Recipe to achieve Singularity
So you want to help to realize the Technology Singularity and you are wondering where should you start. Below are just some of my own opinions that you probably might want to take them seriously or have a laugh.
Alright, here we go. Before we build a pyramid, there must be a good foundation design. A well-designed foundation takes time and effort to lay.
Past decades, computer scientists focused on understanding how human brain functions and did a good job in cloning some of the features found in the human brain. The most visible component is the CPU(Central Processing Unit) and memory chips to perform calculation and storing memory. This is just a small part of the recipe to achieve Singularity.
We need to shift our focus to replicate the sense organs. For humans, the sense organs are our primary teachers and without them, we cannot learn about our surrounding.
Human has these sense organs — eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and skin. Helping us to see the form, hear the sound, recognize smell, taste, and touch. The controller of these sense organs is our mind. Who or what is the controller of our minds? I leave this to you to find out yourself.
Anyway, back to the original topic. For computer(machine) to achieve singularity, the computer needs to perceive form (computer vision), hear a sound (microphone), recognize smell (olfactory - none yet), taste (none yet) and the touch (primitive technology exists today).
Our "designer" bind these sense organs to be controlled by our brain(mind). I think it is not a bad design to follow if we want to create a machine that has these sense organs. Just like pyramids, the design has to last and improve with each version.
Now, the sense organs that we want to incorporate into the machines.....they need to have their own "smaller" brain to perform localize computing instead of pushing everything to the brain for decision making. The "smaller" brain needs to have some sort of filtering algorithm to decide whether to make localize decision(such as reflex) or pass to higher chain for heavy lifting before taking the next course of action.
For example, someone or something touches your hand for the first time, instinctively you will learn about the first touch. Then for subsequent touches, you learned whether it is comfortable or repulsive. You will also learn that touch is unique to the particular person, animals, insects or objects. These have to be localized to the part of the skin where the touching occurs. Higher processing will be passed to the brain and your brain will decide to accept the touchings, reject the touchings, run for your life or look for insect repellent.
With the improvement in machine learning technology, we are able to classify objects with neural networks..., especially in computer vision. However, we are still far away from classifying touches and hearing sounds. Perhaps your startup can work on this.
For these localize sense organs information processing alone will take a while and hopefully not more than 30 years of research. I suspect that the sole reason Masayoshi Son decision to purchase the chip design firm ARM is to make chips that can replicate "biological" sense organs to their machine equivalent.
Masayoshi Son's Vision Fund could be working on refining the technologies that will be incorporated into the singularity design. To get the initial design into a working prototype, probably it will take more than 30 years and $100 billions as projected now. More young people need to be "pumped" into STEM education just to achieve this goal alone.
Till we have successfully replicated these sense organs, achieving singularity is still far away. Looking from the natural history point of view, lifeforms on earth evolved by developing senses. Micro-organisms had fewer senses than a worm. A worm lack senses such as eye and ear. There are lifeforms on this planet that can do well with just two senses, three senses, and four senses. Just enough for them to generate new generations and propagate.
Sentient beings like human have 6 senses. The number six sense organ is the mind and in the mind is where we have the ability to transcend the "simple" information generated by the senses, aggregate information generated from our sense organs, developed intelligence and ....we don't just propagate.... we created civilizations!
What next?
Assuming that we have succeeded in designing a robot that has these sense organs networking with the "non-biological" brain at light speed and the robot is able to self learn from its surrounding with its hardware sense organs, we need to incorporate the robot with a sense of purpose or at minimum incorporate a pre-defined lifespan to the machine. With a purpose and knowing death will limit the robot time, it will motivate the robot to learn faster, propagate and adapt before reaching its expiring date. Each generation will feature better and improvement of the previous generations before them. In another word, machines that evolve.
Machines that evolve is better and safer to us human beings than machines that revolve. Evolution is better than revolution. We got plenty of time in this part of the universe.
I believe that the machines that we plan to create in future to realize "Technology Singularity" goal will be under the influence of the 3 modes of nature. The mode of goodness, passion, and ignorance. From these modes, we will see the machines develop qualities such as desire, greed, peacefulness, forgiveness, vigor, lust, anger and etc.
Summary
While growing up, I remember asking my mother why the dinosaurs exist and extinct before us. Her reply was that the dinosaurs need to exist before us so that we get to pump the oil to power our industry and transport. I wonder one day, maybe the descendants of the singularity will ask why humans exist and created them. Hopefully, we will still be around and co-exist with machines peacefully and not ending up as some kind of fuel to them.
Image credits:
Preview: Michael Prewett
https://sfumatohologram.com/11-technological-singularity-and-holographic-future/
References:
https://www.wired.com/story/the-japanese-company-betting-billions-to-prepare-for-the-singularity/
See also : Consciousness for artificial intelligence? Insert brain with soul here.
By Adam Ng
IF you gain some knowledge or the information here solved your programming problem. Please consider donating to the less fortunate or some charities that you like. Apart from donation, planting trees, volunteering or reducing your carbon footprint will be great too.
