
What If the Singularity Does Not Happen - tocomment
http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/faculty/vinge/longnow/index.html
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jacquesm
It won't.

In all likelyhood it will not, so you might as well start behaving responsibly
and planning your old age.

If - and this is a very very big if - it will happen then you will have
worried for nothing about your old age, but the odds are so far against that
it is probably very smart to behave as though it won't happen.

Even if you secretly believe it will.

Think about it this way: if the continuation of Moores law over 3 decades did
not bring us strong AI then the problem is not in the hardware but in the
software.

We have a long long _long_ way to go in software before we will be able to
approach intelligence at the level of a dog, let alone something smarter than
a smart human.

The singularity, uploading and associated subjects are starting to generate
the same feelings in me as over-unity energy production using zero point
energy or magnetism.

------
lsc
see, we are the singularity. It's happening now. It started with the printing
press. I can't imagine what this world would seem like to someone born 100
years. I bet we will see that kind of rapid change in the next 50 years; then
25.... I mean, this has been happening for a long time now.

/humans/ are the machine that can make better copies of itself that can make
better copies of itself.

Edit: this has been happening since before the printing press... but I think
the printing press was the beginning of our rapid acceleration.

