As I’m writing this, I’m sitting on the roof deck of my
friend Chris’ mother’s house in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. I’m five stories above the Pacific Ocean, but because of the way the sound collects
on the concrete structures below and around her house, the acoustics of the
crashing waves are actually amplified, making it sound louder than if I were
sitting on the beach ten feet from the break. The house is wired throughout, and I’ve got some Tito Puente playing on
my iPod through the stereo three stories below, which of course fires out the
tiki bar speakers on the roof. Now, as
the sun prepares to set midway through my first vacation in about three years,
I was struck by an insatiable urge to whip out the ole’ laptop and update my
blog for the first time in a long while. Isn’t technology great?
In fact, it so happens that technology is going to be the
focus of this post. I recently finished Doris Kearns Goodwin’s
biography of Abe Lincoln Team of Rivals (which
is a truly amazing book and deserves a blog post of its own), and when I closed
out the last page, I found myself so emotionally impacted by the amazing
character and character-based accomplishments of this man that I needed
something very different for a next book. So, I grabbed a Christmas present
from my Mom and Dad, Ray Kurzweil’s The
Singularity is Near. And different is what I got.
For people who are not familiar with Ray Kurzweil, it’s
worth pointing out up-front that he is one of the most peer-respected
inventors, thinkers and futurists around today, with, as his bio points out, “a
twenty year track record of accurate predictions,” largely rooted in the future
of technology. PBS named him one of
“16 revolutionaries that made America”,
along with other inventors over the past two centuries. He is the recipient of 13 honorary
doctorates, as well as the Lemelson-MIT prize, which is apparently the world’s
most prestigious prize for innovation. In short, the guy is no dummy.
The Singularity is
Near is in many ways a simple book with a simple premise; that people
mistakenly view the future, and the future pace of change, with an inherently
linear frame, and as such, most people on the planet are essentially oblivious
to the fact that technological innovation and adoption progress exponentially
(and in some cases with an exponential exponent). More importantly, few people have an
accurate idea of just how vast the changes that are coming down the pipe are,
and how soon these paradigm shifting technologies will be here.
Understanding the
Exponential Pace
Let’s think about this for a second. I know that I have certainly been guilty of
using this linear frame to think about the future. Looking back, a common view of paradigm shifting
technologies is that they happen about once a generation, and the same pace
will hold true through our lifetimes. But this breaks down with closer inspection. It took the telephone about 60 years to
become a mainstream technology. Radio,
which was invented nearly 30 years later, took over 30 years to become
mainstream. Television, took about 25
years to become mainstream. The PC,
which was invented nearly 40 years later, took less than 20 years to become
mainstream. But here’s where things
get interesting, as we hit the “knee of the curve” (a term used to describe the
point where the exponential nature of a curve really kicks in) following the PC. Mobile phones followed less than 10 years
after the invention of the PC and became mainstream in just over 10 years. Most recently, the World Wide Web went from
first commercialization to fully adopted mainstream technology in 7 years. As he points out the in book, according to
this exponential pace post-knee “technological progress in the 21st
century will be the equivalent of two hundred centuries of progress (at the
[linear] rate of progress in 2000).”
How is This Possible?
If you consider this statement – that we will have two
hundred centuries (20,000 years) of progress, at the current rate of
development, in the next 100 years – it’s totally understandable if you’re
reaction is something along the lines of “No way. That’s impossible.” But
closer analysis will help you understand how something like this could make
sense. Most non-technophobes are
familiar with Moore’s
Law – an observation made by Gordon Moore, the founder of Intel, in the
mid-1970’s that we double the number of transistors on an integrated circuit of
the same size every 24 months. This
has held true since then and is expected to hold true at least through 2020,
and probably indefinitely beyond with the shift to three-dimensional molecular
computing. What does this mean to those
of us in the rest of the world, who use computers to send email and watch
YouTube clips, and who are more familiar with Roger Moore than Gordon? It means that computer processing power
doubles every 2 years. But what’s
really interesting, and what helps make an outrageous statement like the one
above make at least some rational sense is that processing power is not the
only technological component subject to Moore’s
Law-like exponential advances. The
same is true microprocessor cost, RAM prices, magnetic storage capacity and
many others. When you boil it all down
and consider how advanced computing power already is, then subject it to the
already proven continual exponential growth, it’s hard to argue with his
conjecture that by mid-2020’s, every person on the planet will have the ability
to buy a $1,000 computer with enough computational power to equal all cumulative
human thought throughout history (nearly 10 billion people) in less than one
thousandth of a second.
