The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology (25 page)

In addition to making computing smaller, we can make it bigger—that is, we can replicate these very small devices on a massive scale. With full-scale nanotechnology, computing resources can be made self-replicating and thus can rapidly convert mass and energy into an intelligent form. However, we run up against the speed of light, because the matter in the universe is spread out over vast distances.

As we will discuss later, there are at least suggestions that the speed of light may not be immutable. Physicists Steve Lamoreaux and Justin Torgerson of the Los Alamos National Laboratory have analyzed data from an old natural nuclear reactor that two billion years ago produced a fission reaction lasting several hundred thousand years in what is now West Africa.
⁷⁵
Examining radioactive isotopes left over from the reactor and comparing them to isotopes from similar nuclear reactions today, they determined that the physics constant
alpha (also called the fine-structure constant), which determines the strength of the electromagnetic force, apparently has changed over two billion years. This is of great significance to the world of physics, because the speed of light is inversely proportional to alpha, and both have been considered unchangeable constants. Alpha appears to have decreased by 4.5 parts out of 10
⁸
. If confirmed, this would imply that the speed of light has increased.

Of course, these exploratory results will need to be carefully verified. If true, they may hold great importance for the future of our civilization. If the speed of light has increased, it has presumably done so not just as a result of the passage of time but because certain conditions have changed. If the speed of light has changed due to changing circumstances, that cracks open the door just enough for the vast powers of our future intelligence and technology to swing the door widely open. This is the type of scientific insight that technologists can exploit. Human engineering often takes a natural, frequently subtle, effect, and controls it with a view toward greatly leveraging and magnifying it.

Even if we find it difficult to significantly increase the speed of light over the long distances of space, doing so within the small confines of a computing device would also have important consequences for extending the potential for computation. The speed of light is one of the limits that constrain computing devices even today, so the ability to boost it would extend further the limits of computation. We will explore several other intriguing approaches to possibly increasing, or circumventing, the speed of light in
chapter 6
. Expanding the speed of light is, of course, speculative today, and none of the analyses underlying our expectation of the Singularity rely on this possibility.

Going Back in Time.
Another intriguing—and highly speculative—possibility is to send a computational process back in time through a “wormhole” in space-time. Theoretical physicist Todd Brun of the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton has analyzed the possibility of computing using what he calls a “closed timelike curve” (CTC). According to Brun, CTCs could “send information (such as the result of calculations) into their own past light cones.”
⁷⁶

Brun does not provide a design for such a device but establishes that such a system is consistent with the laws of physics. His time-traveling computer also does not create the “grandfather paradox,” often cited in discussions of time travel. This well-known paradox points out that if person A goes back in time, he could kill his grandfather, causing A not to exist, resulting in his grandfather not being killed by him, so A would exist and thus could go back and kill his grandfather, and so on, ad infinitum.

Brun’s time-stretching computational process does not appear to introduce
this problem because it does not affect the past. It produces a determinate and unambiguous answer in the present to a posed question. The question must have a clear answer, and the answer is not presented until
after
the question is asked, although the process to determine the answer can take place before the question is asked using the CTC. Conversely, the process could take place after the question is asked and then use a CTC to bring the answer back into the present (but not before the question was asked, because that would introduce the grandfather paradox). There may very well be fundamental barriers (or limitations) to such a process that we don’t yet understand, but those barriers have yet to be identified. If feasible, it would greatly expand the potential of local computation. Again, all of my estimates of computational capacities and of the capabilities of the Singularity do not rely on Brun’s tentative conjecture.

E
RIC
D
REXLER:
I don’t know, Ray. I’m pessimistic on the prospects for picotechnology. With the stable particles we know of, I don’t see how there can be picoscale structure without the enormous pressures found in a collapsed star—a white dwarf or a neutron star—and then you would get a solid chunk of stuff like a metal, but a million times denser. This doesn’t seem very useful, even if it were possible to make it in our solar system. If physics included a stable particle like an electron but a hundred times more massive, it would be a different story, but we don’t know of one
.

R
AY:
We manipulate subatomic particles today with accelerators that fall significantly short of the conditions in a neutron star. Moreover, we manipulate subatomic particles such as electrons today with tabletop devices. Scientists recently captured and stopped a photon dead in its tracks
.

E
RIC:
Yes, but what kind of manipulation? If we count manipulating small particles, then all technology is already picotechnology, because all matter is made of subatomic particles. Smashing particles together in accelerators produces debris, not machines or circuits
.

R
AY:
I didn’t say we’ve solved the conceptual problems of picotechnology. I’ve got you penciled in to do that in 2072
.

E
RIC:
Oh, good, then I see you have me living a long time
.

R
AY:
Yes, well, if you stay on the sharp leading edge of health and medical insights and technology, as I’m trying to do, I see you being in rather good shape around then
.

