Kurzweil is wrong

Kurzweil’s Law of Accelerating returns does not mean what Kurzweil argues it does. He demonstrates an exponential increase over time in the rate of telecommunication, which governs the rate of change, and a similar increase in computational power for a given unit of value, both of which to a certain extent govern the rate of human innovation, because computers can solve through stocastic or brute-force methods problems which are virtually random in terms of the time it takes for spontaneous human innovation, and communication helps the assemblage of disparate ideas into a singular whole.

However, spontaneous human innovation presents a completely unpredictable factor in futurism, and progress, as an epiphenomenon of change, is inherently unpredictable. Kurzweil’s Law does not represent an absolute metric of progress, only an absolute metric of the rate of change which only assists in the eventual convergence of progressive systems, but one which outside forces can throw askew at any time. Futurist predictions rely almost completely on predictions that after a certain amount of time innovation will inevitably emerge, but such an approach is a mistake, a logical fallacy which results from the static analysis of a highly dynamic system. There are so many random, unpredictable components to the system that it simply becomes impossible to give anything a specific deadline. The abstractions that humans build upon are going to become increasingly complex, and the ability to predict the timescales of completion of such tasks, particularly the abstraction of the entire system of the universe into a human-created universal-universe abstractor system, something known as Artifical General Intelligence (AGI), become that much more unpredictable.

Tinges of Revelation begin to peak their head out. Much like the rapture, no one will know the hour of AGI’s birth. The rate of change, accelerated by the increasing speed of the telecommunications network which drives the motivating factors for change at an ever-increasing pace, means that as time goes by the rate at which the invention of AGI could transform society only quickens. Its creation represents a trigger for sweeping change whose potential grows more profound with each passing day. The cause of this trigger remains spontaneous human innovation, but there are certain precursors we can look for which give definite assurances that AGI is near.

The first would be a revolution in neurophysiology, specifically the creation of a comprehensive and falsifiable model of the operation of the human brain. To my knowledge there is but one individual working towards this goal, Jeff Hawkins, creator of the Palm Pilot, who has since founded the Redwood Neuroscience Institute with the goal of developing a comprehensive theory of the operating of the brain, and the company Numenta who seeks to implement in software his memory-prediction framework, a conceptual model of what many see as the three most important centers of the brain surrounding consciousness: the neocortex which represents the perceiver process, the thalamus which represents conscious state perceived by the neocortex, continuously altered by feedback loops between the two of them, and the hippocampus, the brain’s archivist which saves the state of these feedback loops to permanent memory. Hawkins hypothesizes that these three parts of the brain comprise the fundamental structures which represent consciousness in his book On Intelligence, which lays out the memory-prediction framework his company is attempting to develop. This potential path is also governed by the results of the Blue Brain Project, presently using the world’s most powerful supercomputer architecture to simulate the behavior of the fundamental unity of the rodent neocortex. The results of that study will give dramatic insights to those working on a comprehensive, scientific theory of the brain’s operation, including Jeff Hawkins. It’s potential that with enough empirical scientific research into and modeling of the functional operation of the human brain, the closer we will come to having the knowledge to implement artificial general intelligence.

The second path involves increasing our intelligence of cellular and molecular biology to the point that we are able to create a computer simulation of the human developmental process from fertilized egg to human baby. In such a simulation the only limitations on the types of data we can collect are the error from imprecision of the model, the timesteps that the simulation is run over, and the storage limitations for the types of data that can be collected. The first point will likely not matter for any virtual baby which we can carry to term through a cellular model: due to the complex intracacies of the human developmental process, any simulation error apt to have an effect after the end of the virtual gestation period will likely have a negligable effect on the subsequent baby, otherwise the developmental process will fail and a human baby will never be constructed in simulation. Given the massive amounts of data that would be available from such a simulation, it’s likely the precise structure of human consciousness could be derived from the data using only analysis of the resulting simulation data. Thus the other harbinger of AGI you need to be on the look out for are computer models of multicellular organisms, which will eventually give way to full scale simulations of human beings. This potential path is governed by the results of the Blue Gene Project, presently using the world’s most powerful supercomputer to simulate the inner workings of the most complex and confounding aspect of intracellular behavior: protein folding. We are coming to understand it only through an atom-by-atom simulation of forces, particularly Gibbs Free Energy, which beomes one of the dominating factors in the folding pathways and kinetics of proteins.

