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MAHĀMAUDGALYĀYANA VISITS ANOTHER planet
MAHĀMAUDGALYĀYANA VISITS ANOTHER PLANET
MAHĀMAUDGALYĀYANA VISITS ANOTHER PLANET
A Selection from the Scripture Which Is a Repository of Great Jewels[1]
translated by Ron Epstein
Religion East and West, Issue 5, October, 2005
Translator’s Introduction
The following story is about the Venerable Mahā-maudgalyāyana,[2] an
enlightened disciple of the historical Buddha Śākyamuni.
Mahā-maudgalyāyana travels to a distant solar system, to a planet which
is inhabited by giant people, and on which there is also a Buddha with
disciples practicing under his guidance. The story, which brings to mind
Swift’s Gulliver in the land of the giants, is remarkable in many
respects. The Buddha and Mahā-maudgalyāyana both probably lived during
the fifth and sixth centuries BCE. In the European West, until the time
of Galileo (1564-1642), most educated people thought the whole cosmos
rotated around the earth and consisted of the sun and seven planets.
They did not realize that the stars were other suns. This story here
related shows that 2,500 years ago, Buddhists were aware of a vast
cosmos filled with suns and planets and sentient life. Contemporary,
scientifically oriented people often have a tendency to dismiss
non-Western cosmologies as limited, primitive, and distorted myths, in
the negative sense of that word. In this story we are presented with a
cosmology that seems much closer than the Western pre-Galilean view to
the contemporary scientific view of the physical universe. Of course the
assertions about the spiritual powers of the Buddha and
Mahā-maudgalyāyana and the size of the people on the distant planet do
not merge so easily with contemporary scientific, materialist mindsets.
In the story, Mahā-maudgalyāyana tries to find the spatial limit of the voice of the Buddha as he proclaims the Dharma[3].
Mahā-maudgalyāyana is not talking about At issue is not othe physical
voice that travels in sound waves through air. Mahā-maudgalyāyana’s
interest is in the reach of what we might today call a telepathic voice –
a voice which, if we have the proper training, we hear directly in our
minds.
This is also a cautionary tale. On
the one hand, it warns us of the danger of arrogance about our own
abilities and understandings. In the course of events,
Mahā-maudgalyāyana comes to realize both his own limitations and the
extent of the Buddha’s compassion, wisdom and power. On the other hand,
the Buddha of that other world teaches his disciples that, although
Mahā-maudgalyāyana seems ridiculously tiny and inconsequential to them,
there is much to him that does not immediately meet their eyes; he is
really worthy of their great respect. Thus the story also decries
superficial prejudice and ridicule of those who appear to be different
than ourselves. Here we have a lesson, thousands of years old, that
people of other cultures and ethnic groups deserve our respect, and not
only them, but even aliens from other worlds! I am emphasizing those
themes not because they constitute the core message of the story, which
is about the inconceivable range of the voice of the Buddha, but because
they might easily be overlooked while considering the ramifications of
the main topic.
The translation below is of a small section of the Scripture Which Is a Repository of Great Jewels, a
collection of diverse Mahayana Buddhist teachings which was first
translated into Chinese in CE 280 and which was also later translated
into Tibetan. The Indian language versions are no longer extant. The
selection translated here is part of a section entitled “The Assembly
[Taught by] Vajrapāṇi,” which also circulated as a separate scripture.[4] The main theme of the section is the inconceivable hidden qualities of the bodies, the voices, and the minds of the Buddhas.
Text
Vajrapāṇi[5] again spoke to the Bodhisattva Quiet Resolve: “I am now observing everywhere: all the celestial demons[6] and brahma-gods in the worlds of the heavens, the Buddhist monks[7] and
Brahmins, and all the other gods and humans. None is able to find any
limit to how far away the words proclaimed by the Thus Come One[8] can be heard. Why? I myself recall an incident that took placewhen the World-Honored One[9] was on Vulture Peak[10],
surrounded by a retinue of all the Bodhisattvas, and was promulgating
for the sake of vast numbers of living beings a scripture of Dharma
called ‘The Range of the Pure Voice’.
“At that time, after the Bodhisattva
Maitreya had made an assertion about that range, the worthy
Mahā-maudgalyāyana had this thought, ‘I wish to test how far the voice
of the Thus Come One carries.’ Then Mahā-maudgalyāyana suddenly
disappeared from his seat. Reappearing on the summit of Mount Sumeru, he
heard the voice of the Buddha as if he were right in front of him. He
then used his spiritual power of unimpeded functioning of the body[11] to
journey to the very edge of this Great World-System of a Billion
Worlds. He passed through myriads of worlds, each with its Mount Sumeru,
four continents, and all the rings of Iron Mountain Ranges. On the
summit of the very farthest ring of Iron Mountains, he still heard the
voice of the Buddha. It was just as before, without any difference, as
if it were near and not far away.
“The Buddha thought to himself,
‘Since Maudgalyāyana wishes to test the range of pure voice of the Thus
Come One, I should now allow him to do so’. Then the World-Honored One
generated spiritual power. At that time Maudgalyāyana acknowledged the
noble purpose of the Buddha in doing so, and Maudgalyāyana accepted that
spiritual power from him, so that he was able to go to a location in a
westerly direction that was even farther away. In doing so, he passed
through Buddhalands as numerous as the grains of sand in ninety-nine
Ganges Rivers to a world-system called Banner of Light in which a Buddha
resided. In that Buddhaland, a Buddha named King of Light, a Thus Come
One, an Arhat[12], a Samyaksambuddha[13],
was right then speaking the Dharma. Maudgalyāyana went there and, in
that Buddhaland as before, heard the Buddha’s voice just as a person
standing before him would hear his words.
“In the Buddhaland Banner of Light, the light is very bright. The body of the Buddha of that land is eight miles (?)[14] tall,
and the bodies of all the Bodhisattvas are four miles tall. The bowls
from which the Bodhisattvas eat are a fifth of a mile high.
“After Maudgalyāyana alighted atop
the rim of a bowl, all the Bodhisattvas asked that World-Honored One,
‘Great Sage, please tell us where this bug, who is wearing the clothes
of a Buddhist monk[15] and has alighted on the rim of this bowl, came from.”’
“Then that Buddha said, ‘All of you
sons of good families, be careful not to be purposely disrespectful
towards this worthy one. Why? This elder’s name is Mahā-maudgalyāyana.
Among all the great disciples of the Buddha Śākyamuni who were
enlightened directly from hearing his teachings,[16] he is foremost in spiritual powers.’
“Then the Buddha King of Light said
to Mahā-maudgalyāyana, ‘The Bodhisattvas and all the Enlightened Hearers
in my land saw that your esteemed body is small and all became
disrespectful. If you have received the noble permission of the Buddha
Śākyamuni, whose virtue is awe-inspiring, you, humane one, should
display your spiritual powers.’
“At that time Mahā-maudgalyāyana
went to where the Buddha King of Light was and bowed at his feet. Then,
after circumambulating that Buddha in a clockwise direction seven times,
he stood in front of him and said, ‘With this very body I wish to sit
in full lotus position. Will this place be large enough to for my body
to fit in?’
‘That Buddha said, ‘Whatever will please you.’
“Then Mahā-maudgalyāyana leapt
eighty million feet up into the sky. There, in that treasured realm, he
then created a couch and sat in full lotus position upon it. From that
location, sitting upon the couch, he suspended ten billion nayutas[17] of
precious pearl necklaces all variously named. Each pearl of each
necklace emitted a hundred thousand rays of light. In each ray of light
was a lotus flower. And a body of the Buddha Śākyamuni appeared sitting
atop each one of those lotus flowers. Their voices sounded like that of
Śākyamuni. With clarity and purity they proclaimed the Sutras, in just
the same way as he proclaims them, without any difference.