M
OLLY
2104:
Yes, quite a few of you baby boomers did make it through. But most were unmindful of the opportunities in 2004 to extend human mortality long enough to take advantage of the biotechnology revolution, which hit its stride a decade later, followed by nanotechnology a decade after that
.

M
OLLY
2004:
So, Molly 2104, you must be quite something, considering that
one thousand dollars of computation in 2080 can perform the equivalent of ten billion human brains thinking for ten thousand years in a matter of ten microseconds. That presumably will have progressed even further by 2104, and I assume you have access to more than one thousand dollars’ worth of computation
.

M
OLLY
2104:
Actually, millions of dollars on average—billions when I need it
.

M
OLLY
2004:
That’s pretty hard to imagine
.

M
OLLY
2104:
Yeah, well, I guess I’m kind of smart when I need to be
.

M
OLLY
2004:
You don’t sound that bright, actually
.

M
OLLY
2104:
I’m trying to relate on your level
.

M
OLLY
2004:
Now, wait a second, Miss Molly of the future. . ..

G
EORGE
2048:
Ladies, please, you’re both very engaging
.

M
OLLY
2004:
Yes, well, tell that to my counterpart here—she feels she’s a jillion times more capable than I am
.

G
EORGE
2048:
She is your future, you know. Anyway, I’ve always felt there was something special about a biological woman
.

M
OLLY
2104:
Yeah, what would you know about biological women anyway?

G
EORGE
2048:
I’ve read a great deal about it and engaged in some very precise simulations
.

M
OLLY
2004:
It occurs to me that maybe you’re both missing something that you’re not aware of
.

G
EORGE
2048:
I don’t see how that’s possible
.

M
OLLY
2104:
Definitely not
.

M
OLLY
2004:
I didn’t think you would. But there is one thing I understand you can do that I do find cool
.

M
OLLY
2104:
Just one?

M
OLLY
2004:
One that I’m thinking of, anyway. You can merge your thinking with someone else and still keep your separate identity at the same time
.

M
OLLY
2104:
If the situation—and the person—is right, then, yes, it’s a very sublime thing to do
.

M
OLLY
2004:
Like falling in love?

M
OLLY
2104:
Like being in love. It’s the ultimate way to share
.

G
EORGE
2048:
I think you’ll go for it, Molly 2004
.

M
OLLY
2104:
You ought to know, George, since you were the first person I did it with
.

CHAPTER FOUR

Achieving the Software of
Human Intelligence

How to Reverse Engineer the Human Brain

There are good reasons to believe that we are at a turning point, and that it will be possible within the next two decades to formulate a meaningful understanding of brain function. This optimistic view is based on several measurable trends, and a simple observation which has been proven repeatedly in the history of science:
Scientific advances are enabled by a technology advance that allows us to see what we have not been able to see before
. At about the turn of the twenty-first century, we passed a detectable turning point in both neuroscience knowledge and computing power. For the first time in history, we collectively know enough about our own brains, and have developed such advanced computing technology, that we can now seriously undertake the construction of a verifiable, real-time, high-resolution model of significant parts of our intelligence.

                   —L
LOYD
W
ATTS, NEUROSCIENTIST
¹

Now, for the first time, we are observing the brain at work in a global manner with such clarity that we should be able to discover the overall programs behind its magnificent powers.

                   —J. G. T
AYLOR
, B. H
ORWITZ
, K. J. F
RISTON, NEUROSCIENTISTS
²

The brain is good: it is an existence proof that a certain arrangement of matter can produce mind, perform intelligent reasoning, pattern recognition, learning and a lot of other important tasks of engineering interest. Hence we can learn to build new systems by borrowing ideas from the brain. . . . The brain is bad: it is an evolved, messy system where a lot of interactions happen because of evolutionary contingencies. . . . On the other hand, it must also be robust (since we can survive with it) and be able to stand fairly major variations and environmental insults, so the truly valuable insight from the brain might be how to create resilient complex systems that self-organize well. . . . The interactions within a neuron are complex, but on the next level neurons seem to be somewhat simple objects that can
be put together flexibly into networks. The cortical networks are a real mess locally, but again on the next level the connectivity isn’t that complex. It would be likely that evolution has produced a number of modules or repeating themes that are being re-used, and when we understand them and their interactions we can do something similar.

                   —A
NDERS
S
ANDBERG, COMPUTATIONAL NEUROSCIENTIST
, R
OYAL
I
NSTITUTE OF
T
ECHNOLOGY
, S
WEDEN

Reverse Engineering the Brain: An Overview of the Task

T
he combination of human-level intelligence with a computer’s inherent superiority in speed, accuracy, and memory-sharing ability will be formidable. To date, however, most AI research and development has utilized engineering methods that are not necessarily based on how the human brain functions, for the simple reason that we have not had the precise tools needed to develop detailed models of human cognition.