Vernor Vinge - Singularity

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Vernor Vinge

Department of Mathematical Sciences

San Diego State University

(This article may be reproduced for noncommercial

purposes if it is copied in its entirety,

including this notice.)

The original version of this article

was presented at the VISION-21 Symposium

sponsored by NASA Lewis Research Center and

the Ohio Aerospace Institute, March 30-31, 1993.

A slightly changed version appeared in the

Winter 1993 issue of _Whole Earth Review_.

Abstract

Within thirty years, we will have the technological

means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after,

the human era willbe ended.

Is such progress avoidable? If not to be avoided, can

events be guided so that we may survive? These questions

are investigated. Some possible answers (and some further

dangers) are presented.

_What is The Singularity?_

The acceleration of technological progress has been the central

feature of this century. I argue in this paper that we are on the edge

of change comparable to the rise of human life on Earth. The precise

cause of this change is the imminent creation by technology of

entities with greater than human intelligence. There are several means

by which science may achieve this breakthrough (and this is another

reason for having confidence that the event will occur):

o There may be developed computers that are "awake" and

superhumanly intelligent. (To date, there has been much

controversy as to whether we cancreate human equivalence in a

machine. But if the answer is "yes, we can", then there is little

doubt that beings more intelligent can be constructed shortly

thereafter.)

o Large computer networks (and their associated users) may "wake

up" as a superhumanly intelligent entity.

o Computer/human interfaces may become so intimate that users

may reasonably be considered superhumanly intelligent.

o Biological science may provide means to improve natural

human intellect.

The first three possibilities depend in large part on

improvements in computer hardware. Progress in computer hardware has

followed an amazingly steady curve in the last few decades [17]. Based

largely on this trend, I believe that the creation of greater than

human intelligence will occur during the next thirty years. (Charles

Platt [20] has pointed out that AIenthusiasts have been making claims

like this for the last thirty years. Just so I'm not guilty of a

relative-time ambiguity, let me more specific: I'll be surprised if

this event occurs before 2005 or after 2030.)

What are the consequences of this event? When greater-than-human

intelligence drives progress, that progress will be much more rapid.

In fact, there seems no reason why progress itself would not involve

the creation of still more intelligent entities -- on a still-shorter

time scale. The best analogy that I see is with the evolutionary past:

Animals can adapt to problems and make inventions, but often no faster

than natural selection can do its work -- the world acts as its own

simulator in the case of natural selection. We humans have the ability

to internalize the world and conduct "what if's" in our heads; we can

solve many problems thousands of times faster than natural selection.

Now, by creating the means to execute those simulations at much higher

speeds, we are entering a regime as radically different from our human

past as we humans are from the lower animals.

From the human point of view this change will be a throwing away

of all the previous rules, perhaps in the blink of an eye, an

exponential runaway beyond any hope of control. Developments that

before were thought might only happen in "a million years" (if ever)

will likely happen in the next century. (In [5], Greg Bear paints a

picture of the major changes happening in a matter of hours.)

I think it's fair to call this event a singularity ("the

Singularity" for the purposes of this paper). It is a point where our

old models must be discarded and a new reality rules. As we move

closer to this point, it will loom vaster and vaster over human

affairs till the notion becomes a commonplace.Yet when it finally

happens it may still be a great surprise and a greater unknown. In

the 1950s there were very few who saw it: Stan Ulam [28] paraphrased

John von Neumann as saying:

One conversation centered on the ever accelerating progress of

technology and changes in the mode of human life, which gives the

appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the

history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them,

could not continue.

Von Neumann even uses the term singularity, though it appears he

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