“Then the Mahā-maudgalyāyana, having
finished displaying his spiritual powers, returned to his place in
front of that Buddha. At that time all those Bodhisattvas obtained what
they never had before. They wondered about it, and so they said to that
Buddha, ‘Why has Mahā-maudgalyāyana come to this world?’
“That World-Honored One said to
them, ‘He came to this land because he wished to test how far the voice
of the Buddha Śākyamuni travels.’
“Then the Buddha King of Light said
to the worthy Mahā-maudgalyāyana, “’umane one, it is not fitting to test
how far the voice of the Thus Come One, the Arhats, travels; it has no
limit, no far or near. How could you wish to know its limits? You,
eminent one, are making an extremely great error. Maudgalyāyana, if you,
humane one, were to use your spiritual powers to pass through eons[18]as numerous as the grains of sands in the riverand
travel in a westerly direction without resting, you would still not get
to know all the places where the voice of the Thus Come One is heard.
The vast range of the voices of the Buddhas, the Thus Come Ones,
absolutely transcends any limits. Their voices are majestic and
infinite, and cannot be understood even by means of analogy.’
“At that time Mahā-maudgalyāyana prostrated himself at the feet of that World-Honored One and repentedof
his transgressions: ‘Yes, World-Honored One, because I myself was not
intelligent enough to understand that the voice of the Buddhas has no
limit, I unfortunately wished to know what was the farthest distance at
which it could still be heard.’
“The Buddha King of Light then said
to Maudgalyāyana, ‘Even so, you came from far away and passed through
Buddha-worlds as numerous as the sands in ninety-nine rivers to get to
this Buddha-land.’
“Maudgalyāyana again spoke to that
Buddha: ‘O God among gods, I have come extremely far, extremely far
indeed. My body is so extremely fatigued that I cannot return to my
homeland.’
“That World-Honored One said to him,
‘Maudgalyāyana, what is your opinion? Did you use your own spiritual
power to get to this world? Do not take that view. You are here in this
world because of the awesome virtuous power of the World-Honored One
Śākyamuni. From afar you should take refuge with the Buddha Śākyamuni
and bow your head in worship of him. Then that Buddha can, by activating
his noble intent, return you, humane one, to your homeland. Esteemed
one, if you wished to use your own spiritual power to return to your
homeland, even after an eon you would still not have arrived there.
Esteemed one, since you would not have arrived, you would not be there
in time to see the Buddha Śākyamuni[19] enter Nirvana. Maudgalyāyana, what is your opinion? What region am I in: east, south, west, or north?”’
“Maudgalyāyana answered, ‘I do not
know what region. Because I am now disoriented, I don’t know where my
homeland is or in what direction it is.’
“That World-Honored One said to Maudgalyāyana, ‘The Buddha Śākyamuni is east of here.’
“Then the Mahā-maudgalyāyana put his
right knee on the ground and placed his palms together, taking refuge
towards the east, where the Buddha Śākyamuni was. At that time he spoke
these verses:
‘The One who alone is honored by both gods and humans,
Who is seen to bestow his strength and thoughts of compassion,
Whose awesome power of virtue reaches great and majestic heights;
’The One whom both gods and humans revere,
Whose voice travels infinitely,
And whose wisdom is without bound;
‘His is the land in which I wish to reappear,
And so I now desire to return there’.”
Vajrapāṇi said, “So it is, Quiet Resolve, that the voice of all Buddhas, World-Honored Ones, is without boundary or limit.
“As the Buddha Śākyamuni was
strolling atop Vulture Peak, Śāriputra heard that loud voice transmitted
by the worthy Mahā-maudgalyāyana and wondered about the reason for it,
but it was the worthy Ānanda who first asked the Buddha, ‘Who is it who
is now asking for refuge in such a loud voice, so that he can return
from so far away?’
“The Buddha said to Ānanda,
‘Mahā-maudgalyāyana has been in the Western regions for many years. He
traveled through Buddha-lands as numerous as the grains of sand in
ninety-nine rivers and reached a world called Banner of Light. The
Buddha of that land is called King of Light Thus Come One, an Arhat, who
is right now speaking the Dharma there. It has been many years since
the Mahā-maudgalyāyana reached that Buddha-land, and because he now
desires to return to this land, he has transmitted his strong and clear
voice from that far away place.’
“Ānanda asked further, ‘Why did he go to that Buddha-land?’
“The Buddha told Ānanda, ‘When Mahā-maudgalyāyana arrives, you can ask him what his intentions were.’
“Then everyone in the great assembly
said to the Buddha, ’We would be pleased if we could get to see the
Banner of Light world and the Buddha King of Light, a Thus Come One, an
Arhat, an Equally and Properly Enlightened One, and to observe what the
Mahā-maudgalyāyana is doing in his land.’
“At that time the World-Honored One,
seeing that all in the assembly were exhorting him to aid them in
fulfilling their wish, emitted from the Buddha-Hallmark between the
eyebrows[20] a
great light called ‘Perceived by All’. It illuminated all the
Buddha-worlds as numerous as the grains of sand in ninety-nine rivers
and reached all the way to the Buddha-land Banner of Light. What that
great light illuminated was seen by all those in the assembly, so that
everyone observed King of Light, the Buddha of that land, a Thus Come
One, an Arhat. When the Mahā-maudgalyāyana saw the light, he bowed to
the ground and called out in a loud voice.
“At that time the World-Honored One,
the Buddha Śākyamuni told the worthy Mahā-maudgalyāyana to ride that
light back to his own land. Then, relying on the Buddha-light,
Maudgalyāyana, in the space of a thought, returned to this land.
He bowed at the Buddha’s feet and circumambulated him seven times in a
clockwise direction. Afterwards he stood before the Buddha, repented,
and took refuge. He reproached himself once again, saying, ‘I was
extremely confused. The voice of the Thus Come One has no limits, yet I
wanted to test its range. The most distant point I reached was
exceedingly far away, yet the voice that I heard there was the same as
it is now; I perceived it as if it were near and not far away. The voice
of the Thus Come One is majestic and its range is boundless.’
“The Buddha said, ‘So it is,
Maudgalyāyana, just as you say. The voice of the Thus Come One extends
far, even beyond what can be understood by analogy. Wishing to know the
range of the voice of the Thus Come One is like wanting to make
boundaries by placing limits on space. Why? Like space, which pervades
everywhere and is boundless,the range of the words proclaimed by the Thus Come One isboundless in its extent’.”
Ron Epstein recently retired
from the Philosophy faculty of San Francisco State University, where for
over thirty years he taught courses on Buddhism and on Asian and
comparative philosophy and religion. He holds a Ph.D. in Buddhist
Studies (interdisciplinary) from the University of California at Berkeley and
an M.A. in Chinese Language and Literature
from University of Washington. His many publications and translations
include Buddhist Text Translation Society’s Buddhism A to Z; The Heart
of Prajna Paramita Sutra with the No-Stand Gatha Explanation and Prose
Commentary of Gold Mountain Tripitaka Master, Sramana Hsüan Hua; and the
concluding volume of the “Entering the Dharma Realm” chapter of the
Buddhist Text Translations Society’s translation of the Avatamsaka
Sutra. He is a regular contributor to the journal Vajra Bodhi Sea, and
his educational websites include ‘Resources for the Study of Buddhism,’
and ‘Resources for the Study of Religion.’
[1]Da Bao Ji Jing大寶積經 or Mahāratnakuṭa-sūtra (Taisho Tripiṭaka #310, roll 10, 56c05-57c07). Other selections from the sutra have been published in A Treasury of Mahayana Sutras: Selections from the Maharatnakuta Sutra,Garma C.C. Chang (Editor), University
Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1983. The original
translation into Chinese was made by Tripiṭaka Master Dharmarakṣa in 280
CE. I would like to thank Dharma Master Heng Shunand Dharma Master Heng
Sure for reviewing an early version of my English translation.
