Drivers of Accelerating Technology
It’s pretty clear that everything is happening faster and faster in this world. The most obvious examples in consumer’s lives are: the Internet, cell phones, and computers. Against this waterfall of technological advances, it’s pretty interesting to notice that most people are totally unaware of the singularity.
My favorite book about the singularity is The Singularity Is Near
One thing that’s interesting about the singularity is that all the different advances in technology fuel other advances. For example, researchers around the world use the Internet to collaborate and make their own technological progress faster. It’s a big, powerful virtuous circle.
Consider this: there’s a researcher who’s developing Artificial Intelligence software to design CPUs. She does research on the Internet and discovers the most powerful Artificial Intelligence theories available today. She goes out and buys a computer that is four times as powerful as the one she bought two years ago. After a few years of hard work, she licenses her new technology to AMD. AMD uses it to make still more powerful computers at lower prices.
So what just happened? She leveraged off existing advancing technologies to create a new technology that will, in turn, empower other people even more! This powerful cycle creates the double exponential curve of technological advancement that leads to the singularity.
It seems that there are a few of these technologies that fuel the advance to the singularity. What are these drivers of progress?
- The Internet
- Computers
- Free market economy
- Artificial Intelligence technology
Have I missed any? What do you think are the most powerful forces that create technological progress?
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is one of my favorite financial books of all time. It's an allegory about a guy who has a terrible job, and how he overcomes challenges to achieve his dreams.
I believe that knowledge of how the human brain works will drive AI technology. I don’t think it will be very easy for AI researchers to dream up human-level AI without borrowing a lot from the human brain. If you accept this then better brain scanning technology (both better spatial and temporal resolution) is clearly a driver. Also basic research in psychology, cognitive science, and neuroscience can help shed light on how the brain works.
(Now I’m looking at second-order drivers of understanding the brain)..Nanotechnology will drive brain scanning – I think Kurzweil mentions this in his book too. What drives the basic research I mentioned? Coffee, money…smart drugs/cognitive enhancement would be beneficial as well…
John Smart made an excellent presentation at the 1st Singularity Summit in 2006, where he discussed the NBICS Convergence. How nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, cognitive technology, and social technology all feed on and reinforce each other.
Couple the NBICS Convergence with Kurzweil’s Law of Accelerating Returns (power of information technologies doubles every year) and you have something really huge.
I recently presented these concepts to a conference of 1,750 university students in Leon, Mexico. It was great.
I also agree with Ryan McCall (above), in that our understanding of the brain – especially pattern recognition and parallel processing – may be the key. Jeff Hawkins book, On Intelligence, is quite an eye opener.
Yes, I agree. On Intelligence is very interesting too.