The idea of the Singularity is not recent: in 1958 Stanislaw Ulam reported discussing with John Van Neumann a “singularity in the history of the race beyond which the afflictions of human beings, as we know them, cannot continue.”
A few years later, in 1965, statistician I. J. Good associated the singularity with the advent of superhuman intelligence:
“An ultra-intelligent machine could design better and better machines; therefore, there would be an “intelligence explosion,” and human intelligence would be left far behind. Therefore, the first ultra-intelligent machine will be the last invention that man will need to make.”
In 1993 Vernor Vinge wrote the essay “Technological Singularity,” in which he prophesied the transformation of humans into a new form of superhuman intelligence, superior to Homo Sapiens.
Ray Kurzweil, who is considered Singularity’s principal theorist, focuses instead on the exponential acceleration of technology beyond Moore’s Law (“The complexity of a microcircuit, as measured, for example, by the number of transistors per chip, doubles every 18 months”), and thus on the accelerating progress of technology and humanity in the universe.
The idea of Singularity also alludes to a process of innovation that when triggered does not lead to the technology being overtaken by others, but to its exponential and potentially infinite expansion.
Contrasting Ray Kurzweil’s thinking is Federico Faggin, the father of the microprocessor, who, for his part, doubts that the singularity can be realized on the technical level and is inspired by a vision that recovers the intrinsic value of man endowed with consciousness and as such difficult to replace with the machine.
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