"Vernor Vinge - Technological Singularity" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vinge Vernor)

1. What Is The Singularity?

The acceleration of technological progress has been the central
feature of this century. 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. Science may achieve this breakthrough by several means (and
this is another reason for having confidence that the event will occur):
Computers that are "awake" and superhumanly intelligent may be developed.
(To date, there has been much controversy as to whether we can create
human equivalence in a machine. But if the answer is "yes," then there is
little doubt that more intelligent beings can be constructed shortly there-
after.)

Large computer networks and their associated users may "wake up" as super-
humanly intelligent entities.

Computer/human interfaces may become so intimate that users may reasonably
be considered superhumanly intelligent.

Biological science may provide means to improve natural human intellect.

The first three possibilities depend on improvements in computer
hardware. Progress in hardware has followed an amazingly steady curve in
the last few decades. Based on this trend, I believe that the creation of
greater-than-human intelligence will occur during the next thirty years.
(Charles Platt has pointed out that AI enthusiasts have been making claims
like this for thirty years. Just so I'm not guilty of a relative-time
ambiguity, let me be 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 I see is to 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 could. 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.

This change will be a throwing-away of all the human rules, perhaps in
the blink of an eye -- an exponential runaway beyond any hope of control.
Developments that were thought might only happen in "a million years" (if
ever) will likely happen in the next century.