Second is problem of artificially speeding up thinking speed, while its seen as a great thing to increase the evolution of thinking from a viewpoint of technological advances, how does the AI respond by having its subjective time effectively increased to x vs. real time. In other words how does time affect the AI over what could be subjectively 10,000 years for ever minute(or whatever), thats longer then human civilization has ever existed, long enough for anything to happen, yet the time is just seen as inconsequential in being a actual tradeoff. Would the AI even exist that long, and how are you designing it to exist that long if it does?

How is the system being designed to even have a goal structure over that long?, considering we can't design something to last that long even now?

Second detatchment from reality, we see this all the time with people living in fantasy worlds(world of warcraft whatever), if the AI or Upload can design a reality as good as ours, what's to prevent it from living in it, what's the kick? keeping it here in our reality, and related what is to prevent its own artificial reality from attaining more validity in formulation of various hypothesis or actions then our reality, in other words what's to prevent it from going insane, rather like people do all the time?

A couple things to keep in mind are that 1) the Singularity is a technological milestone, not the products or progeny of that milestone; and 2) the hallmark of a technological singularity is that all models for predicting our progress become unreliable, not that progress becomes unlimited. There will always be a plateau, but a singularity has occurred when we can't say with any degree of certainty just where that plateau will be. I agree that the Singularitarians who expect "unlimited" progress are thinking magically and don't properly understand what they're talking about, and a more conservative outlook is called for. However, I also think that the most extravagant predictions (except the totally impossible ones) are plausible to a degree (albeit a small one), for the reason that Socrates could not have conceived of the LHC - it is so far beyond his experience that he would have no way to think of it, it would be utterly alien to him, and so things may become to us due to a technological development. Maybe even in our lifetime. Some such developments will doubtless occur in the wake of the next technological singularity, AI or otherwise.

(If that's not too much already, I have a more in-depth version of this response - especially point D - on my "yes I'm vaguely ashamed to admit I have a" livejournal, which is linked as my website (same date as this comment).)

Problem is that there's a bunch of versions of "the Singularity". The original was better-than-human intelligence, period (Vinge).

The original notion came from I. J. Good in 1965.

Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an ‘intelligence explosion,’ and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make. (Source)

Damien R. S.:

Then an idea that as we improved our intelligence, so the next generation could improve theirs, even faster because they were smarter. (fallacy: they might be more complex as well, taking more work to self-improve.)

Despite the fact that they can do more work in a given time and handle more complexity than us humans. Even a simple speed increase would be worthwhile without an increase in complexity and it really is a fallacy to assume that it won't happen.

Damien R. S.:

Which is probably ridiculous,

So is heavier than air flight but that doesn't stop anyone from getting on a 737.

Damien R. S.:

Vinge's four paths to Singularity were AI, cybernetic enhancement of humans, cybernetic links *between* humans (groupminds), and purely biological enhancement of humans (which itself could be genetic, drugs, manipulated brain development, or others.)

Yes, if a human were uploaded they might end up starting it, even just an augmented human might be able to start it although AI does look more promising.

Damien R. S.:

And what happens to liberal democracy when you can duplicate a voter in a few minutes, or send off your own suicide bombers?

That will be interesting to see.

One thing I can say is that it is essential to liberal democracy that we not stop transhumanism as some idiots have suggested (it's not like a country could stop technological progress and remain a liberal democracy anyway).

Damien R. S.:

Personally I kind of think "the Singularity" is a poisoned term, and prefer to talk of a Cognitive Revolution, what happens when we can manipulate mind.

Which would be just like replacing "atheist" with some other word (bright, etc), completely pointless.

Which is probably ridiculous, but just because some people have latched onto that as "the Singularity" doesn't make the original version of "when we can make beings smarter than us then weird things happen" go away. And note I said beings, not machines; Vinge's four paths to Singularity were AI, cybernetic enhancement of humans, cybernetic links *between* humans (groupminds), and purely biological enhancement of humans (which itself could be genetic, drugs, manipulated brain development, or others.)

Conversely, AI or uploads could make things go very weird very quickly without being smarter at all. Unaging beings who can be duplicated at will. Data collection a bottleneck? Mass produce your scientists. Motivations will probably strongly if not perfectly manipulable. And what happens to liberal democracy when you can duplicate a voter in a few minutes, or send off your own suicide bombers?

Personally I kind of think "the Singularity" is a poisoned term, and prefer to talk of a Cognitive Revolution, what happens when we can manipulate mind.

At the back of the book, Kurzweil answers nearly every one of his critics' arguments, including virtually every point you've raised here.

I think you set up a straw man of Singularitarian claims (god-like super-intelligence) and then easily knock it down. At least Kurzweil's view is far more nuanced and limited, and allows for far more uncertainty than you give credit for.