Then, when you consider the application-oriented impact that
all of this processing power is already having, you start to see the whole
picture. DNA sequencing data is growing
exponentially. Brain scanning
capability (resolution and speed) is growing exponentially. All aspects of nanotechnology (size,
computational power, communication capability) are shrinking or growing
exponentially, respectively. A great
example of how computational power increases effect linear models is a look at
the story of the human genome project. Quoting
from the book, “When the human-genome scan got underway in 1990 critics pointed
out that given the speed with which the genome could then be scanned, it would
take thousands of years to finish the project. Yet the fifteen-year project was completely slightly ahead of schedule
with a first draft in 2003.”
It is in this light that I started to understand just how
different the tools of tomorrow will be from the tools of today. But, this is still just the backdrop of
the post – albeit a necessary backdrop in order to appreciate the legitimacy of
Kurzweil’s main point and real subject of my post. Kurzweil’s central point is that as the computational
power of available technology reaches that of the human brain, and then quickly
surpasses it and all collective human brains, non-biological intelligence will
become the driver of progress and will no longer be slowed down by human boundaries,
thereby growing the exponent exponentially until all matter and energy near us
in the universe is used for computation and the storage of information. If
this last part sounds like a bit of a stretch, consider what happens as we pass
the point where non-biological intelligence surpasses biological intelligence,
which he refers to as “the singularity”. After this point, non-biological intelligence will be able to evolve
itself drawing off of a combination of (i) its super-intelligence, (ii) instantaneous
access via the Internet to all available human knowledge at all times, (iii)
the fact that non-biological intelligence is much more efficient at
transferring information from one node to another vs. human’s highly
inefficient language-based sharing mechanisms and (iv) the fact that it doesn’t
need coffee breaks or get tired. Oh
yeah, and don’t forget that it will continue to get access to exponentially
more computational power over time after the singularity, at the very least – a
point that is almost certainly dramatically over conservative given the fact
that the current exponential growth pace is based on non-superintelligent human
progress. How realistic is this? Well, artificial intelligence (AI) systems
are already in use today doing things like scheduling airline traffic,
reviewing data from surveillance satellites, monitoring the stock markets for
insider trading and other fraud, and aerospace engineers have even been using
genetic algorithms (so-called because of their ability to actually evolve on
their own) to design highly sophisticated equipment like new jet engines. In short, the integration of non-biological
intelligence into society is already well underway.
Before we get to the singularity though, the first step will
be the integration of biological and non-biological intelligence, and this was
actually much more interesting for me because as I thought about it, I was
somewhat stunned to realize that I actually believed it was possible in the
somewhat near-term given the exponential advance frame from above. Naturally, this is a highly controversial
topic, and one that will undoubtedly be met with highly emotional responses –
namely fear, disgust, disbelief and outright rejection. And understandably so, as this quickly
becomes a religious question (readers of this blog will now finally understand
why I choose this topic as the first thing to write about in so long).
D.A.R.Y.L. on
Steroids
The integration of biological and non-biological
intelligence has already begun with numerous experiments ranging from hybrid
neural networks to devices aimed at replacing damaged areas of the brain
causing diseases like Parkinson’s. But
this is only the beginning. Kurzweil
believes that by the 2040’s, we will have fully non-biological entities that we
could upload new or existing human personalities to that will be able to easily
pass the Turing test – essentially meaning that they will be conversationally utterly
indistinguishable from biological humans. As far as I can tell, people will fall into two camps on this matter. People who are in any way religious or faith
grounded (even so casually that they might frequently say that they are not
religious at all), will find it very difficult to believe that this is possible. It
just clashes too much with a traditional view of the human soul. In their minds, even if these non-biological
entities are possible (a point they will certainly contest) and no matter how
realistic, they will believe in their heart that these things will not truly behave
like humans, and most importantly, they will not BE human. Purely rational atheists who view the human
body as nothing more than a highly evolved machine, made up of nothing but
chemical and electrical mysteries that are all ultimately solvable with the
proper equipment and insight, will find themselves believing this to be
possible. Perhaps they will be as
shocked at themselves as I was as I thought about this, as viewing their own
personalities in the frame of nothing more than an elaborately evolved
collection of analog and digital, chemical and electrical processes can be a
disconcerting thought experiment.
