[photostill]

Ok what are your viewpoints and thoughts on The Singularity?

I find it hard that folks here interested in AI would not be aware of the topic. For those not familar with it, here's a short article that will give you the insight into what it represents... here.

[Art]

The editor in the Morning Joe report is an idiot and should never have had access to a computer!

He needs to read Ray Kurzweil's works, watch his videos and lectures to better understand the Singularity and the concept behind it.

The date that was shown seems flawed compared to Kurzweil's prediction as well. It is just a prediction but it could actually happen sooner than 2029. Just tomorrow (Feb. 14th), we can witness the televised contest between two of the very best human minds to ever play the verbally based game, Jeopary, against a competing computer, Watson. This computer needs to understand the nuances, puns, double entendres and meanings of various categorized answers then ring in the buzzer in time to beat the other opponents and formulate it's response in the form of a question...and hopefully be correct!

This is no trivial task for a human, let alone a computational machine! This is only 2011...imagine another 20 years from now how advanced computers might be. AI, natural language processing, speech synthesis, machine learning, logic processing, neural networks, expert systems, robots of all unimaginable sorts virtually everywhere in and intertwined in our lives!

Oh yes, this is only the opening of the cover...we've barely finished reading the foreward...now we're tuning toward the FIrst chapter.  Should be a most interesting read!!

[photostill]

Seems to me that a couple of years ago, I read a work called Singularity. It's been a while. Still sometimes one hopes to poke a finger and get things stirred up in comments. (hence the post here)

[Freddy]

Futurists are always good for a chuckle 

I am sure the day will come when this kind of thing happens, but I wouldn't put any bets on myself.  Ray Kurzweil , somehow seems to have his finger is in most of the pies out there and he's probably raking it in even though there are plenty of other people with the same kind of ideas.

Some people I think try to see too far ahead and miss what is going on in the present, as Art just illustrated.  I think these predictions being thrown around left right and centre are akin to those e-penis things you mentioned the other day.  Who will get the future right ?  I wonder...  Nostradamus can be interpreted to appear like he predicted a few things, but if you make that many predictions at least one will probably turn out to be true.

The nice thing is that anyone can do it and it's a lot of fun

Oh and they mentioned William Gibson... I really enjoyed the handful of books of his I have read.  Very entertaining all that CyberPunk stuff and quite believable at times.

[Bragi]

Death and taxes baby, death and taxes.

[photostill]

For a while I often questioned myself as to why I liked sci-fi. I finally came up with the answer that I wanted to have a clue as to what the future might bring. Admittedly there's a lot of chaff for the few kernels of possibles.

There's an old saying that if you throw enough spitballs at the wall, a few are going to stick. Basically that's what future predictions come out to be. (even though the original reference was to ideas)

No one really grabs the ramifications of some future trend. Take Buck Rogers from the 50's. He had a ray gun. We haven't seen one of those yet. Maybe the closest we have is the laser ray. You sure can't hold one those puppies in your hand. Yet it is getting down to the size that if you have a semi truck to tote the power supply or a ship, then you might be able to pull off limited mobility. No one predicted at that time, hand held laser pointers nor the idea that blinding pilots of aircraft was something that could be done with them. Today, the police forces are going bananas trying to rein in the young punk with a high powered pointer, blinding pilots on approach to a landing. That today is a big problem with over 200 incidents and growing. It gives the same sort of eyeblinding flash that looking at the sun or having a photoflash hit you in the eye for a period of time. Fixed wings of big enough size can auto-pilot out of the approach, not so with the helicopter pilot who has no auto-pilot nor anyone to pass the controls over to.

[Art]

Stepping aside from the topic for a bit is the underlying reason a lot of people enjoy Sci-Fi or Sy-Fy (as the case may be), is that it is a departure from the often mundane reality that in which each of us exist. This temporary escape offers those who indulge the journey, a trip into the mind of what might be our future with all its trappings and pitfalls.
Some are quite enjoyable while other experiences are not.

I often think of it as something akin to one of my old favorites from my youth, The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits (a spin off around the same time). These shows fueled the fire of fantasy and sometimes offered visions of a possible future. Usually those stories ended with a similar message or moral and not always pleasant: Be careful what you wish for...you might get it!

With the "coming" Singularity...it will no doubt arrive. When? No one really knows but as mentioned, if enough people ascribe to enough varied dates, someone will be proclaimed as genius...a prophet! And the singularity, much like the Matrix, will have us!!