have slightly better smartphones, slightly better laptops and slightly better AI.

I wouldn't call GPT-4 "slightly" better. It's pretty near passing the Turing Test.

And in some ways, phones are much better now. Camera quality, data transfer speeds, memory, etc. all improved exponentially. Then there's the integration of biometrics, sensors for health tracking, etc. as well as improved batteries, wireless charging, durability, water resistance, and so on.

I don't remember anyone predicting "billions with AR or brain implants" by 2023.

[erowind]

I remember most people talking about AR being in its infancy around now which it is and not really taking off taking off until the late 2020s at the earliest. I think it's expected to be as ubiquitous as smartphones more in the 2040s-2050s.

I have noticed the slowdown in specification upgrades for desktop and laptop computers though. OEMs genuinely are selling computers that are similarly outfitted to how they were 10 years ago minus some CPU improvements.

[funkervogt]

In 2016, I thought that in 2023, two billion people would go around all-day everyday, wearing AR glasses or AR contact lenses or brain implants, each with approximately the power of the current Nvidia DGX H100 workstation. In reality, we just have slightly better smartphones, slightly better laptops and slightly better AI.

I wouldn't call GPT-4 "slightly" better. It's pretty near passing the Turing Test.

And in some ways, phones are much better now. Camera quality, data transfer speeds, memory, etc. all improved exponentially. Then there's the integration of biometrics, sensors for health tracking, etc. as well as improved batteries, wireless charging, durability, water resistance, and so on.

I don't remember anyone predicting "billions with AR or brain implants" by 2023.

In 2016, very few people would have thought AI would have made the advances it has by now, and the fact that they're making creative jobs obsolete before mundane jobs like flipping burgers is a bolt out of the blue.

I actually think we're better off having these kinds of improvements in AI by 2023 instead of having AR/VR be widely used.

[Cyber_Rebel]

VR & AR take off (truly) the moment they become fully integrated into AI. It will be way too appealing for most people to hold conversations with digitized celebrities, historical figures, influencers, and of course, waifus/husbandos. I honestly don't think the lack for physical sensation will matter much initially if VR avatars are convincing enough to fool the brain.

What's coming out of Meta integrated with GPT-5 and Apple Vision Pro is all you need.

[Vakanai]

VR & AR take off (truly) the moment they become fully integrated into AI. It will be way too appealing for most people to hold conversations with digitized celebrities, historical figures, influencers, and of course, waifus/husbandos. I honestly don't think the lack for physical sensation will matter much initially if VR avatars are convincing enough to fool the brain.

What's coming out of Meta integrated with GPT-5 and Apple Vision Pro is all you need.

Eh, I think it'll go a long way for some, but I still think weight/comfort/form factor and being both as good as PCVR while still being mobile/unthethered with 8+ hours battery life per charge (or at least 4 hours) is needed. People are damn picky, and as cool as an AI Einstein or Scarlett Johansson to talk to will be, ultimately people will still view it as gimmicky once they get used to it. Humans are very annoyance-centered, no matter how good things are otherwise we'll always focus more on the negatives, and nothing is as negative as discomfort, and standalone headsets are bulky.

Plus some people still get dizzy or get headaches from VR even now.

[Tadasuke]

And in some ways, phones are much better now. Camera quality, data transfer speeds, memory, etc. all improved exponentially. Then there's the integration of biometrics, sensors for health tracking, etc. as well as improved batteries, wireless charging, durability, water resistance, and so on.

I don't really see phones being that much better year over year, similarly laptops. My friend had water resistance in his phone back in early 2013, it's nothing new. USB 3.0 was in Galaxy S5 in 2014. Tracking steps was in the Pokéwalker pedometer back in 2009 (for use with Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver).