I will argue the term “technological singularity” is imprecise and unhelpful. I will propose that a more precise concept is the transition from dead technology to living technology. That is, the moment when allopoietic products become autopoietic.
Definitions
The Wikipedia definition of the technological singularity is:
a hypothetical event in which technological growth accelerates beyond human control, producing unpredictable changes in human civilization.
Let’s compare this to the mathematical definition of a singularity, from which the mathematicians and scientists who coined this term were almost surely inspired:
“a point at which a given mathematical object is not defined, or a point where the mathematical object ceases to be well-behaved in some particular way”.
Can the “technological singularity” as popularly discussed truly be considered a singularity in the mathematical sense?
Vernor Vinge is credited with popularizing the term in a 1993 NASA symposium report, where he described it thus:
Stan Ulam [27] paraphrased John von Neumann as saying:
“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” […]
From the human point of view this change will be a throwing away of all the previous rules, perhaps in the blink of an eye, an exponential runaway beyond any hope of control. Developments that before were thought might only happen in “a million years” (if ever) will likely happen in the next century. (In [4], Greg Bear paints a picture of the major changes happening in a matter of hours.)
I think it’s fair to call this event a singularity (“the Singularity” for the purposes of this paper). It is a point where our models must be discarded and a new reality rules.
Let’s unpack each of these subtly different definitions:
von Neumann: “some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could not continue”.
What are human affairs as we know them? How do we evaluate whether they have continued?
In Complexity Rising, NECSI describes a reason that we have passed a threshold in societal complexity where societal affairs are hard to predict.
Vinge: “a point where our models must be discarded and a new reality rules.”
A mathematical singularity is indeed a reason to discard a model. Since a singularity is a parameter value for which a function is ill-defined, If one is using that function to model some physical phenomenon, this is indeed a reason to not use that model to make a prediction at that parameter-value (since the model doesn’t even give one a well-defined prediction there).
But a singularity is not the only reason to discard a model. We discard scientific models all the time for all sorts of reasons, e.g.:
we found a model that makes more accurate predictions
we found a situation where the model makes a grossly wrong prediction
we found a simpler explanation of observed phenomena that perhaps generalizes better
etc.
Saying there exists a situation where we will have to discard our models is much different than saying there’s a singularity: a singularity is a much stronger condition.
Past & Present
Is technological growth under human control right now (Wikipedia definition)? Was it ever? Did it stop being so at some point?
Consider this cycle of causal relationships, where the notation A→B should be read as “A causes B”, and A←→B is “A and B cause each other”:
Individual Humans ←(→) Human Society ←→ Technology
↖——————————————————(↗)
When we carefully consider each relationship, we realize we have to draw the arrows bi-directionally everywhere. This is true even when one direction of causality may seem weaker than its opposite. For example, most humans’ effect on society is less than society’s effect on them, and their impact on technology is less than technology’s impact on them.1
To the degree that human society is the main thing that creates technology (rather than individual humans), and individual humans have little control over human society, one can argue that humans have little control over technology even now. The development of technology is driven by a societal and cultural meme-plex that evades understanding not only by individual humans but even by society itself. Humans are not in control of themselves; society is not in control of itself. Society is creating technology yet is not in control of its own act of creation.
One could thus argue that technological growth has already accelerated beyond human control. This is because individual human behavior has accelerated beyond individual human control, and societal behavior has accelerated beyond societal control. In his 1954 essay “The Question Concerning Technology,” Martin Heiddegar already argued that technology should not merely be considered a tool or a human activity, but as an autopoietic process having its own essence which we should seek to understand. Does the present situation over the last 70 years thus qualify as being “post-singularity”?
It is true however that humans are still necessary for technological growth. If all humans would disappear right now, one would reasonably expect that technological growth would stop. Datacenters would rust, factories would grind to a halt, Waymo cars would run low on charge and not know what to do next without their human supervisors. This might soon not be the case.
Future
If we connect the mathematical definition to the popular definition of the singularity, I’m not sure what distinct point or event the definition refers to. There have already been unpredictable changes in human civilization, yet it’s hard to pin down the distinct point at which this began happening. Is the definition saying things will get more unpredictable at a certain point? Technological growth is already beyond human control — though humans influence it. But the crucial distinction is that humans are still necessary for it. If all humans would disappear, we expect that all the technology we’ve built to quickly grow idle. Perhaps this is the relevant basis on which to claim humans are “in control.” Are they talking about a point where humans are no longer necessary for technology to evolve — i.e. if all humans would disappear, the technology would carry on functioning and improving?
Let’s compare the relationship between technology and humans to the relationship between a human and their gut-microbiome. We can ask to what degree the gut-microbiome is “in control” of the human. The answer is a bit fuzzy: they indeed have some significant control (they influence mood, appetite etc. via the gut-brain connection), but not complete control (our brain, nervous system, and other bodily processes exert larger control of our behavior). So it’s a bit of a stretch to say that the gut microbiome “controls” the human (though it’s not entirely false). But the gut microbiome are quite necessary: the human would struggle dearly to survive without it.
In the post-singularity world, this is one such possible fate between humans and technology: technology might turn into a super-organism where humans are both necessary for its survival yet not in full control of where it goes.
Beyond the Singularity
If we want to consider what changes human society is about to face, we might better consider a multiplicity of rapidly-changing phenomena in our world, which take place as continuous (though perhaps rapid) transitions, rather than singular/discrete ones:
a transition from embodied, biological minds to disembodied, non-living ones
a transition from carbon-based life to silicon-based life (which are different things)
escalating economic inequality
diverging polarization in political and intellectual space
increased risk of war
increased risk of climate change
the risk of human extinction
the prospect of humans living forever.
It’s not apparent to me that there’s a singular cause for all of these. The only unifying theme is that these are all the things happening right now. One can map the relationships, which are both complicated and complex. But one will not find that map to reveal any one event in the past or future before which everything is okay and under human control and after which it is not.
Since at this moment in history most technology is developed in groups of people rather than individuals, I consider such groups to be closer to “human society” than “individual humans”. Thus I treat “human society creates technology” as the stronger arrow than “individual humans create technology”.
[Individual humans steer and make up human society, and in turn human society steers individual humans. There’s a similar bidirectional relationship between human society and technology. We can draw a similar set of arrows between individual humans and technology as well — but at this moment in history, most influential technology is produced by groups of humans rather than individuals, so the “individual human influences technology” arrow is a bit weaker, while the “technology influences individual human” arrow is quite strong.]