The Singularity and the Fixed Point
• Technology ReviewSome futurists such as Ray Kurzweil have hypothesized that we will
someday soon pass through a singularity--that is, a time period of
rapid technological change beyond which we cannot envision the future
of society. Most visions of this singularity focus on the creation of
machines intelligent enough to devise machines even more intelligent
than themselves, and so forth recursively, thus launching a positive
feedback loop of intelligence amplification. It's an intriguing
thought. (One of the first things I wanted to do when I got to MIT as
an undergraduate was to build a robot scientist that could make
discoveries faster and better than anyone else.) Even the CTO of Intel,
Justin Rattner, has publicly speculated recently that we're well on our
way to this singularity, and conferences like the Singularity Summit
(at which I'll be speaking in October) are exploring how such transformations might take place.