[2] The
‘Mahā’ in his name means ‘great;’ he is the Great Maudgalyāyana to
distinguish him from others of the same name and to honor his level of
enlightenment and the spiritual powers he possessed as a byproduct of
that enlightenment.
[3] Dharma consists of the methods taught for becoming enlightened.
[12] Here Arhat is used as an epithet of the Buddhas.
[13] Lit., ‘Equally and Rightly Enlightened One,’ another epithet of the Buddhas.
[14] The length of the measure used here is uncertain. The Chinese text literally says ‘forty li 里.’ A li is usually considered to be somewhere between 1/5 and 1/3 of a mile. In ancient China a li 里was defined as 360 paces (bu步). A pace was about six ancient Chinese feet (chi 尺). However,
we do not know for sure what Sanskrit term of measure it is a
translation for. Fortunately, knowing the exact heights is not essential
to the meaning of the story.
[16]Śrāvaka. Lit.
‘Hearer’, i.e., Arhat, in the sense of those enlightened disciples of
the Buddha who have transcended rebirth and no longer have any outflows
of psychic energy related to attachment to the objects of the senses.
[17] A nayuta is a very large number, the exact size of which is not clearly fixed.
[19] The text literally says neng ren能仁,
“Mighty in lovingkindness, an incorrect interpretation of Śākyamuni,
but probably indicating his character.” (Soothill and Hoodus, A Dictionary of Chinese Buddhism, quoted by Charles Muller, Digital Dictionary of Buddhism <http://www.acmuller.net/ddb/>).
[20] All
Buddhas have 32 distinctive physical attributes, of which one is a tuft
of white hair, that emits light and is located between the eyebrows.
Prominent technologists and academics dispute the
plausibility of a technological singularity and associated artificial
intelligence "explosion", including Paul Allen,[5]Jeff Hawkins,[6]John Holland, Jaron Lanier, Steven Pinker,[6]Theodore Modis,[7]Gordon Moore,[6] and Roger Penrose.[8] One claim is that artificial intelligence growth is likely to run into decreasing returns instead of accelerating ones. Stuart J. Russell and Peter Norvig observe that in the history of technology, improvement in a particular area tends to follow an S curve: it begins with accelerating improvement, then levels off without continuing upward into a hyperbolic singularity.[9]
History
Alan Turing,
often regarded as the father of modern computer science, laid a crucial
foundation for contemporary discourse on the technological singularity.
His pivotal 1950 paper "Computing Machinery and Intelligence" argued that a machine could, in theory, exhibit intelligent behavior equivalent to or indistinguishable from that of a human.[10]
But a technological singularity is not required for machines that can
perform at or beyond a human level on certain tasks to be developed, nor
does their existence imply the possibility of such an occurrence, as
demonstrated by events such as the 1996 victory of IBM's Deep Blue supercomputer in a chess match with grandmaster Garry Kasparov.[11]
The Hungarian-American mathematician John von Neumann is the first person known to have discussed a "singularity" in technological progress.[12][13]Stanislaw Ulam
reported in 1958 that an earlier discussion with von Neumann "centered
on the accelerating progress of technology and changes in human life,
which gives the appearance of approaching some essential singularity in
the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them,
could not continue".[14] Subsequent authors echoed this viewpoint.[3][15]
In 1965, I. J. Good speculated that superhuman intelligence might bring about an "intelligence explosion":[16][17]
Let an
ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass
all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the
design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an
ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would
then unquestionably be an 'intelligence explosion', and the intelligence
of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent
machine is the last invention that man need ever make, provided that the
machine is docile enough to tell us how to keep it under control.
—Speculations Concerning the First Ultraintelligent Machine (1965)
The concept and the term "singularity" were popularized by Vernor Vinge, first in a 1983 op-ed in Omni
magazine arguing that once humans create intelligences greater than
their own, there will be a technological and social transition similar
in some sense to "the knotted space-time at the center of a black hole".[18] In his 1993 essay "The Coming Technological Singularity",[4][15]
Vinge wrote that the transition would signal the end of the human era,
as the superintelligence would continue to upgrade itself and advance
technologically at an incomprehensible rate, and that he would be
surprised if it occurred before 2005 or after 2030.[4]
Another significant contribution to wider circulation of the notion was Ray Kurzweil's 2005 book The Singularity Is Near, predicting singularity by 2045.[15]
Technological progress has been limited by the basic intelligence of the human brain, which has not, according to Paul R. Ehrlich, changed significantly for millennia.[19]
But with the increasing power of computers and other technologies, it
might eventually be possible to build a machine significantly more
intelligent than humans.[20]
A superhuman intelligence—through either the amplification of human intelligence
or artificial intelligence—would theoretically surpass human
problem-solving and inventive skill if it were invented. Such an AI is
often called a "seed AI"[21][22]
because this theoretical type of AI could autonomously improve its own
software and hardware to design an even more capable machine, which
could repeat the process in turn.
A superintelligence, hyperintelligence, or superhuman intelligence is a hypothetical agent that possesses intelligence far surpassing that of even the brightest and most gifted humans.[23] "Superintelligence" may also refer to the form or degree of intelligence possessed by such an agent. I. J. Good, Vernor Vinge, and Ray Kurzweil
define the concept in terms of the technological creation of super
intelligence, arguing that it is difficult or impossible for present-day
humans to predict what human beings' lives would be like in a
post-singularity world.[4][24]
The related concept of "speed superintelligence" describes
an artificial intelligence that can function like a human mind but much
faster.[25]
For example, given a millionfold increase in the speed of information
processing relative to that of humans, a subjective year would pass in
30 physical seconds.[26] Such an increase in information processing speed could result in or significantly contribute to the singularity.[27]
Technology forecasters and researchers disagree about when,
or whether, human intelligence will be surpassed. Some argue that
advances in artificial intelligence
(AI) may result in general reasoning systems that bypass human
cognitive limitations. Others believe that humans will evolve or
directly modify their biology so as to achieve radically greater
intelligence.[28][29] A number of futures studies focus on scenarios that combine these possibilities, suggesting that humans are likely to interface with computers, or upload their minds to computers, in a way that enables substantial intelligence amplification. Robin Hanson's 2016 book The Age of Em
describes a future in which human brains are scanned and digitized,
creating "uploads" or digital versions of human consciousness. In this
future, the development of these uploads may precede or coincide with
the emergence of superintelligent AI.[30]
Variations
Non-AI singularity
Some writers use "the singularity" in a broader way, to
refer to any radical changes in society brought about by new technology
(such as molecular nanotechnology),[31][32][33] although Vinge and other writers say that without superintelligence, such changes would not be a true singularity.[4]
Predictions
Progress of AI performance on various benchmarks compared to human-level performance[34]
including computer vision (MNIST, ImageNet), speech recognition
(Switchboard), natural language understanding (SQuAD 1.1, MMLU, GLUE),
general language model evaluation (MMLU, Big-Bench, and GPQA), and
mathematical reasoning (MATH). Many models surpass human-level
performance (black solid line) by 2019, demonstrating significant
advancements in AI capabilities across different domains over the past
two decades.
Numerous dates have been predicted for the attainment of singularity.
