Six scenarios for the Technological Singularity
Written by John Moravec on Monday, September 10, 2007 at 9:33
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Two articles related to the Singularity Summit have appeared on preparing for the Technological Singularity:
First, Jamais Cascio writes on a Metaverse Roadmap Overview:
In this work, along with my colleagues John Smart and Jerry Paffendorf, I sketch out four scenarios of how a combination of forces driving the development of immersive, richly connected information technologies may play out over the next decade. But what has struck me more recently about the Roadmap scenarios is that the four worlds could also represent four pathways to a Singularity. Not just in terms of the technologies, but — more importantly — in terms of the social and cultural choices we make while building those technologies.
The scenarios explored are:
- Virtual Worlds: the combination of simulation and intimate (highly personalized) technologie
- Mirror Worlds: the intersection of simulation and externally-focused technologies
- Augmented Reality: the collision of augmentation and external technologies
- Lifelogging: brings together augmentation and intimate technologies to record the experiences and histories of objects and users (what Cascio refers to as “participatory panopticon“)
Second, Bryan Gardiner writes on the Wired blog that Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal, multi-millionaire Facebook backer, and the president of Clarium Capital Management, a global macro hedge fund, is devising a Singularity-aware investment strategy based on two, polarized scenarios in a near-future world where machines will become smarter than humans:
- Negative scenario: where machines won’t need us and humans become expendable
- Positive scenario: where humans would still have a positive outlook
Regardless of the two scenarios, Gardiner points out that the volatile booms and busts over recent years are indicative of the market’s attempts to align itself with near-Singularity transformations:
In essence, he argues that each of these booms represent different bets on the singularity, or at least on various things that are proxies for it, like globalization. What’s more, we’ve been seeing them now for over 30 years.
The markets are catching on to accelerating change. Why not bet on the Singularity in our schools as well?
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Category: Accelerating Change, The Singularity
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