A brief history of the notion of the Singularity, why some think it is coming soon, why some disagree, and why some are afraid of it. This is a very old presentation. See the updated one at www.scaruffi.com/singular

1. The Singularity
and you
piero scaruffi
www.scaruffi.com
March 2015
"The person who says it cannot be done
should not interrupt the person doing it"
(Chinese proverb)

2. 2
Thinking about Thought
(four volume reader of my UC Berkeley class)

3. 3
A History of Silicon Valley

4. 4
Intelligence is not Artificial
Why the Singularity is not Coming any
Time Soon & other Meditations on the
Post-Human Condition and the Future
of Intelligence

5. 5
The Singularity Debate
Good, Irving John: "Speculations
Concerning the First
Ultraintelligent Machine"
(1964)
Moravec, Hans: "Mind Children"
(1988)
Vinge, Vernon: "The Singularity"
(1993)
Kurzweil, Ray: "The Singularity Is
Near" (2005)
5
Ray Kurzweil at the
Singularity University

6. 6
Progress in A.I.
1997: IBM's "Deep Blue" chess
machine beats the world's chess
champion, Garry Kasparov
2003: Hiroshi Ishiguro's Actroid, a
robot that looks like a young
woman
2006: Geoffrey Hinton's Deep Belief
Networks (a fast learning
algorithm for restricted Boltzmann
machines)
2008: Adrian Bowyer's 3D Printer
builds a copy of itself at the
University of Bath
6

7. 7
Progress in A.I.
2011: IBM's Watson debuts on a tv
show
2012: Google’s software learns to
find cat videos
2014: Vladimir Veselov's and
Eugene Demchenko's
program Eugene Goostman,
which simulates a 13-year-old
Ukrainian boy, passes the
Turing test at the Royal
Society in London
7

8. 8
Progress in A.I.
2014: Deep Knowledge Ventures (Hong Kong)
appoints an algorithm to its board of directors
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9. 9
The Singularity
Ray Kurzweil’s predictions
• Infinite life extension: “Medical technology
will be more than a thousand times more
advanced than it is today… every new
year of research guaranteeing at least
one more year of life expectancy”* (2022)
• Precise computer simulations of all
regions of the human brain (2027)
• Small computers will have the same
processing power as human brains (2029)
• 2030s: Mind uploading - humans become
software-based
• 2045: The Singularity
9* recently postponed to 2040

10. 10
The Singularity
Ray Kurzweil’s predictions
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11. 11
To be worried or not to be worried?
(Hamlet 2015)
Demystifying A.I.
A.I. is everything that machines can't do
When a machine does it, then it is no
longer A.I. (John McCarthy)
Demonizing A.I.
Elon Musk: “The human race’s biggest
existential threat”
Stephen Hawking: “The end of the human
race”
Piero: “What we understand is not enough to
understand why we understand it”
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12. 12
The Singularity?
Five arguments against the Singularity
1. Reality Check
2. Accelerating Progress?
3. Non-human Intelligence
4. Human Intelligence
5. A Critique of the Turing Test
12

13. 13
The Singularity?
More:
Slideshare -> Scaruffi -> Artificial
Intelligence and the Singularity (200
slides)
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