In 1965, Good wrote that it was more probable than not that an ultra-intelligent machine would be built in the 20th century.[16]
That computing capabilities for human-level AI would be available in supercomputers before 2010 was predicted in 1988 by Moravec, assuming that the then current rate of improvement continued.[35]
The attainment of greater-than-human intelligence between 2005 and 2030 was predicted by Vinge in 1993.[4]
Human-level AI around 2029 and the singularity in 2045 was predicted by Kurzweil in 2005.[36][37] He reaffirmed these predictions in 2024 in The Singularity Is Nearer.[38]
Human-level AI by 2040, and intelligence far beyond human
by 2050 was predicted in 1998 by Moravec, revising his earlier
prediction.[39]
A median confidence of 50% that human-level AI would be developed by 2040–2050 was the outcome of four informal polls of AI researchers, conducted in 2012 and 2013 by Bostrom and Müller.[40][41]
In September 2025, a review of surveys of scientists and
industry experts from the previous 15 years found that most agreed that artificial general intelligence (AGI), a level well below technological singularity, will occur by 2100.[42] A more recent analysis by AIMultiple reported, "Current surveys of AI researchers are predicting AGI around 2040".[42]
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman
has made escalating public statements about the singularity. In January
2025, he posted a cryptic six-word remark: "near the singularity;
unclear which side."[43]
In June 2025, he published "The Gentle Singularity", an essay arguing
that AI had already passed the "event horizon" and that "the takeoff has
commenced".[44][45]
In July 2026, Altman said, more directly, "we are now in the
singularity—this is the moment", but said the transition remained part
of "one crazy exponential" curve without a single decisive tipping
point.[46]
Robin Hanson
has expressed skepticism of human intelligence augmentation, writing
that once the "low-hanging fruit" of easy methods for increasing human
intelligence have been exhausted, further improvements will become
increasingly difficult.[48]
In conversation about human-level artificial intelligence with cognitive scientist Gary Marcus, computer scientist Grady Booch
skeptically said the singularity is "sufficiently imprecise, filled
with emotional and historic baggage, and touches some of humanity's
deepest hopes and fears that it's hard to have a rational discussion
therein".[49]
Later in the conversation, Marcus, while more optimistic about the
progress of AI, agreed that any major advances would not happen as a
single event, but rather as a slow and gradual increase in reliability
usefulness.[49]
The possibility of an intelligence explosion depends on
three factors. The first accelerating factor is the new intelligence
enhancements made possible by each previous improvement. But as the
intelligences become more advanced, further advances will become more
and more complicated, possibly outweighing the advantage of increased
intelligence. Each improvement should generate at least one more
improvement, on average, for movement toward singularity to continue.
Finally, the laws of physics may eventually prevent further improvement.[50]
There are two logically independent, but mutually
reinforcing, causes of intelligence improvements: increases in the speed
of computation and improvements to the algorithms used.[15] The former is predicted by Moore's law and the forecasted improvements in hardware,[51]
and is comparatively similar to previous technological advances. "Most
experts believe that Moore's law is coming to an end during this
decade", the AIMultiple report reads,[42] but "quantum computing can be used to efficiently train neural networks",[42] potentially working around any end to Moore's law. But Schulman and Sandberg[52]
argue that software will present more complex challenges than simply
operating on hardware capable of running at human intelligence levels or
beyond.
A 2017 email survey of authors with publications at the 2015 NeurIPS and ICMLmachine learning
conferences asked about the chance that "the intelligence explosion
argument is broadly correct". Of the respondents, 12% said it was "quite
likely", 17% said it was "likely", 21% said it was "about even", 24%
said it was "unlikely", and 26% said it was "quite unlikely".[53]
Speed improvements
Both for human and artificial intelligence, hardware
improvements increase the rate of future hardware improvements. Some
upper limit on speed may eventually be reached. Jeff Hawkins has said
that a self-improving computer system will inevitably run into limits on
computing power: "in the end there are limits to how big and fast
computers can run. We would end up in the same place; we'd just get
there a bit faster. There would be no singularity."[6]
It is difficult to directly compare silicon-based hardware with neurons. But Anthony Berglas notes that computer speech recognition
is approaching human capabilities, and that this capability seems to
require 0.01% of the volume of the brain. This analogy suggests that
modern computer hardware is within a few orders of magnitude of being as
powerful as the human brain, as well as taking up much less space. The costs of training systems with deep learning may be larger. In modern deep learning, the effects of hardware improvement on neural networks are characterized by neural scaling laws.[54][a][38]
The exponential growth in computing technology suggested
by Moore's law is commonly cited as a reason to expect a singularity in
the relatively near future, and a number of authors have proposed
generalizations of Moore's law. Computer scientist and futurist Hans
Moravec proposed in a 1998 book[56] that the exponential growth curve could be extended back to earlier computing technologies before the integrated circuit.
Ray Kurzweil postulates a law of accelerating returns whereby the speed of technological change (and more generally, all evolutionary processes)[57]
increases exponentially, generalizing Moore's law in the same manner as
Moravec's proposal, and also including material technology (especially
as applied to nanotechnology) and medical technology.[58]
Between 1986 and 2007, machines' application-specific capacity to
compute information per capita roughly doubled every 14 months; the per
capita capacity of the world's general-purpose computers has doubled
every 18 months; the global telecommunication capacity per capita
doubled every 34 months; and the world's storage capacity per capita
doubled every 40 months.[59]
On the other hand, it has been argued that the global acceleration
pattern having a 21st-century singularity as its parameter should be
characterized as hyperbolic rather than exponential.[60]
Kurzweil reserves the term "singularity" for a rapid
increase in artificial intelligence (as opposed to other technologies),
writing: "The Singularity will allow us to transcend these limitations
of our biological bodies and brains ... There will be no distinction,
post-Singularity, between human and machine".[61]
He also defines the singularity as when computer-based intelligences
significantly exceed the sum total of human brainpower, writing that
advances in computing before that "will not represent the Singularity"
because they do "not yet correspond to a profound expansion of our
intelligence."[62]
Some singularity proponents argue its inevitability through
extrapolation of past trends, especially those pertaining to shortening
gaps between improvements to technology. In one of the first uses of the
term "singularity" in the context of technological progress, Stanislaw Ulam tells of a conversation with John von Neumann about accelerating change:
One
conversation centered on the ever accelerating progress of technology
and changes in the mode of human life, which gives the appearance of
approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond
which human affairs, as we know them, could not continue.[14]
Kurzweil claims that technological progress follows a pattern of exponential growth, following what he calls the "law of accelerating returns". Whenever technology approaches a barrier, Kurzweil writes, new technologies surmount it. He predicts paradigm shifts
will become increasingly common, leading to "technological change so
rapid and profound it represents a rupture in the fabric of human
history".[63] Kurzweil believes that the singularity will occur by 2045.[58]
His predictions differ from Vinge's in that he predicts a gradual
ascent to the singularity, rather than Vinge's rapidly self-improving
superhuman intelligence.
Oft-cited dangers include those commonly associated with molecular nanotechnology and genetic engineering. These threats are major issues for both singularity advocates and critics, and were the subject of Bill Joy's 2000 Wired magazine article "Why The Future Doesn't Need Us".[15][64]
Algorithm improvements
Some intelligence technologies, like "seed AI",[21][22] may also be able to make themselves not just faster but also more efficient, by modifying their source code. These improvements would make further improvements possible, which would make further improvements possible, and so on.
The mechanism for a recursively self-improving set of
algorithms differs from an increase in raw computation speed in two
ways. First, it does not require external influence: machines designing
faster hardware would still require humans to create the improved
hardware, or to program factories appropriately.[citation needed] An AI rewriting its own source code could do so while contained in an AI box.