While I said before that human innovation is completely unpredictable, I believe all other paths to AGI will ultimately lead to failure. While I admit that there is the potential that someone taking an unscientific, completely conceptual approach to understanding the mind may leap frog everyone else by spontaneously coming up with the “right answer”, I believe the two horsemen of the technological infocalypse to bet on are a comprehensive theory of the brain and biomodeling. I also believe these two fields represent the two most beneficial scientific studies mankind can undertake, because I believe the fruits of their labor will eventually lead to AGI more than any other type of research.

I’m sad to say that I do not believe that the MIT AI lab, the Singularity Institute, or any other group advocating direct research into AGI at the present time, or even advocating a non-biological approach towards successive steps towards AGI, will accomplish anything before the biological movement does, because while the former movement relies on the completely sporadic and unpredictable process of human innovation, the latter makes continous progress through scientific research into the problem. While the former will eventually usurp the results of the latter to create AGI, until that time comes we are floundering. There is much more we need to understand about nature before AGI becomes a possibility, and when the prerequisite natural knowlege is in place, we will make the leap to a post-AGI, post-Singularity society where were are no longer, in any way, bound by the limitations of nature, but are free to puruse our own ends in an environment free from natural consequences, a heavenly world solely of mind. However, unlike the pictured posthumous utopia of the dominant religions, this utopia would go to the survivors: those who could preserve their patterns long enough that they could forever save them from the continous onslaught of natural forces which tended towards entropy and thus the destruction of highly complex patterns, preferring diffuse apatternistic formations which tend toward equilibrium.

Exact progress towards comprehensive models of either the human brain or low-level human biology is difficult to determine. Save for Jeff Hawkins, there are no notable people working toward the former goal, and none that I have ever heard of working toward the latter. Until humanity gets its priorities straight, realizes that AGI, or rather, “Friendly AI” is a moral imperative, and chooses the best route for pursuing this goal, it will remain elusive. The more humanity becomes focused towards achieving AGI as a goal, and focuses on realistic prerequisites, the sooner AGI will happen.

I very much wish that humanity would focus its efforts on the creation of either a comprehensive theory of the human brain, or perfecting cellular biomodeling to the point that complex multicellular entites could be simulated. These two pursuits will, more than any other, bring us closer to Singularity. As to which one will win out in the end I am uncertain. At this time BlueGene is beating BlueBrain in terms of total computational power, and that is all I can say. The exact prerequisite structure for either task to fall into place as AGI is unknown and immense, so at this point, I think it’s really either discipline’s game.

May the best discipline win. I just hope the public will eventually realize the need to support you both.

The Singularity could occur within 5 years. It could occur within 50 years. Who’s to say? The sheer number of assumptions which are required to predict a timeframe are incomprehensibly immense, at least for any human. My ultimate point is that the Singularity isn’t anything to plan your life around: it will happen when it happens, and no sooner, or not at all, and we will all die. Enjoy yourselves for now, and know that the status quo, or thereabouts, is going to stick around, getting a little better all the time, until the final trigger is pulled and AGI is created. And while I may see that event happen with a head full of wetware, smirking at these remarks, until the prerequisite triggers are in place, to the general public all of you Singularitarians and transhumanists all sound like jackasses for talking about the transhuman age where we will live on as immortal transhuman entities. You can’t predict the trigger, I can’t predict the trigger, and until that happens your fantasies are merely science fiction. The birth of Friendly AGI will truly represent a day when the universe changes.