Berlin, 2020. Alongside an interview with Howard Rheingold, we explored the main theme ‘The End of Utopia?’. This included a discussion on ‘Singularity: Point-of-no-Return to Utopia or Dystopia?’. Here’s a summary:
Today’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a technically limited assistant, often not much smarter than a person with natural stupidity. However, through machine learning and exponentially accelerated progress, these weak assistants will soon become expert geniuses. The idea of singularity is that there will be a moment when machines start improving themselves forcefully, leading from expert geniuses to a universal machine genius. It’s the point where humans recognize this universal AI as having strong intelligence, growing exponentially and quickly surpassing human intelligence by a wide margin. It’s the turning point where there’s no going back to a world without this AI. If this universal AI is given decision-making and action-taking abilities, society will change into either a positively utopian or negatively dystopian society, depending on the moral stance the AI adopts. […]
The full text (in german) can be found here:
Singularität: Point-of-no-Return zur Utopie oder Dystopie? (researchgate.net)