<\/p>\n
<\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>It is with sadness \u2014 and deep appreciation of my friend and colleague \u2014 that I must report the passing of Vernor Vinge.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>The <b>technological singularity <\/b>\u2014or simply the <b>singularity<\/b><sup id=\u201d cite_ref-1\u201d class=\u201d reference\u201d>[1] <\/sup>\u2014is a <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Hypothetical\" class=\"\" title=\"Hypothetical\">hypothetical<\/a> future point in time at which technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible, resulting in unforeseeable consequences for human civilization.<sup id=\u201d cite_ref-2\u201d class=\u201d reference\u201d>[2]<\/sup><sup id=\u201d cite_ref-Singularity_hypotheses_3-0\u201d class=\u201d reference\u201d>[3]<\/sup> According to the most popular version of the singularity hypothesis, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/I._J._Good\" title=\"I. J. Good\">I. J. Good<\/a>\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Technological_singularity#Intelligence_explosion\">intelligence explosion<\/a> model, an upgradable <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Intelligent_agent\" title=\"Intelligent agent\">intelligent agent<\/a> will eventually enter a \u201crunaway reaction\u201d of self-improvement cycles, each new and more intelligent generation appearing more and more rapidly, causing an \u201cexplosion\u201d in intelligence and resulting in a powerful <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Superintelligence\" title=\"Superintelligence\">superintelligence<\/a> that qualitatively far surpasses all <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Human_intelligence\" title=\"Human intelligence\">human intelligence<\/a>.<sup id=\u201d cite_ref-vinge1993_4-0\u201d class=\u201d reference\u201d>[4]<\/sup><\/p>\n<p>The first person to use the concept of a \u201csingularity\u201d in the technological context was the 20th-century Hungarian-American mathematician <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/John_von_Neumann\" title=\"John von Neumann\">John von Neumann<\/a>.<sup id=\u201d cite_ref-5\u201d class=\u201d reference\u201d>[5]<\/sup> <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Stanislaw_Ulam\" class=\"\" title=\"Stanislaw Ulam\">Stanislaw Ulam<\/a> reports in 1958 an earlier discussion with von Neumann \u201ccentered on the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Accelerating_change\" title=\"Accelerating change\">accelerating progress<\/a> of technology and changes in the mode of human life, which gives the appearance of approaching some essential <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/singularity\" class=\"\" title=\"wiktionary: singularity\">singularity<\/a> in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could not continue\u201d.<sup id=\u201d cite_ref-ulam1958_6-0\u201d class=\u201d reference\u201d>[6]<\/sup> Subsequent authors have echoed this viewpoint.<sup id=\u201d cite_ref-Singularity_hypotheses_3-1\u201d class=\u201d reference\u201d>[3]<\/sup><sup id=\u201d cite_ref-chalmers2010_7-0\u201d class=\u201d reference\u201d>[7]<\/sup><\/p>\n<p>The concept and the term \u201csingularity\u201d were popularized by <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Vernor_Vinge\" title=\"Vernor Vinge\">Vernor Vinge<\/a> first in 1983 in an article that claimed that once humans create intelligences greater than their own, there will be a technological and social transition similar in some sense to \u201cthe knotted space-time at the center of a black hole\u201d,<sup id=\u201d cite_ref-dooling2008-88_8-0\u201d class=\u201d reference\u201d>[8]<\/sup> and later in his 1993 essay <i>The Coming Technological Singularity<\/i>,<sup id=\u201d cite_ref-vinge1993_4-1\u201d class=\u201d reference\u201d>[4]<\/sup><sup id=\u201d cite_ref-chalmers2010_7-1\u201d class=\u201d reference\u201d>[7]<\/sup> in which he wrote that it would signal the end of the human era, as the new superintelligence would continue to upgrade itself and would advance technologically at an incomprehensible rate. He wrote that he would be surprised if it occurred before 2005 or after 2030.<sup id=\u201d cite_ref-vinge1993_4-2\u201d class=\u201d reference\u201d>[4]<\/sup> Another significant contributor to wider circulation of the notion was <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ray_Kurzweil\" title=\"Ray Kurzweil\">Ray Kurzweil<\/a>\u2019s 2005 book <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Singularity_Is_Near\" title=\"The Singularity Is Near\"><i>The Singularity Is Near<\/i><\/a>, predicting singularity by 2045.<sup id=\u201d cite_ref-chalmers2010_7-2\u201d class=\u201d reference\u201d>[7]<\/sup>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It is with sadness \u2014 and deep appreciation of my friend and colleague \u2014 that I must report the passing of Vernor Vinge. The technological singularity \u2014or simply the singularity[1] \u2014is a hypothetical future point in time at which technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible, resulting in unforeseeable consequences for human civilization.[2][3] According to the [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":716,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,2018,64],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-185755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cosmology","category-ray-kurzweil","category-singularity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185755","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/716"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185755"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185755\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}