If we can perfectly reverse engineer the brain (and if you
fall in the purely rational camp, there seems to be no reason to believe that
we will not be able to do so with the proper advances in technology – which
seem to be right around the corner as per the above backdrop information), can
we so easily say that a non-biological person would be any less “human?” Again, from a purely rational perspective, I
think the answer has to be ‘no’. If
the engineering is perfect and the non-biological brain functions exactly as
the biological one, it would be hard to view this non-biological entity as
casually as we view a toaster, for example.
What would the creation of non-biological humans mean to
modern monotheistic religions that are built around the central role of
humanity in the universe and their interplay with a God? If people are just biological machines that
can be perfectly replicated by other people, does this in any way damage God’s
role in the universe or the legitimacy of His accomplishments? Or
conversely, what could the failure to achieve something like this given
adequate technology mean to atheists and their beliefs about the essentially random
and ultimately irrelevant role of humans in the universe?
While one could easily look at this impending success or
failure point and think that it will represent an “answer” to some of the super-questions
like ‘does God exist’, I’m sad (or happy – depending upon how you want to look
at it) to say that I don’t think this will happen at all. Ultimately, I don’t see the results of advances
in this technology, or any technology for that matter, shedding much light on
these questions. It may shift the goal
posts a bit, so to speak, but as has happened again and again throughout the
progress of science, the more philosophical role of God should remain
untouched. As I’ve mentioned in
previous posts on topics like Intelligent Design, regardless of how much we
learn about what the physical rules of the universe are and how things work the
way they do, there is simply nothing that science can ever offer us about WHY
the rules are as they are. Astrophysicists
can tell you Einstein’s cosmological constant to fifteen decimal places and
tell you what that means to the expansion of the universe, but they can’t tell
you why it is what it is.
But long before we get to have that argument over campfires
with our non-biological fishing buddies, however, there seem to be a lot of
practical questions that need to be addressed as we head towards “the
singularity.” As a soon-to-be parent
and the husband of a teacher, it strikes me that we’ll likely need to give the
entire education system a major upgrade, probably a lot sooner than people
think. With so much of today’s
education focused on the accumulation of a somewhat narrow base of knowledge
across a wide array of subjects which will enable us to function productively
in society, it seems that the focus of curricula will need to be adapted to
make us more efficient and effective users of the tools that will be at our
disposal. For example, I doubt it will it still make
sense to spend months learning the key dates and names of the American civil
war or the advance of the European explorers, when we will be able to download
the entirety of this information into the non-biological component of our
brains in a matter of minutes. Instead,
it seems that the focus should be reoriented towards exercises that help future
generations harness their creativity to better use the technology at their
disposal. This creativity can be then
be applied to subtopics like problem solving, the arts, interpersonal dynamics (conflict
resolution, etc.), critical analysis and design. Instead of learning about General George
McClellan’s failed 1862 Peninsula Campaign, students might instead be asked WHY
he failed against General Lee’s smaller army, and to design a tactical
simulation that would have succeeded in accomplishing Lincoln’s goal at the
time – namely, ending the civil war three years earlier than it ultimately did,
and saving tens of thousands of American lives. I have to admit, taking all of the time in
schools that is currently needed for data/background accumulation and
transitioning it to guided critical analysis sounds pretty interesting to me
and makes me somewhat jealous of our kids.
What does this mean
for real estate prices?
Ultimately, regardless of whether or not these technological
advances happen exactly according to Kurzweil’s aggressive timeframe, it does
seem likely that we will experience his three revolutions (genetics,
nanotechnology and robotics) during our lifetimes. While
the scope of what we can expect in the future unfortunately takes the wind out
of my sails a bit on my excitement over wifi networks and iPods overlooking the
Pacific, it does open up a whole host of questions. And isn’t the inherently human characteristic
of asking questions what life is all about?
So, as I prepare to shut down my computer and go back to the
task of staring at the ocean, I strangely find myself stuck wondering about
what genetic and nanotechnology advances will mean to real estate prices in New York City. Assuming we can extend life essentially
indefinitely through gene therapy and nanobot-based cellular repair, it seems
that the population growth will skyrocket and real estate prices will continue
their relentless ascent. Maybe buying
a place in New York does make sense? Of course, after the singularity
it sounds like we will all be living in virtual Victorian mansions inside our $1,000
laptop supercomputers, which does make a $2 million studio apartment seem a bit
unnecessary. Oh well, I guess we’ll
just have to let it play out. And
anyway, it’s time to change the Tito.