The Law of Accelerating Returns

Thu, 08 May 2008 12:53:48 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

Can the pace of technological progress continue to speed up indefinitely? Is there not a point where humans are unable to think fast enough to keep up with it? With regard to unenhanced humans, clearly so. But what would a thousand scientists, each a thousand times more intelligent than human scientists today, and each operating a thousand times faster than contemporary humans (because the information processing in their primarily nonbiological brains is faster) accomplish? One year would be like a millennium. What would they come up with?

Well, for one thing, they would come up with technology to become even more intelligent (because their intelligence is no longer of fixed capacity).

This, then, is the Singularity. The Singularity is technological change so rapid and so profound that it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history.

Needless to say, the Singularity will transform all aspects of our lives, social, sexual, and economic,

Some prominent dates from this analysis include the following:

We achieve one Human Brain capability (2 * 10^16 cps) for $1,000 around the year 2023.
We achieve one Human Brain capability (2 * 10^16 cps) for one cent around the year 2037.
We achieve one Human Race capability (2 * 10^26 cps) for $1,000 around the year 2049.
We achieve one Human Race capability (2 * 10^26 cps) for one cent around the year 2059.

Downloading the Human Brain

A Thought Experiment

By 2030, going to a web site will mean entering a full immersion virtual reality environment.

Brain implants based on massively distributed intelligent nanobots will ultimately expand our memories a trillion fold, and otherwise vastly improve all of our sensory, pattern recognition, and cognitive abilities.

And in the same way that biological self-replication gone awry (i.e., cancer) results in biological destruction, a defect in the mechanism curtailing nanobot self-replication would endanger all physical entities, biological or otherwise.

A related question is "is death desirable?"

Plan to Stick Around

Tags: k kurzweil singularity

Posted by: mwesch

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The Law of Accelerating Returns