I’ve been listening to the Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe for rather a long time. It’s the only podcast I listen to regularly now. It’s a campaigning podcast for critical thinking, with a special bent for taking the piss out of conman nonsense, such as alternative medicine, conspiracy theories, etc..
It was this podcast that introduced me to the problems with organic farming, that it does more harm than good. It uses 20% more land to produce same amount of crop, which means greater pressure on the ecosystem and so greater loss of species. Given land can be recovered after industrial farming, whereas lost species cannot be recovered, especially if we don’t know about them, and we don’t know about a great number of microbiota species; thus organic farming does more harm than good.
Their most recent episode had an interesting discussion about the harms and benefits that Artificial Intelligence may have on the arts. It was quite amusing to me, as a poet, given that the event that reduced poetry from an élitist specialism to something that anyone can do, was the invention of the pencil (ok, you can argue that point, but it’s undeniable that there is no mechanism for artificial scarcity in poetry.)
But, to me, the most interesting comment in the show was that “the singularity may have already started”. As a quick summary, ‘the singularity’ is a predicted acceleration of the development of science and technology as a result of Artificial Intelligence, an acceleration to a near infinite pace as AI accelerates itself. We are certainly seeing the start of an acceleration with AI, because the current technology is being used to develop, far more quickly, new knowledge. For example, the search for a new possible antibiotic takes years, and none have been found for far too long. A research group used a new AI in such a search, and found 58 candidates in a nine hours. These candidates have been narrowed down to six paticular potent chemicals, which now have to go through all the necessary formal processes required to turn possible medicines into actual ones. Many will be rejected, but with luck a couple will succeed.
This antibiotic example is far from unique. Many other research examples exist. AI is accelerating scientific and technological progress.
On the other hand, AI is in the full roar of the marketing con, with anyone and everyone in a position of power using it as a magic word to bring in money, and complexity be damned. It’s the usual hype cycle, but with knobs on. Of course, the fact that the big tech companies are throwing money at AI suggests there’s something there, and you already know I think there is, but I don’t think the Fred Bloggs village Motorcycle Repair Shop will suddenly get far better because they say they’re using AI and have double their prices—although the local cows may be happier.
So are we seeing the start of the singularity? I don’t know. We might be. It’d be very exciting if we are.
The predicted prospects of the singularity are immense, and I don’t really believe them. But they are so juicy it’s going to be worth hanging around to see if any of them do actually happen. Who would object to eternal youth and the stars?!
The singularity is predicted by some of the great names in computing—John von Neumann named it—and science fiction—Vernor Vinge popularised it. But their predictions are coloured by temporal distance. In the here and now, there are a lot of counter arguments and a lot of nitty–gritty. All the same, things are accelerating, but wishes will trip over nasty little reality, as they always do, and we’ll end up with some kind of halfway house, as we usually do. But it’ll be a fascinating halfway house all the same. I don’t believe I’ll see us tour the stars, but I do believe in the biological benefits, mostly because we only have the vagueist idea about Faster Than Light travel, but we’re already quite good at (science–based) medicine. Lifespan has been increasing for quite some time (not just because of medicine), and all that’s necessary for extreme lifespans is that the trend to increase lifespan accelerates to more than one year per year. Given it’s currently at three years per decade, ignoring pandemic hiccups (an increase of six years between 2000 and 2019), you’ll understand my hopefulness. Of course, that means new problems to address, such as that the maximum human lifespan seems to be around 110 years, but that’s a (knotty) bioengineering problem, not a fundamental physics problem.
I don’t believe the hype of AI. I certainly don’t believe the magic of the singularity. But something is happen, and it may well prove to be dangerously interesting.