Have we reached tech ’ s tipping point ?
The promise and the peril of technology is something which futurist Ray Kurzweil has long been debating . As technological growth gathers pace , and we see an accelerated increase in futuristic technologies such as robotics and artificial intelligence ( AI ), computers and genetic manipulation , the point of no return rises before us .
Popularised as ‘ the singularity ’ by science fiction author Vernor Vinge in 1993 ( who borrowed the term from 1940s physicist John von Neumann ) the most remarkable outcome of this unfolding and tech-driven human evolution would be , said Vinge in a 2013 interview with Science , Technology & The Future : “… creating minds that were more intelligent in all ways than humans ”.
In the past the arrival of this hypothetical point seemed somewhat distant , given the limitations of technology , but today it is not only possible to talk of achieving singularity , but to see it unfolding before our very eyes .
Just around the corner ?
While Kurzweil projected that humankind would arrive at this technological singularity point around 2045 , just last year Elon Musk , the South Africa-born founder of electric auto maker Tesla and space transportation company SpaceX , told The New York Times that he saw AI overtaking human capabilities by 2025 .
“ We are headed toward a situation where AI is vastly smarter than humans and I think that time frame is less than five years from now .
“ But that does not mean that everything goes to hell in five years . It just means that things get unstable or weird ,” Musk told the newspaper .
How weird ? An example is Neuralink ’ s The Link brain chip that Musk describes as a “ Fitbit in your skull with tiny wires ”. The Link was implanted into a pig to showcase its ability to read brain signals . It has the potential to download memories onto a computer , to achieve enhanced vision and even to cure addiction or anxiety .
And Musk argues that these advances can and must be regulated given the tremendous impact advanced AI developments will have on the human species .
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