Second, as with Vernor Vinge's conception of the singularity, it is much harder to predict the outcome.[citation needed]
While speed increases seem to be only a quantitative difference from
human intelligence, actual algorithm improvements would be qualitatively
different.[citation needed]
Substantial dangers are associated with an intelligence
explosion singularity originating from a recursively self-improving set
of algorithms. First, the goal structure of the AI might self-modify,
potentially causing the AI to optimise for something other than what was
originally intended.[65][66] Second, AIs could compete for the resources humankind uses to survive.[67][68]
While not actively malicious, AIs would promote the goals of their
programming, not necessarily broader human goals, and thus might crowd
out humans.[69][70][71]
Carl Shulman and Anders Sandberg
suggest that algorithm improvements may be the limiting factor for a
singularity; while hardware efficiency tends to improve at a steady
pace, software innovations are more unpredictable and may be
bottlenecked by serial, cumulative research. They suggest that in the
case of a software-limited singularity, intelligence explosion would
actually become more likely than with a hardware-limited singularity,
because in the software-limited case, once human-level AI is developed,
it could run serially on very fast hardware, and the abundance of cheap
hardware would make AI research less constrained.[72]
An abundance of accumulated hardware that can be unleashed once the
software figures out how to use it has been called "computing overhang".[73]
Criticism
Linguist and cognitive scientist Steven Pinker
wrote in 2008: "There is not the slightest reason to believe in a
coming singularity. The fact that you can visualize a future in your
imagination is not evidence that it is likely or even possible. Look at
domed cities, jet-pack commuting, underwater cities, mile-high
buildings, and nuclear-powered automobiles—all staples of futuristic
fantasies when I was a child that have never arrived. Sheer processing
power is not a pixie dust that magically solves all your problems."[6]
Jaron Lanier
denies that the singularity is inevitable: "I do not think the
technology is creating itself. It's not an autonomous process [...] The
reason to believe in human agency over technological determinism is that
you can then have an economy where people earn their own way and invent
their own lives. If you structure a society on not
emphasizing individual human agency, it's the same thing operationally
as denying people clout, dignity, and self-determination ... to embrace
[the idea of the Singularity] would be a celebration of bad data and bad
politics."[74]
Philosopher and cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett
said in 2017: "The whole singularity stuff, that's preposterous. It
distracts us from much more pressing problems [...] AI tools that we
become hyper-dependent on—that is going to happen. And one of the
dangers is that we will give them more authority than they warrant."[75]
Some critics suggest religious motivations for believing
in the singularity, especially Kurzweil's version. The buildup to the
singularity is compared to Christian end-times scenarios. Beam called it "a Buck Rogers vision of the hypothetical Christian Rapture".[76]John Gray has said, "the Singularity echoes apocalyptic myths in which history is about to be interrupted by a world-transforming event".[77]
In The New York Times, David Streitfeld questioned whether "it might manifest first and foremost—thanks, in part, to the bottom-line obsession of today’s Silicon Valley—as a tool to slash corporate America’s head count."[78]
Astrophysicist and scientific philosopherAdam Becker
criticizes Kurzweil's concept of human mind uploads to computers on the
grounds that they are too fundamentally different and incompatible.[79]
Skepticism of exponential growth
Theodore Modis holds the singularity cannot happen.[80][7][81] He claims the "technological singularity" and especially Kurzweil lack scientific rigor; Kurzweil is alleged to mistake the logistic function
(S-function) for an exponential function, and to see a "knee" in an
exponential function where there can in fact be no such thing.[82]
In a 2021 article, Modis wrote that no milestones—breaks in historical
perspective comparable in importance to the Internet, DNA, the
transistor, or nuclear energy—had been observed in the previous 20
years, while five of them would have been expected according to the
exponential trend advocated by proponents of the technological
singularity.[83]
AI researcher Jürgen Schmidhuber
has said that the frequency of subjectively "notable events" appears to
be approaching a 21st-century singularity, but cautioned readers to
take such plots of subjective events with a grain of salt: perhaps
differences in memory of recent and distant events create an illusion of
accelerating change where none exists.[84]
Hofstadter
(2006) raises concern that Kurzweil is insufficiently rigorous, that an
exponential tendency of technology is not a scientific law like one of
physics, and that exponential curves have no "knees".[85] Nonetheless, he did not rule out the singularity in principle in the distant future[6] and in light of ChatGPT and other recent advancements has revised his opinion significantly toward dramatic technological change in the near future.[86]
Economist Robert J. Gordon points out that measured economic growth slowed around 1970 and slowed even further since the 2008 financial crisis, and argues that the economic data show no trace of a coming Singularity as imagined by I. J. Good.[87]
In addition to general criticisms of the singularity
concept, several critics have raised issues with Kurzweil's iconic
chart. One line of criticism is that a log-log
chart of this nature is inherently biased toward a straight-line
result. Others identify selection bias in the points Kurzweil uses. For
example, biologist PZ Myers points out that many of the early evolutionary "events" were picked arbitrarily.[88]
Kurzweil has rebutted this by charting evolutionary events from 15
neutral sources and showing that they fit a straight line on a log-log chart. Kelly
(2006) argues that the way the Kurzweil chart is constructed, with the
x-axis having time before the present, it always points to the
singularity being "now", for any date on which one would construct such a
chart, and shows this visually on Kurzweil's chart.[89]
Technological limiting factors
Martin Ford[90]
postulates a "technology paradox": most routine jobs could be automated
with a level of technology inferior to that required for a singularity.
This would cause massive unemployment and plummeting consumer demand,
which would eliminate the incentive to invest in the technology required
to bring about the singularity. Job displacement is no longer limited
to the types of work traditionally considered "routine".[91]
Theodore Modis[92] and Jonathan Huebner[93]
argue that the rate of technological innovation has not only ceased to
rise but is actually now declining. Evidence for this decline is that
the rise in computer clock rates
is slowing, even while Moore's prediction of exponentially increasing
circuit density continues to hold. This is due to excessive heat buildup
from the chip, which cannot be dissipated quickly enough to prevent it
from melting when operating at higher speeds. Advances in speed may be
possible in the future by virtue of more power-efficient CPU designs and
multi-cell processors.[94]
Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen has argued that there is a "complexity brake":[5]
the more progress science makes toward understanding intelligence, the
more difficult it becomes to make additional progress. A study of the
number of patents shows that human creativity does not show accelerating
returns, but in fact, as suggested by Joseph Tainter in The Collapse of Complex Societies,[95] a law of diminishing returns. The number of patents per thousand peaked in the period from 1850 to 1900, and has been declining since.[93] The growth of complexity eventually becomes self-limiting, and leads to a widespread "general systems collapse".
Potential impacts
Dramatic changes in the rate of economic growth have
occurred in the past because of technological advancement. Based on
population growth, the economy doubled every 250,000 years from the Paleolithic era until the Neolithic Revolution. The new agricultural economy doubled every 900 years, a remarkable increase. Since the Industrial Revolution,
the world's economic output has doubled every 15 years, 60 times faster
than during the agricultural era. If the rise of superhuman
intelligence causes a similar revolution, argues Robin Hanson, one would
expect the economy to double at least quarterly and possibly weekly.[96]
Physicist Stephen Hawking
said in 2014: "Success in creating AI would be the biggest event in
human history. Unfortunately, it might also be the last, unless we learn
how to avoid the risks."[101]
Hawking believed that in the coming decades, AI could offer
"incalculable benefits and risks" such as "technology outsmarting
financial markets, out-inventing human researchers, out-manipulating
human leaders, and developing weapons we cannot even understand."[101]
He suggested that artificial intelligence should be taken more
seriously and that more should be done to prepare for the singularity:[101]
So,
facing possible futures of incalculable benefits and risks, the experts
are surely doing everything possible to ensure the best outcome, right?
Wrong. If a superior alien civilisation sent us a message saying,
"We'll arrive in a few decades," would we just reply, "OK, call us when
you get here–we'll leave the lights on"? Probably not–but this is more or less what is happening with AI.
Berglas (2008)
claims that there is no direct evolutionary motivation for AI to be
friendly to humans. Evolution has no inherent tendency to produce
outcomes valued by humans, and there is little reason to expect an
arbitrary optimisation process to promote an outcome desired by
humankind, rather than inadvertently leading to an AI behaving in a way
not intended by its creators.[102][103][104]Anders Sandberg has elaborated on this, addressing various common counter-arguments.[105] AI researcher Hugo de Garis suggests that artificial intelligences may simply eliminate the human race for access to scarce resources,[67][65] and humans would be powerless to stop them.[106] Alternatively, AIs developed under evolutionary pressure to promote their own survival could outcompete humanity.[71]
Bostrom (2002) discusses human extinction scenarios, and lists superintelligence as a possible cause:
When we
create the first superintelligent entity, we might make a mistake and
give it goals that lead it to annihilate humankind, assuming its
enormous intellectual advantage gives it the power to do so. For
example, we could mistakenly elevate a subgoal to the status of a
supergoal. We tell it to solve a mathematical problem, and it complies
by turning all the matter in the solar system into a giant calculating
device, in the process killing the person who asked the question.
