The Babelarity Is Near

I’m reading, for the second time, Raymond Kurzweil’s The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology. The book is about that moment in human history – the “singularity” – when machine intelligence will surpass human intelligence. This is not science fiction, I really believe it’s going to happen. And it’s huge.

Along with the ability of machines to think faster than humans and to contain more than the equivalent of all human knowledge ever to have existed, they will also be able to continuously design better versions of themselves at an exponentially faster rate. In other words, the time is coming when machines will be continuously improving themselves in real time, faster than humans can even think.

This not only can happen, but it will, and sooner than most people think. If we look at the rate of technological progress to date, we will see that it been advancing at an exponential rate as opposed to a simple linear rate of progress. In fact, in the computer and technology realm, the author shows that the rate of advancement is actually doubly exponential. The exponential rate of change itself is increasing exponentially.

Kurzweil uses the $1,000 laptop as a benchmark. Within only a decade or two, your $1,000 laptop will be able to process more knowledge than the entire history of human intelligence. It will be able to think faster than a human. It will be capable of pattern recognition, and the AI (Artificial Intelligence) programming will make it impossible to distinguish between human and machine, for instance, when talking on a phone. That is, if phones still exist at that time.

What does this portend for the future of humanity?

Kurzweil is an optimist and sees good things coming of all this. Greatly increased longevity, medical “miracles”, peace and food for all human beings, and such. I hope he’s right. But I’m not sure God will allow it.

Parallel with all of this technological talk, the Christian community at large seems convinced that the end is near. I’m not sure I subscribe to all that, but let’s say it’s true. Could it be that God is planning to stop human progress and set up His reign on earth to prevent human beings from becoming what may appear as omniscient? This has happened once before.

Here’s what God said when human beings built the Tower of Babel, in disobedience to His commandment to spread throughout the earth:

“If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other” (Genesis 11:5).

Seems that Gods takes His position of ultimate sovereignty rather seriously. I have always found this story fascinating, since it implies – no, it plainly states – that human beings are capable of some truly miraculous things. We are, after all, made in God’s image.

It seems to me that God may not let us become omnipotent without first establishing His own rule in this universe. Time will tell, of course. And it may not be long…