Consciousness and the Apocalypse, Part 2 of 4: Creating 'God' Because We Need Him
We're dead-set on replacing God with ourselves at the same time we admit we're nowhere near as capable as He is.
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What Happens After the Singularity?
What's the singularity again...?
Depends on your perspective and which part of this definition you prefer; on the one hand, the “singularity” occurs when technological innovation accelerates to a point beyond which humans can no longer control it. At this point we assume that innovation also becomes irreversible, since it'll largely be up to that technology to decide whether to evolve or devolve itself. On the other hand, as technologist and former Google engineer Ray Kurzweil has posited, the “singularity” occurs when man and machine become one...yes like in The Terminator. Apparently Kurzweil aims to "live forever," and he's adamant he just might—if he can last until age-defying tech catches up with his speculative mind. It's almost impossible to know what life will be like immediately before and after that moment; I'm not sure we'll even recognize the moment if/when we live it. But I’m having trouble wrapping my mind around something…not whether tech can achieve escape velocity but for what and why we’re aiming for that in the first place.
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We'll Make 'God' in Our Own Image
Which is backwards, if you're paying attention; I know not everyone agrees. The quest for artificial intelligence (AI) has been won in some quarters already, at limited scale and scope. Think about the algorithms social media platforms rely on while hawking you as their product. The search and filter functions on YouTube, for example, are a primitive form of AI that attempts to predict your preferences and intended goals as it offers suggestion after suggestion. Beyond search algorithms are products like Google's “Magic Editor,” available on the company's Pixel smartphone (apparently for customers 18+ only). This editing feature lets you to change reality in the photo. You can change a person's position in space, expressions and gestures, or even remove people entirely. I'm sure there's more you can do with it; Google reminds users the feature is “experimental,” though the implications of “augmented reality” and such surgical editing are profound. All thanks to generative AI, computer-based “intelligence” that “creates” content. Generative AI accesses loads of data (via sources provided or programmed by humans) to predictively make something new by combining a user prompt and what else in the world (i.e., in its dataset) might be relevant. I'm not doing the concept justice but if you're at all wondering why this is a big deal, just focus on the fact that the computer…creates the content. In theory the only limitation is
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