{"id":29964,"date":"2016-09-08T11:49:53","date_gmt":"2016-09-08T18:49:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/09\/building-a-stairway-to-the-singularity"},"modified":"2017-04-24T19:42:22","modified_gmt":"2017-04-25T02:42:22","slug":"building-a-stairway-to-the-singularity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/09\/building-a-stairway-to-the-singularity","title":{"rendered":"Building a stairway to the singularity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/building-a-stairway-to-the-singularity.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A computer\u2019s victory over a human go master this past March reminds us of the pending \u201csingularity\u201d \u2014 the rapidly approaching moment in time when artificial intelligence overtakes human intelligence. Machines will learn, and we won\u2019t be their teachers. Are we prepared for it? <em>Can<\/em> we prepare for it?<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019d better. Many futurists declare it inevitable, probably within a generation, maybe less. Shukan Shincho magazine discusses some hypothetical implications in its Aug. 25 edition. Even the least of them are shocking. For example, in 2045 a computer with the combined intellectual power of the entire human race would cost $100. In short, it\u2019ll be no big deal. What <em>will<\/em> be a big deal? Should we shudder at the thought, or rejoice?<\/p>\n<p>Francis Bacon (1561\u22121626) is generally acknowledged as the grandfather of modern science. \u201cNature, to be commanded, must be obeyed,\u201d he wrote. His fictional \u201cNew Atlantis\u201d was a utopia ruled by scientists who, having admitted their ignorance and purged themselves of illusory knowledge, experimented, observed and slowly built up from scratch an ever-expanding store of \u201ctrue\u201d knowledge \u2014 armed with which they \u201ccommanded\u201d nature to outgrow her destructive caprices and ease mankind\u2019s lot.<\/p>\n<p><!-- Link: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.japantimes.co.jp\/news\/2016\/09\/03\/national\/media-national\/building-stairway-singularity\/#.V9GnUZgrKCi\">http:\/\/www.japantimes.co.jp\/news\/2016\/09\/03\/national\/media-n...9GnUZgrKCi<\/a> --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A computer\u2019s victory over a human go master this past March reminds us of the pending \u201csingularity\u201d \u2014 the rapidly approaching moment in time when artificial intelligence overtakes human intelligence. Machines will learn, and we won\u2019t be their teachers. Are we prepared for it? Can we prepare for it? We\u2019d better. Many futurists declare it [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":409,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1523,6,64],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computing","category-robotics-ai","category-singularity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29964","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\/409"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29964"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29964\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49912,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29964\/revisions\/49912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}