Sixth Blog Post: Kurzweil, Singularity and Artificial Intelligence

Technological singularity is a hypothesis that some form of super human or artificial intelligence system will outsmart the best minds or code that one has integrated into it. This technology that we use everyday has a source code scripted into it and collects artificial intelligence to provide you quick computing of your personal doing. The most important general-purpose technology of our era is artificial intelligence, particularly

machine learning (ML) — that is, "the machine’s ability to keep improving its performance without humans having to explain exactly how to accomplish all the tasks it’s given." Considering that, Ray Kurzweil has also researched the topic vigorously and is a futurist himself. He has written a book based on his prediction on the singularity, and of the epochs of evolutionary progress, and the potential next epoch being the merger of human technology with human intelligence. However Kurzweil does say that "the evolutionary progress looks smooth but is really divided into paradigms, or specific methods of solving problems.". This can be seen through everyday technology, in the sense that, we each have a computer of some type with a processor that performs tasks that YOU as the end user WANT it to perform. Significantly, that computer knows what you are putting into it and decoding it through a medium for anyone or anything to understand and interpret. What the singularity is, is the taking over of human life, and artificial intelligence will essentially destroy in some way, the human race, therefore being the epoch of technological singularity in our known universe. (CONNORKOBAL)

When using these technologies, there is a blend between human intelligence and virtual reality through parts of the interface including chat rooms, video games or a virtual commonplace.  In these places we have avatars, handles and profiles which help make up our

virtual identities.  On social media platforms, users often use a photo of themselves and their real name.  Below, is an example profile page of the creator of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg.  Social media platforms can be used in many different ways.  Some people create accounts and are very intentional about what is posted.  Many use different platforms as different means of communication. For example, people might view Snapchat as a more casual platform because images sent are temporary.   A virtual identity is not completely the same as a real life identity because people have the choice of changing how they are perceived in a virtual context.  It's interesting to see what can be done with virtual identities. (Mary-Lynn)