Singularitarianism

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Pages: 49. Chapters: Technological singularity, Moore's law, Vernor Vinge, Ray Kurzweil, Eliezer Yudkowsky, Hugo de Garis, Andrey Korotayev, Predictions made by Ray Kurzweil, The Singularity Is Near, The Future and You, Friendly artificial intelligence, ILabs, Stephen Euin Cobb, Indefinite lifespan, Ben Goertzel, Singularity Institute, Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever, Wirth's law, Seed AI, Alexander Chislenko, Prometheus Rising, Eamonn Healy, Superintelligence, James John Bell, Maes-Garreau Law, The Spike. Excerpt: Technological singularity refers to the hypothetical future emergence of greater-than human intelligence through technological means. Since the capabilities of such an intelligence would be difficult for an unaided human mind to comprehend, the occurrence of technological singularity is seen as an intellectual event horizon, beyond which the future becomes difficult to understand or predict. Nevertheless, proponents of the singularity typically anticipate such an event to precede an "intelligence explosion," wherein superintelligences design successive generations of increasingly powerful minds. The term was coined by science fiction writer Vernor Vinge, who argues that artificial intelligence, human biological enhancement or brain-computer interfaces could be possible causes for the singularity. The concept is popularized by futurists like Ray Kurzweil and widely expected by proponents to occur in the early to mid twenty first century. Kurzweil writes that, due to paradigm shifts, a trend of exponential growth extends Moore's law from integrated circuits to earlier transistors, vacuum tubes, relays, and electromechanical computers. He predicts that the exponential growth will continue, and that in a few decades the computing power of all computers will exceed that of human brains, with superhuman...