Singularity Hypotheses: An Overview Introduction to: Singularity Hypotheses: A Scientific and Philosophical Assessment

Abstract

Bill Joy in a widely read but controversial article claimed that the most powerful 21st century technologies are threatening to make humans an endangered species (Joy 2000). Indeed, a growing number of scientists, philosophers and forecasters insist that the accelerating progress in disruptive technologies such as artificial intelligence, robotics, genetic engineering, and nanotechnology may lead to what they refer to as the technological singularity: an event or phase that will radically change human civilization, and perhaps even human nature itself, before the middle of the 21st century (Paul and Cox 1996; Broderick 2001; Garreau 2005, Kurzweil 2005). Singularity hypotheses refer to either one of two distinct and very different scenarios. The first (Vinge 1993; Bostrom to appear) postulates the emergence of artificial superintelligent agents—software-based synthetic minds—as the ‘singular’ outcome of accelerating progress in computing technology. This singularity results