Singularity

The current WIRED magazine has a very interesting article by Kevin Kelly about the Planetary Computer. In this inexorable march towards convergence where every device talks with everything else, there is a planetary "brain" evolving. Consider the mind-boggling numbers:

  • 1.2 billion personal computers
  • 92 quadrillion transistors
  • 1.2 trillion MB RAM
  • 960 billion MHz CPU speed
  • 72 trillion MB data storage
  • 446 million Mbps bandwidth

Of course right now it is "just" hardware, and there is no externally designed software to use this awesome machine (There is endogenous software which is being programmed by the actions of human beings.)

IEEE Spectrum's recent issue was about Technological Singularity (This article explains what Singularity is all about). Their conclusion was that Singularity was unlikely to happen. I am not so sure. Look at the data about the Planetary Computer. This is a system that is already orders of magnitude more complex than the brain and that is evolving on a time-scale of days and years, not hundreds of thousands of years as in biological evolution. I think Singularity is going to sneak up on us in a way that we have no way of predicting. Super-human technological intellegence is already here!

I have many questions about this. For instance, as I see it, the planetary brain will start becoming "conscious" way before it becomes "self-aware". There is a whole gamut of consciousness from the amoeba to the human. So how would one detect such an event?

My friend Karl pointed out that we have managed to create insect-level brains in silico. I want to know what the implication are for self-organization and evolution of such brains. For instance, how can we bootstrap such brains and let them evolve? What will happen if a million of such brains are networked together?

I think we are at the cusp of the next quantum leap in the evolution of humanity. This time we have technology to assist us and accelerate the process.

PS: As I thought about the planetary computer more I realized a big problem. Yes, a large number of PCs are connected to the Internet and yes, the potential processing power is mind-boggling. BUT, these PCs are not truly available for computation. They are not true "nerve-cells" of this planetary brain because they do not participate in the global computation. The information flow to and from them is asymmetric - the whole Internet is accessible to them, but they are not accessible to the Internet. The only exception are the "screensaver" programs from specific companies that are allowed to use the PC's idle power for specific purposes (such as the famous SETI screensaver). I do not know when or how this will change, but if it does, we might very well have an instant Singularity!

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