The Singularity is a hypothetical future event where technology growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible, leading to unpredictable transformations in our reality[1]. It’s often associated with the point at which artificial intelligence surpasses human intelligence, potentially causing radical changes in society. I’d like to know your thoughts on what the Singularity’s endgame will be: Utopia, Dystopia, Collapse, or Extinction, and why?

Citations:

  1. Singularity Endgame: Utopia, Dystopia, Collapse, or Extinction? (It’s actually up to you!)

  1. https://www.techtarget.com/searchenterpriseai/definition/Singularity-the ↩︎

  • empireOfLove
    1·
    2 years ago

    Unfortunately, I think human nature makes utopia an impossibility. Some portion of people will always have issues, they will always contain hate and greed and a desire to harm others for their own profit. AI has the potential to take away that human element from most economic and governmental decision making- except for the fact that it’s humans giving the AI directives, which means the end outcome will always be the same- massive inequality. Garbage in, garbage out will always hold true.

    Similarly, I do not think humanity will ever go completely extinct. Sure, industrial society may not survive. But, we are an amazingly hardy, resilient species. And with the cumulative knowledge and intelligence we’ve amassed powered by our inherent ingenuity, we can survive just about any calamity short of complete nuclear sterilization. (Which could still happen, of course- but they’ve been saying that for 60 years.)

    No, where I think we will land is somewhere in between dystopia and collapse. We’re beginning to reach a point where natural resources become exponentially more expensive to extract and the working population available to extract them begins to plateau. Automation is great for reducing labor requirements but it requires a massive amount of the very natural resources that are becoming difficult to extract.

    So the haves will do everything in their power to continue having, while the have-nots want desperately to have what no longer exists- cheap natural resources to modernize and industrialize. The haves will only use the new efficient technology to create to cement their own affluence. Dystopian inequality will continue grow worse, eventually straining our current capitalist system built on an affluent middle class until it snaps, and we see a massive worldwide economic reordering. It could turn into a Marxist dream of the rising global proletariat, or it could turn into a technologically decaying hellhole divided by hypernationalistic borders, every nation desperately clinging to the extractable resources they have with no time or money to put into innovation.