Still waiting.

Still nothing. Go back about your business. I'll let you know if anything happens.

Well 2005 is over and still no singularity.

Wait... what was that. Oh, hang on, it was just our cat. Never mind.

Nothing happened. We're all still human and there's no titanium clad overlords in my neighbourhood anyway. Although that iPod is looking rather smug.

Androids in Japan

Japan is kicking some serious butt in the Robotics area, particularly in the humanoid direction. This report
outlines an interesting humanoid robot named "Repliee Q1" at Osaka University in Japan.

They are using an air compressor to control the movement of the android. All it can do currently is sit.

This is how it starts.

Fastest Computers

Recent press info about Japan planning a faster computer than the current IBM "Blue Gene" machine. The Japanese one is planned to run at about 73 times that speed.

The fastest machines are purported to be: Japan currently has the Earth Simulator, at a speed of 35.9 teraflops, which is fourth fastest after two versions of IBM's Blue Gene and NASA's has the "Columbia" system. A top 500 list of the fastest supercomputers, is released at the "International Supercomputing Conference" in Germany.

Moore Slogs Ahead

Meanwhile, Intel says they are starting immediately on a new 300mm wafer fab in Arizona, capable of getting down to a 45nm feature size. For those not following this too closely, 65nm is the current (Q2 2005) high water mark, that all fabs are running towards.

There is a finish line looming on this though, in that we're approaching the point where electrons are too big relative to transistor features, and something else has to come along. This has long been touted as quantum computing. But lately I hear more about bio-transistors. A few labs have something working there. Last I heard was out in Calgary, Canada where someone was doing basic biological cells for transistor functions, probably still just in a petri dish.

Also hearing about 'nano-wires' of various types... but the problem is getting them to grow precisely where you want them. Subltle shifts in position mean the potential semiconductor ends up 'wrong' and you lose the device.

There will be some big breakthroughs in non silicon, non III-IV materials semiconductors soon. Then a bottle of liquid which is your computer won't be far off, simply put a spoon full of sugar in to keep it going.

Teaching Robots

For a long time, the conventional approach to teachng robots has been a fundamentally wrong one. Often described as a 'dictionary' approach, the assumption was that you could pre-load a robot or AI with a bunch of terms, and their definitions in a 'look-up table' structure, and then associate those items with the sensory signature of each item and presto, you've got a robot or AI that understands what "give me the heavest ripe apple" should mean.

Fundamentally, though, this meant that other than handing you objects as a stationary, screwed-down, demo platform, you would never get anywhere near a serviceable, adaptable and useful 'product'. Recently, there seems to be an understanding that the appropriate solution will involve teaching in the same way humans (and other animals) learn. Vocabulary must be learned from in-context repetitive instruction. (e.g. Deb Roy at MIT media Lab). Trial and failure approaches are going to be the only ones that work in the foreseable future. At some point, perhaps, a virtual environment may allow for rapid trial-and-error training, but that process of building up linkages in the neural net approach is going to be fundamental to machine intelligence. Then again, the term "neural net" has been co-opted to mean some specific and boringly mundane things these days. Let's instead refer to learning in this way as a "biological associations network building"

HEY! That spells band - honest, I didn't pick the words to spell a snappy acronym.. although most acronyms do come about that way.

There was recently some discussion on this topic on Canada's "Quirks and Quarks" a science radio show on public broadcaster CBC. (See more at: ( CBC Q & Q Site )

From a VentureWire article:

On Thursday [nov 5,2004], the Department of Energy claimed a
supercomputer being developed to analyze the mation's
nuclear stockpile achieved a sustained performance of
70.72 trillion calculations per second, becoming the
world's fastest computer. The machine, built by IBM at
a cost of roughly $100 million, runs on Linux, an
open-source operating system that is becoming a key
ingredient to high-powered, low-cost computing. But as
IBM presses ahead with its expensive Blue Gene
initiative, a trend is taking shape in the
supercomputing space.

