THE SINGULARITY
I just began reading a book called “The Singularity is Nearer: When We Merge With AI” by Ray Kurzweil who is an engineer at Google. He is the inventor of a synthesizer that can recreate the grand piano and other instruments as well as a whole bunch of digital devices. In 2005 he wrote a book called “The Singularity is Near”. By singularity he means the point when artificial intelligence and the brain somehow become one. Most of his predictions about the future of artificial intelligence have proven true and he now thinks the singularity will happen in 2029.
All of this was taken from the blurb for the book I have just started and I take it all on faith without understanding a thing. He traces the development from the time of Alan Turing during the Second World War to the present day. He makes his points clearly with easy to understand examples, easy for someone else to understand, I am simply hanging on in awe.
But what I do understand is that a huge wave of technological change is coming that will upend everything that has happened in the last 40 years since I got my first IBM Jr. computer, the first computer that I could afford, with about 100K of memory. By that time the AI revolution was well on its way, while I and most everyone I know talks about it being somewhere in the future, as if it is something that we can make decisions about (but 40 years too late).
So that is what I have gotten out of the first 50 pages of the book. In my mind the computer has revolutionized most everything including many of the things the MAGA backlash is trying to prevent in their return to the 1950’s (which were pretty dull if you ask me). Manufacturing, world trade, transportation, communications, scientific understanding, world politics have all been, in my mind, turned upside down by the computer. But I’ve had no inkling of how the next changes will be. This time it isn’t just blue collar workers who will be dislocated, next it will be higher education, medical knowledge and the role of doctors, accountants, financial geniuses, everyone will be turned upside down. When he mentions that my brain will be attached to the cloud and I will be a million times smarter than I am now (granted starting from a low bar) it will be a completely different world. And what he is talking about is only four years away, at least for him, the rest of us will be plodding our way along guided by common sense and our elementary school education, completely unready for what is coming next and as shocked as factory workers were when our jobs suddenly vanish.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 