According to Eliezer Yudkowsky,
a significant problem in AI safety is that unfriendly AI is likely to
be much easier to create than friendly AI. Both require large advances
in recursive optimisation process design, but friendly AI also requires
the ability to make goal structures invariant under self-improvement (or
the AI could transform itself into something unfriendly) and a goal
structure that aligns with human values and does not automatically
destroy the human race. An unfriendly AI, on the other hand, can
optimize for an arbitrary goal structure, which does not need to be
invariant under self-modification.[107]Bill Hibbard (2014) proposes an AI design that avoids several dangers, including self-delusion,[108] unintended instrumental actions,[65][109] and corruption of the reward generator.[109] He also discusses social impacts of AI[110] and testing AI.[111] His 2001 book Super-Intelligent Machines
advocates public education about AI and public control over AI. It also
proposes a simple design that is vulnerable to corruption of the reward
generator.
Schematic Timeline of Information and Replicators in the Biosphere: Gillings et al.'s "major evolutionary transitions" in information processing.[112]
Amount of digital information worldwide (5×1021 bytes) versus human genome information worldwide (1019 bytes) in 2014[112]
A 2016 Trends in Ecology & Evolution article argues that humanity is in the midst of a major evolutionary transition
that merges technology, biology, and society. This is due to digital
technology infiltrating the fabric of human society to a degree of often
life-sustaining dependence. The article says, "humans already embrace
fusions of biology and technology. We spend most of our waking time
communicating through digitally mediated channels [...] we trust
artificial intelligence with our lives through antilock braking in cars and autopilots
in planes... With one in three courtships leading to marriages in
America beginning online, digital algorithms are also taking a role in
human pair bonding and reproduction".[112]
The article further argues that from the perspective of evolution, several previous Major Transitions in Evolution have transformed life through innovations in information storage and replication (RNA, DNA, multicellularity,
and culture and language). In the current stage of life's evolution,
the carbon-based biosphere has generated a system (humans) capable of
creating technology that will result in a comparable evolutionary transition.[112]
The digital information created by humans has reached a
similar magnitude to biological information in the biosphere. Since the
1980s, the quantity of digital information stored has doubled about
every 2.5 years, reaching about 5 zettabytes in 2014 (5×1021 bytes).[113]
In biological terms, there were 7.2 billion humans on the
planet in 2013, each with a genome of 6.2 billion nucleotides. Since one
byte can encode four nucleotide pairs, the individual genomes of every
human could be encoded by approximately 1×1019
bytes. The digital realm stored 500 times more information than this in
2014 (see figure). The total amount of DNA in all the cells on Earth is
estimated to be about 5.3×1037 base pairs, equivalent to 1.325×1037 bytes of information. If growth in digital storage continues at its current rate of 30–38% compound annual growth per year,[59]
it will rival the total information content in all the DNA in all the
cells on Earth in about 110 years. This would represent a doubling of
the amount of information stored in the biosphere in just 150 years.[112]
In 2009, under the auspices of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), Eric Horvitz
chaired a meeting of leading computer scientists, artificial
intelligence researchers, and roboticists at the Asilomar conference
center in Pacific Grove, California. The goal was to discuss the impact
of the possibility that robots could become self-sufficient and able to
make their own decisions. They discussed the extent to which computers
and robots might acquire autonomy, and to what degree they could use such abilities to pose threats or hazards.[114]
Some machines are programmed with various forms of
semi-autonomy, including the ability to locate their own power sources
and choose targets to attack with weapons. Also, some computer viruses
can evade elimination and, according to scientists in attendance, could
therefore be said to have reached a "cockroach" stage of machine
intelligence. The conference attendees noted that self-awareness as
depicted in science fiction is probably unlikely, but that other
potential hazards and pitfalls exist.[114]
Frank S. Robinson predicts that once humans achieve a
machine with the intelligence of a human, scientific and technological
problems will be tackled and solved with brainpower far superior to that
of humans. He notes that artificial systems are able to share data more
directly than humans, and predicts that this will result in a global
network of super-intelligence that dwarfs human capability.[115] Robinson also discusses how vastly different the future would look after such an intelligence explosion.
Hard or soft takeoff
In
this sample recursive self-improvement scenario, humans modifying an
AI's architecture would be able to double its performance every three
years through, for example, 30 generations before exhausting all
feasible improvements (left). If instead the AI is smart enough to
modify its own architecture as well as human researchers can, its time
required to complete a redesign halves with each generation, and it
progresses all 30 feasible generations in six years (right).[116]
In a hard takeoff scenario, an artificial
superintelligence rapidly self-improves, "taking control" of the world
(perhaps in a matter of hours), too quickly for significant
human-initiated error correction or for a gradual tuning of the agent's
goals. In a soft takeoff, the AI still becomes far more powerful than
humanity, but at a human-like pace (perhaps on the order of decades), on
a timescale where ongoing human interaction and correction can
effectively steer its development.[117][118]
Ramez Naam
argues against a hard takeoff. He has pointed out that we already see
recursive self-improvement by superintelligences, such as corporations. Intel,
for example, has "the collective brainpower of tens of thousands of
humans and probably millions of CPU cores to... design better CPUs!" But
this has not led to a hard takeoff; rather, it has led to a soft
takeoff in the form of Moore's law.[119]
Naam further points out that the computational complexity of higher
intelligence may be much greater than linear, such that "creating a mind
of intelligence 2 is probably more than twice as hard as creating a mind of intelligence 1."[120]
J. Storrs Hall believes that "many of the more commonly seen scenarios for overnight hard takeoff are circular–they seem to assume hyperhuman capabilities at the starting point
of the self-improvement process" in order for an AI to be able to make
the dramatic, domain-general improvements required for takeoff. Hall
suggests that rather than recursively self-improving its hardware,
software, and infrastructure all on its own, a fledgling AI would be
better off specializing in one area where it was most effective and then
buying the remaining components on the marketplace, because the quality
of products on the marketplace continually improves, and the AI would
have a hard time keeping up with the cutting-edge technology used by the
rest of the world.[121]
Ben Goertzel agrees with Hall's suggestion that a new
human-level AI would do well to use its intelligence to accumulate
wealth. The AI's talents might inspire companies and governments to
disperse its software throughout society. Goertzel is skeptical of a
hard five-minute takeoff but speculates that a takeoff from human to
superhuman level on the order of five years is reasonable. He calls this
a "semihard takeoff".[122]
Max More
disagrees, arguing that if there were only a few superfast human-level
AIs, that they would not radically change the world, as they would still
depend on other people to get things done and would still have human
cognitive constraints. Even if all superfast AIs worked on intelligence
augmentation, it is unclear why they would do better in a discontinuous
way than existing human cognitive scientists at producing superhuman
intelligence, although the rate of progress would increase. More further
argues that superintelligence would not transform the world overnight:
it would need to engage with existing, slow human systems to have
physical impact on the world. "The need for collaboration, for
organization, and for putting ideas into physical changes will ensure
that all the old rules are not thrown out overnight or even within
years."[123]
Eric Drexler, one of the founders of nanotechnology, theorized in 1986 the possibility of cell repair devices, including ones operating within cells and using as yet hypothetical biological machines, allowing immortality via nanotechnology.[124] According to Richard Feynman, his former graduate student and collaborator Albert Hibbs originally suggested to him (circa 1959) the idea of a medical
use for Feynman's theoretical micromachines. Hibbs suggested that
certain repair machines might one day be shrunk to the point that it
would, in theory, be possible to (as Feynman put it) "swallow the doctor". The idea was incorporated into Feynman's 1959 essay There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom.[125]
In 1988, Moravec predicted mind uploading,
the possibility of "uploading" a human mind into a human-like robot,
achieving quasi-immortality by extreme longevity via transfer of the
human mind between successive new robots as the old ones wear out;
beyond that, he predicts later exponential acceleration of subjective
experience of time leading to a subjective sense of immortality.[35]
In 2005, Kurzweil suggested that medical advances would allow people to protect their bodies from the effects of aging, making life expectancy limitless.