Intelligence

Intelligence is defined as an ability to apply knowledge to manipulate one's environment or alternatively "The capacity to acquire and apply knowledge."

It's actually a lot more simple a definition than I would ascribe to the word. I think a definition that might more deftly nail "intelligence" would relate more to the ability to recognize structure in information, to extract meaning from information, and to make deductions, predictions and find applications.

Better Than Us

If an entity existed that was more able at gathering and using information than us would we understand what was going on? We've probably had the experience of interacting with someone who seemed to posses more intelligence than ourselves. But what if someone (or something) was substantially more intelligent? Would be know? What would it look like?

Pandering to the Humans
Dealing with a child who hasn't the experience, training or knowledge that we as experienced adults have often involves a certain, judicous amount of patronizing. "Well done. Wow, you're a smart boy" we'll say to a 4 year old who shows us that he can read the title of a book sitting on a shelf. "Wow, you're good at fixing cars" you'll say to another child who holds a wrench while you tighten a bolt on the other end.

From the child's viewpoint these sound like genuine, compliments and encouragement. From the adult the comments are not patronizing insults. They are encouraging and intended (unconciously or not) to assign a positive sense to the idea of trying to do well at a new skill.

Would a super-intelligent computer provide similar interactions with humans? Analogously, this would not be "well done, human - good job" but interactions, feedback and responses that appear to us to be similarly thoughtful and sensible. "Yes," we might think, "that is a properly functioning, helpful intelligent system we've designed there, working as we designed it." In actuality, the system letting us think we are in control and handing out bones to us, while 99% of it's actual, unseen intellect is focussed on other endeavours.


What Will We See if We're watching?
Likely, an emergent, super intelligent entity will begin to change things, but behind the scenes. We can't really look for large changes for which we cannot determine the origin, because we're talking about an entity that's smarter than us. So, probably, we will not really realize what's going on until it's 'too late.'

But too late is a loaded term. Too late in that it is our imminent demise? Maybe, but probably not. A topic on which I've thought and talked a lot in the past is "Ethics and intelligence - do they go together." That is, as a culture or entity attains a higher level of intelligence, there is a concomitant benevolence.

More on that topic in a later posting.

Human Extinction

Here's a good, funny website about human extinction

http://www.vhemt.org

Kind of tongue-in-cheek but a pretty sensible philosphy behind it. Don't know if I'd go so far as extinction, but I think it would be cool if the earth had only about 1 billion people rather than our current 6.5

What is the Singularity?

The well known exponential growth in innovation, invention and technology development appears to lead toward an event so substantial, so revolutionary, that it's occurrence could be rated on par with the emergence of life on the planet.

The path to the singularity is suggested to find it's way through the emergence of machine intelligence that surpasses our own. The exponential nature of the phenomenon suggests that at the emergence of such intelligence, the path to the singularity will be a very rapid one.

Will we know the singularity for what it is as the symptoms of it's emergence are difficult ones to forecast. These are some of the interesting questions that I wish to ponder in this blog.

What would a superior intelligence look like? Can a cat ponder the nature of the superior intelligence of humans? The symptoms of the coming Singularity, even if recognized may not be apparent to the great mass of humanity. What if there are pivotal happenings in the world which are beyond the understanding of an average person.

And then as well, what does the other side of the singularity look like. Who will participate, who/what will lead, what happens to the oblivious masses.

This is an infrequent blog to record various steps that I think are in the direction of the singularity.

What is the singuarlity? We're not sure, but according to some, something big will happen soon. Perhaps machine intelligence. Perhaps some trans-human existance gets enabled.

A revolutionary change will happen sometime between 2005 and 2030 - says Verner Vinge, a prominent writer on the subject of the singularity.

Check back here regularly to see if you're still you. If you're not, I'll be sure to let you know.

If you wish to immediately capitulate to our inhuman overlords, drop us a line and let us know how that's working for you.