Tipping Point III

Nobody asked but ...

Vernor Vinge and Ray Kurzweil have called it a Singularity -- that point at which the question of getting sucked in to the black hole, or the AI takeover, becomes a foregone conclusion.  Let me first admit that Kurzweil has gone, in the last decade, from an oversimplification, to a more nuanced view.  Singularity advocates see this whole idea as a single point at which all former paradigms are replaced wholesale by all new paradigms.  I, instead, see similar changes, but in a far less monolithic event -- AI will take over some areas quickly, and others much more slowly, some never at all.  Right now, there are areas in which machine knowledge is superior to human knowledge.  There are other areas in which human knowledge is embryonic, and where we can't even know what the concrete questions are.  The devil is, however, still in the details.  I have no question that GAI can plumb the depths of detail faster and better than humans.  But I still wonder about knowing which questions to ask.  A principle question for me is will natural laws be uprooted -- an abstraction?  Or will humans be replaced by alternate intelligent organic forms first.  Nobody is telling me that the rules of natural selection are being short-circuited.

 -- Kilgore Forelle