He argues that technological advances in medicine would allow us to
continuously repair and replace defective components in our bodies,
prolonging life to an undetermined age.[126] Kurzweil buttresses his argument by discussing current bio-engineering advances. He suggests somatic gene therapy;
after synthetic viruses with specific genetic information, the next
step is to apply this technology to gene therapy, replacing human DNA
with synthesized genes.[127]
Beyond merely extending the operational life of the physical body, Jaron Lanier
argues for a form of immortality called "Digital Ascension" that
involves "people dying in the flesh and being uploaded into a computer
and remaining conscious."[128] This idea is the central theme of the television series Upload.
History of the concept
A paper by Mahendra Prasad, published in AI Magazine, asserts that the 18th-century mathematician Marquis de Condorcet first hypothesized and mathematically modeled an intelligence explosion and its effects on humanity.[129]
An early description of the idea was made in John W. Campbell's 1932 short story "The Last Evolution".[130]
In his 1958 obituary for John von Neumann,
Ulam recalled a conversation with him about the "ever accelerating
progress of technology and changes in the mode of human life, which
gives the appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the
history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could
not continue."[14]
In 1965, Good wrote his essay postulating an "intelligence explosion" of recursive self-improvement of a machine intelligence.[16][17]
In 1977, Hans Moravec
wrote an article with unclear publishing status where he envisioned a
development of self-improving thinking machines, a creation of
"super-consciousness, the synthesis of terrestrial life, and perhaps
jovian and martian life as well, constantly improving and extending
itself, spreading outwards from the solar system, converting non-life
into mind."[131][132]
The article describes the human mind uploading later covered in Moravec
(1988). The machines are expected to reach human level and then improve
themselves beyond that ("Most significantly of all, they [the machines]
can be put to work as programmers and engineers, with the task of
optimizing the software and hardware which make them what they are. The
successive generations of machines produced this way will be
increasingly smarter and more cost effective.") Humans will no longer be
needed, and their abilities will be overtaken by the machines: "In the
long run the sheer physical inability of humans to keep up with these
rapidly evolving progeny of our minds will ensure that the ratio of
people to machines approaches zero, and that a direct descendant of our
culture, but not our genes, inherits the universe." While the word
"singularity" is not used, the notion of human-level thinking machines
thereafter improving themselves beyond human level is there. In this
view, there is no intelligence explosion in the sense of a very rapid
intelligence increase once human equivalence is reached. An updated
version of the article was published in 1979 in Analog Science Fiction and Fact.[133][132]
In 1981, Stanisław Lem published his science fiction novel Golem XIV.
It describes a military AI computer (Golem XIV) that obtains
consciousness and starts to increase its intelligence, moving toward
personal technological singularity. Golem XIV was originally created to
aid its builders in fighting wars, but as its intelligence advances to a
much higher level than that of humans, it stops being interested in the
military requirements because it finds them lacking internal logical
consistency.
Vernor Vinge addressed Good's intelligence explosion in the January 1983 issue of Omni
magazine. Vinge seems to have been the first to use the term
"singularity" (although not "technological singularity") in a way
specifically tied to the creation of intelligent machines:[18][132]
We will
soon create intelligences greater than our own. When this happens,
human history will have reached a kind of singularity, an intellectual
transition as impenetrable as the knotted space-time at the center of a
black hole, and the world will pass far beyond our understanding. This
singularity, I believe, already haunts a number of science-fiction
writers. It makes realistic extrapolation to an interstellar future
impossible. To write a story set more than a century hence, one needs a
nuclear war in between ... so that the world remains intelligible.
In 1985, in "The Time Scale of Artificial Intelligence", AI researcher Ray Solomonoff
articulated mathematically the related notion of what he called an
"infinity point": if a research community of human-level self-improving
AIs take four years to double their own speed, then two years, then one
year and so on, their capabilities increase infinitely in finite time.[15][134]
In 1986, Vinge published Marooned in Realtime,
a science-fiction novel where a few remaining humans traveling forward
in the future have survived an unknown extinction event that might well
be a singularity. In a short afterword, Vinge writes that an actual
technological singularity would not be the end of the human species: "of
course it seems very unlikely that the Singularity would be a clean
vanishing of the human race. (On the other hand, such a vanishing is the
timelike analog of the silence we find all across the sky.)".[135][136]
In 1988, Vinge used the phrase "technological singularity" in the short-story collection Threats and Other Promises, writing in the introduction to his story "The Whirligig of Time": Barring a worldwide catastrophe, I believe that technology will achieve our wildest dreams, and soon. When
we raise our own intelligence and that of our creations, we are no
longer in a world of human-sized characters. At that point we have
fallen into a technological "black hole", a technological singularity.[137]
In 1988, Hans Moravec published Mind Children,[35]
in which he predicted human-level intelligence in supercomputers by
2010, self-improving intelligent machines far surpassing human
intelligence later, human mind uploading into human-like robots later,
intelligent machines leaving humans behind, and space colonization. He
did not mention "singularity", though, and he did not speak of a rapid
explosion of intelligence immediately after the human level is achieved.
Nonetheless, the overall singularity tenor is there in predicting both
human-level artificial intelligence and further artificial intelligence
far surpassing humans later.
Vinge's 1993 article "The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era",[4] spread widely on the internet and helped popularize the idea.[138]
This article contains the statement, "Within thirty years, we will have
the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly
after, the human era will be ended." Vinge argues that science-fiction
authors cannot write realistic post-singularity characters who surpass
the human intellect, as the thoughts of such an intellect is beyond
humans' ability to express.[4]
Minsky's
1994 article says robots will "inherit the Earth", possibly with the
use of nanotechnology, and proposes to think of robots as human "mind
children", drawing the analogy from Moravec. The rhetorical effect of
the analogy is that if humans are fine to pass the world to their
biological children, they should be equally fine to pass it to robots,
their "mind children". Per Minsky, "we could design our 'mind-children'
to think a million times faster than we do. To such a being, half a
minute might seem as long as one of our years, and each hour as long as
an entire human lifetime." The feature of the singularity present in
Minsky is the development of superhuman artificial intelligence
("million times faster"), but there is no talk of sudden intelligence
explosion, self-improving thinking machines, or unpredictability beyond
any specific event, and the word "singularity" is not used.[139]
Tipler's 1994 book The Physics of Immortality
predicts a future where super–intelligent machines build enormously
powerful computers, people are "emulated" in computers, life reaches
every galaxy, and people achieve immortality when they reach Omega Point.[140]
There is no talk of Vingean "singularity" or sudden intelligence
explosion, but intelligence much greater than human is there, as well as
immortality.