As for greater ability to gather data, are you kidding me? The interconnection of the internet will increase just as exponentially as computing power. Sensors, cameras, cell phones and biometric data are already allowing some truly freaky pattern recognition to occur whereby the grid is aware of who you are, where you are, what you are doing, who you are with, etc. That information has not yet been effectively brought together, but it will be. The grid/web will have trillions of available data gathering nodes of all types. Both the natural and human world will be positively brimming with instrumentation. We can expect sensors to shrink in size, drop in cost, and increase in sensitivity to the point where even frivolous uses would be cost effective. Applications? A bartender could have a display of whose drinks were getting empty. So every product, even disposable cups and such will probably wirelessly transmit some kind of state information.

In short, we don't know where this is headed or what the Singularity will or will not be. It's an extrapolation of trends with some possible implications that point in a general direction, not a prediction. All the predictions you showed which turned out to be laughably wrong were extremely specific.

Kurzweil's predictions about levels of machine intelligence have been holding true since he started making them in 1990.

For someone of your awareness to be able to look at the amazing and converging progress in Computing, Communication, Genetics, Nanotechnology, and Robotics and concluding something like artificial human-level intelligence will never happen is, I'm sorry, really troubling. There has to be some level of denial. You have to have some personal stake in this not happening--in the permanent and irrefutable specialness and supremacy of humanity over machines--to be this blind. As some other commenters have remarked, it sounds almost like dualism. When you talk about having to "understand the brain fully in order to understand even a part of it." it's like you think there's some force or property of the brain that's inherently incomprehensible and irreducible (shades of ID there). If you're not a dualist, and if you reject supernaturalism, what could possibly be in a physical brain that could not be reverse-engineered and duplicated, given the time??

I predict you will sound as laughably wrong about this by 2040 as Napoleon or Lord Haldane. But what do I know? That's a personal, not a scientific prediction. I admit I don't know. I hope I live to find out. The Singularity sounds plausible, but I don't really know. On this point, you think you know, and you're basing your opinion on a "feeling"--it's "argument from personal incredulity," not really from hard evidence. (Since you can't prove a negative). That's the most troubling part. Your anti-singularity fervor (and this is not the first statement you've made about it) does not seem to be rational.

I could totally understand if you said it was unlikely. But you said "I reject the notion." That's pretty strong. You have to admit humanity may figure out how to construct and program an artificial brain to the level of human intelligence. Even if they just duplicated it in software, or genetically produced it in a lab. It's possible. By Moore's Law, we will have the computing power of a human brain for $1,000 in just 12 years.

Someone could also figure out how to wire up both natural and artificial brains to the internet. Simple forms of direct neural interface have already been accomplished. If those two things happened, then some form of the Singularity is possible.

Come on, Ebonmuse. You've taken a pretty indefensible position. Come back to rational skepticism. Admit you don't really know. Admit it's possible.

Ipetrich pointed out the name of the fundamental fallacy - the fallacy of composition (thanks Ipetrich). Searle proponents such as your previous commenter likes to call this "The Systems Response" as if that somehow avoids the fundamental thrust of the response - that the Chinese Room is a fallacy. There's no point in going past this point and discussing the consequences of the thought experiment when at its based on a fallacy. But the other thread has perfect examples of your readers doing just that.

But yet they go on, using a faulty machine (not a Turing machine) and fallacious logic to argue that the real difference is that Searle's system is purely a symbol manipulation mechanism that gives us no insight into human understanding. Well "duh", if it's not even remotely capable of doing what a computer does, then you can make whatever point you want about it. But it's got nothing to say about computers.

To extend your argument, Ebon, a real Turing machine could easily have a contextual understanding if we simply gave it all the pieces that Searle's proponents claim are missing. We give it a dictionary, thesaurus and a picture dictionary. And we give it the ability to learn new words by allowing users to slide a picture, a word, a definition, a list of synonyms under the door. A true Turing machine not only remembers its previous state (context), but it can learn by being re-programmable.

Wait, now doesn't that sound like begging the question? Searle set out to prove that a Turing machine is incapable of giving us insight into human understanding by designing a machine with the explicit purpose of giving us no insight into human understanding. I did say he was begging the question earlier, and this is why.

We live in a chaotic world, and it is very nearly impossible to see the full ramifications of any particular development in the long term.

On the other hand, we do witness an exponential curve. We do witness change after change following one another with ever increasing rapidity. Teenage slang changing as it is being reported, and more frighteningly: the previous generation being very nearly able to comprehend it because of new media. New media themselves: who's got a bluetooth headset? Who synchronizes documents when passing a convenient hotspot? Who carries around their own personal area network (PAN) consisting of headsets, phones, notebooks and PDA's? Environmental interconnectivity and intelligence are increasing just as fast as the speed of single-type processors, or the number of switches per nanometer. Is it then really so hard to imagine a time when that environment is so complex, so fast changing, that it is beyond the ability of an unaugmented human mind to comprehend?

We're not expecting gods to step out of our networks and part the seas, you know?

Searle also claimed that he was challenging the Turing machine with his thought experiment. Yet, what he had set up was not even a fully functional Turing machine. You cannot re-program it. It's hardly even a calculator. That's a very audacious thing to do when you're trying to disprove the possibility of AI!