Singularity is a tipping point when the robots powered by artificial intelligence will become more intelligent than human beings. Singularity is the time when artificial intelligence won’t require human intervention to become more intelligent. Computers will be self-sufficient, they will make their own decisions, they will make more computers like themselves, and there may come a point when they will decide what is going to be the role of humans in the affairs of the world rather than humans deciding what’s going to be the role of computers in the affairs of the world.
This may happen in 30 years, says Softbank Robotics CEO Masayoshi Son. By 2047, he says, a single computer chip will have an IQ of 10,000, which is far more than the most intelligent people on earth.
He says, “One of the chips in our shoes in the next 30 years will be smarter than our brain. We will be less than our shoes. And we are stepping on them.”
But how has Son arrived at this calculation? How does he know that computers will reach singularity in the next 30 years? By 2047?
He has concluded this by equating the neurons in human brain to the number of transistors in a computer chip. Neurons help us think, transistors help computers compute and hence, think. By 2018, the number of transistors on a computer chip will surpass the number of neurons in our brain. He says there are 30 billion neurons in our brain. For a layperson, it might be exasperating to think that there may be more than 30 billion transistors on a computer chip. Nanotechnology is making this possible.
Google’s director of Engineering, Ray Kurzweil, has predicted singularity to take place around 2045.
Is it going to be good? Will computers more intelligent than human beings be better for the world? It remains to be seen. After all, it’s humans who are designing these computers and based on this present knowledge and technology, computers will surpass the intelligence of human beings. So it depends on the seeds of intelligence that are being sown right now.
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