In 2000, Bill Joy, a prominent technologist and a co-founder of Sun Microsystems, voiced concern over the potential dangers of robotics, genetic engineering, and nanotechnology.[64]
In 2007, Yudkowsky suggested that many of the varied
definitions that have been assigned to "singularity" are mutually
incompatible rather than mutually supporting.[32][142]
For example, Kurzweil extrapolates current technological trajectories
past the arrival of self-improving AI or superhuman intelligence, which
Yudkowsky argues represents a tension with both I. J. Good's proposed
discontinuous upswing in intelligence and Vinge's thesis on
unpredictability.[32]
In 2009, Kurzweil and X-Prize founder Peter Diamandis announced the establishment of Singularity University,
a nonaccredited private institute whose mission is "to educate, inspire
and empower leaders to apply exponential technologies to address
humanity's grand challenges."[143] Funded by companies such as Google,[144]Autodesk,[145] and ePlanet Ventures,[146] the organization runs an annual ten-week graduate program as well as smaller "executive" courses.[147]
In politics
In 2007, the Joint Economic Committee of the United States Congress
released a report about the future of nanotechnology. It predicts
significant technological and political changes in the midterm future,
including possible technological singularity.[148][149][150]
One
thing that we haven't talked about too much, and I just want to go back
to, is we really have to think through the economic implications.
Because most people aren't spending a lot of time right now worrying
about singularity—they are worrying about "Well, is my job going to be
replaced by a machine?"
Notes
Large language models such as ChatGPT and Llama require millions of hours of graphics processing unit (GPU) time. Training Meta's Llama in 2023 took 21 days on 2048 NVIDIA A100
GPUs, thus requiring hardware substantially larger than a brain.
Training took around a million GPU hours, with an estimated cost of over
$2 million. Even so, it is far smaller, and thus easier to train, than
a LLM such as ChatGPT, which as of 2023 had 175 billion parameters to
adjust, compared to 65 million for Llama.[55]
Vinge, Vernor. "The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era". Archived 2018-04-10 at the Wayback Machine, in Vision-21: Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering in the Era of Cyberspace,
G. A. Landis, ed., NASA Publication CP-10129, pp. 11–22, 1993. "There
may be developed computers that are "awake" and superhumanly
intelligent. (To date, there has been much controversy as to whether we
can create human equivalence in a machine. But if the answer is 'yes, we
can', then there is little doubt that beings more intelligent can be
constructed shortly thereafter.)"
Modis, Theodore (2012). "Why the Singularity Cannot Happen". Published in Eden, Amnon H. et al (Eds.) (2012). Singularity Hypothesis(PDF). New York: Springer. p.311. ISBN978-3-642-32560-1. pp. 311–339.
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Roman V. "Analysis of types of self-improving software." Artificial
General Intelligence. Springer International Publishing, 2015. pp.
384–393.
Eliezer Yudkowsky. General Intelligence and Seed AI-Creating Complete Minds Capable of Open-Ended Self-Improvement, 2001.
Ray Kurzweil, The Singularity Is Near, pp. 135–136. Penguin Group, 2005.
Sotala, Kaj; Yampolskiy, Roman (2017). "Risks of the Journey to the Singularity". The Technological Singularity. The Frontiers Collection. Berlin and Heidelberg, Germany: Springer Berlin Heidelberg. pp.11–23. doi:10.1007/978-3-662-54033-6_2. ISBN978-3-662-54031-2.
Pearce, David (2012), "The Biointelligence Explosion", in Eden, Amnon H.; Moor, James H.; Søraker, Johnny H.; Steinhart, Eric (eds.), Singularity Hypotheses, The Frontiers Collection, Berlin and Heidelberg, Germany: Springer Berlin Heidelberg, pp.199–238, doi:10.1007/978-3-642-32560-1_11, ISBN978-3-642-32559-5, retrieved 16 January 2022
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V. C., & Bostrom, N. (2016). "Future progress in artificial
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Katja; Salvatier, John; Dafoe, Allan; Zhang, Baobao; Evans, Owain (24
May 2017). "When Will AI Exceed Human Performance? Evidence from AI
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Ray Kurzweil, The Singularity Is Near, p. 9. Penguin Group, 2005
Ray Kurzweil, The Singularity Is Near, pp. 135–136. Penguin Group, 2005.
"So we will be producing about 1026 to 1029
cps of nonbiological computation per year in the early 2030s. This is
roughly equal to our estimate for the capacity of all living biological
human intelligence ... This state of computation in the early 2030s will
not represent the Singularity, however, because it does not yet
correspond to a profound expansion of our intelligence. By the
mid-2040s, however, that one thousand dollars' worth of computation will
be equal to 1026 cps, so the intelligence created per year (at a total cost of about $1012) will be about one billion times more powerful than all human intelligence today. That will
indeed represent a profound change, and it is for that reason that I
set the date for the Singularity—representing a profound and disruptive
transformation in human capability—as 2045."
Shulman, Carl; Sandberg, Anders (2010). Mainzer, Klaus (ed.). "Implications of a Software-Limited Singularity"(PDF). ECAP10: VIII European Conference on Computing and Philosophy. Archived(PDF) from the original on 30 April 2019. Retrieved 17 May 2014.
Muehlhauser, Luke; Salamon, Anna (2012). "Intelligence Explosion: Evidence and Import"(PDF). In Eden, Amnon; Søraker, Johnny; Moor, James H.; Steinhart, Eric (eds.). Singularity Hypotheses: A Scientific and Philosophical Assessment. Springer. Archived(PDF) from the original on 26 October 2014. Retrieved 28 August 2018.
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Wood, Andrew Paul (17 May 2025). "Mission Critical". New Zealand Listener: 38–39.
Modis, Theodore (2020). "Forecasting the Growth of Complexity and Change—An Update". Published in Korotayev, Andrey; LePoire, David (Eds.) (3 January 2020). The 21st Century Singularity and Global Futures (1ed.). Springer. p.620. ISBN978-3-030-33730-8. pp/ 101–104.
"The Uncertain Future". theuncertainfuture.com; a future technology and world-modeling project. Archived from the original on 30 April 2019. Retrieved 17 August 2010.
Nick Bostrom, "Ethical Issues in Advanced Artificial Intelligence". Archived 2018-10-08 at the Wayback Machine, in Cognitive, Emotive and Ethical Aspects of Decision Making in Humans and in Artificial Intelligence, Vol. 2, ed. I. Smit et al., International Institute of Advanced Studies in Systems Research and Cybernetics, 2003, pp. 12–17.
Hall, J. Storrs (2008). "Engineering Utopia"(PDF). Artificial General Intelligence, 2008: Proceedings of the First AGI Conference: 460–467. Archived(PDF) from the original on 1 December 2014. Retrieved 16 May 2014.
Sandberg,
Anders. "An overview of models of technological singularity." Roadmaps
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8. 2010.
Treder, Mike (31 March 2007). "Congress and the Singularity". Responsible Nanotechnology. Archived from the original on 7 April 2007. Retrieved 4 November 2016.
John R. Searle, "What Your Computer Can't Know" (review of Luciano Floridi, The Fourth Revolution: How the Infosphere Is Reshaping Human Reality, Oxford University Press, 2014; and Nick Bostrom, Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies, Oxford University Press, 2014), The New York Review of Books, vol. LXI, no. 15 (October 9, 2014), pp.52–55.
Krüger, Oliver, Virtual Immortality. God, Evolution, and the Singularity in Post- and Transhumanism., Bielefeld: transcript 2021. ISBN978-3-8376-5059-4.
Marcus, Gary, "Am I Human?: Researchers need new ways to distinguish artificial intelligence from the natural kind", Scientific American, vol. 316, no. 3 (March 2017), pp.58–63. Multiple tests of artificial-intelligence efficacy are needed because, "just as there is no single test of athletic
prowess, there cannot be one ultimate test of intelligence." One such
test, a "Construction Challenge", would test perception and physical
action—"two important elements of intelligent behavior that were
entirely absent from the original Turing test."
Another proposal has been to give machines the same standardized tests
of science and other disciplines that schoolchildren take. A so far
insuperable stumbling block to artificial intelligence is an incapacity
for reliable disambiguation. "[V]irtually every sentence [that people generate] is ambiguous,
often in multiple ways." A prominent example is known as the "pronoun
disambiguation problem": a machine has no way of determining to whom or
what a pronoun in a sentence—such as "he", "she" or "it"—refers.
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