The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology (79 page)

M
OLLY 2004:
So a software virus could turn the nanobot immune system into a stealth destroyer
?

R
AY:
That’s possible. It’s fair to conclude that software security is going to be the decisive issue for many levels of the human-machine civilization. With everything becoming information, maintaining the software integrity of our defensive technologies will be critical to our survival. Even on an economic level, maintaining the business model that creates information will be critical to our well-being
.

M
OLLY 2004:
This makes me feel rather helpless. I mean, with all these good and bad nanobots battling it out, I’ll just be a hapless bystander
.

R
AY:
That’s hardly a new phenomenon. How much influence do you have in 2004 on the disposition of the tens of thousands of nuclear weapons in the world
?

M
OLLY 2004:
At least I have a voice and a vote in elections that affect foreign-policy issues
.

R
AY:
There’s no reason for that to change. Providing for a reliable nanotechnology immune system will be one of the great political issues of the 2020s and 2030s
.

M
OLLY 2004:
Then what about strong AI
?

R
AY:
The good news is that it will protect us from malevolent nanotechnology because it will be smart enough to assist us in keeping our defensive technologies ahead of the destructive ones
.

N
ED
L
UDD:
Assuming it’s on our side
.

R
AY:
Indeed
.

CHAPTER NINE

Response to Critics

The human mind likes a strange idea as little as the body likes a strange protein and resists it with a similar energy.

                   —W. I. B
EVERIDGE

If a . . . scientist says that something is possible he is almost certainly right, but if he says that it is impossible he is very probably wrong.

                   —A
RTHUR
C. C
LARKE

A Panoply of Criticisms

I
n
The Age of Spiritual Machines
, I began to examine some of the accelerating trends that I have sought to explore in greater depth in this book.
ASM
inspired a broad variety of reactions, including extensive discussions of the profound, imminent changes it considered (for example, the promise-versus-peril debate prompted by Bill Joy’s
Wired
story, “Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us,” as I reviewed in the previous chapter). The response also included attempts to argue on many levels why such transformative changes would not, could not, or should not happen. Here is a summary of the critiques I will be responding to in this chapter:

• The “criticism from Malthus”:
  It’s a mistake to extrapolate exponential trends indefinitely, since they inevitably run out of resources to maintain the exponential growth. Moreover, we won’t have enough energy to power the extraordinarily dense computational platforms forecast, and even if we did they would be as hot as the sun
  . Exponential trends do reach an asymptote, but the matter and energy resources needed for computation and communication are so small per compute and per bit that these trends can
  continue to the point where nonbiological intelligence is trillions of trillions of times more powerful than biological intelligence. Reversible computing can reduce energy requirements, as well as heat dissipation, by many orders of magnitude. Even restricting computation to “cold” computers will achieve nonbiological computing platforms that vastly outperform biological intelligence.
  
• The “criticism from software”:
  We’re making exponential gains in hardware, but software is stuck in the mud
  . Although the doubling time for progress in software is longer than that for computational hardware, software is also accelerating in effectiveness, efficiency, and complexity. Many software applications, ranging from search engines to games, routinely use AI techniques that were only research projects a decade ago. Substantial gains have also been made in the overall complexity of software, in software productivity, and in the efficiency of software in solving key algorithmic problems. Moreover, we have an effective game plan to achieve the capabilities of human intelligence in a machine: reverse engineering the brain to capture its principles of operation and then implementing those principles in brain-capable computing platforms. Every aspect of brain reverse engineering is accelerating: the spatial and temporal resolution of brain scanning, knowledge about every level of the brain’s operation, and efforts to realistically model and simulate neurons and brain regions.
  
• The “criticism from analog processing”:
  Digital computation is too rigid because digital bits are either on or off. Biological intelligence is mostly analog, so subtle gradations can be considered
  . It’s true that the human brain uses digital-controlled analog methods, but we can also use such methods in our machines. Moreover, digital computation can simulate analog transactions to any desired level of accuracy, whereas the converse statement is not true.
  
• The “criticism from the complexity of neural processing”:
  The information processes in the interneuronal connections (axons, dendrites, synapses) are far more complex than the simplistic models used in neural nets
  . True, but brain-region simulations don’t use such simplified models. We have achieved realistic mathematical models and computer simulations of neurons and interneuronal connections that do capture the nonlinearities and intricacies of their biological counterparts. Moreover, we have found that the complexity of processing brain regions is often simpler than the neurons they comprise. We already have effective models and simulations for several dozen regions of the human brain. The genome contains only about thirty to one hundred million bytes of design information when
  redundancy is considered, so the design information for the brain is of a manageable level.
  
• The “criticism from microtubules and quantum computing”:
  The micro-tubules in neurons are capable of quantum computing, and such quantum computing is a prerequisite for consciousness. To “upload” a personality, one would have to capture its precise quantum state
  . No evidence exists to support either of these statements. Even if true, there is nothing that bars quantum computing from being carried out in nonbiological systems. We routinely use quantum effects in semiconductors (tunneling in transistors, for example), and machine-based quantum computing is also progressing. As for capturing a precise quantum state, I’m in a very different quantum state than I was before writing this sentence. So am I already a different person? Perhaps I am, but if one captured my state a minute ago, an upload based on that information would still successfully pass a “Ray Kurzweil” Turing test.
  
• The “criticism from the Church-Turing thesis”:
  We can show that there are broad classes of problems that cannot be solved by any Turing machine. It can also be shown that Turing machines can emulate any possible computer (that is, there exists a Turing machine that can solve any problem that any computer can solve), so this demonstrates a clear limitation on the problems that a computer can solve. Yet humans are capable of solving these problems, so machines will never emulate human intelligence
  . Humans are no more capable of universally solving such “unsolvable” problems than machines. Humans can make educated guesses to solutions in certain instances, but machines can do the same thing and can often do so more quickly.
  
• The “criticism from failure rates”:
  Computer systems are showing alarming rates of catastrophic failure as their complexity increases. Thomas Ray writes that we are “pushing the limits of what we can effectively design and build through conventional approaches
  .” We have developed increasingly complex systems to manage a broad variety of mission-critical tasks, and failure rates in these systems are very low. However, imperfection is an inherent feature of any complex process, and that certainly includes human intelligence.
  
• The “criticism from ‘lock-in’ ”:
  The pervasive and complex support systems (and the huge investments in these systems) required by such fields as energy and transportation are blocking innovation, so this will prevent the kind of rapid change envisioned for the technologies underlying the Singularity
  . It is specifically information processes that are growing exponentially in capability and price-performance. We have already seen rapid paradigm shifts
  in every aspect of information technology, unimpeded by any lock-in phenomenon (despite large infrastructure investments in such areas as the Internet and telecommunications). Even the energy and transportation sectors will witness revolutionary changes from new nanotechnology-based innovations.
  
• The “criticism from ontology”:
  John Searle describes several versions of his Chinese Room analogy. In one formulation a man follows a written program to answer questions in Chinese. The man appears to be answering questions competently in Chinese, but since he is just mechanically following a written program, he has no real understanding of Chinese and no real awareness of what he is doing. The “man” in the room doesn’t understand anything, because, after all, “he is just a computer,” according to Searle. So clearly, computers cannot understand what they are doing, since they are just following rules
  . Searle’s Chinese Room arguments are fundamentally tautological, as they just assume his conclusion that computers cannot possibly have any real understanding. Part of the philosophical sleight of hand in Searle’s simple analogies is a matter of scale. He purports to describe a simple system and then asks the reader to consider how such a system could possibly have any real understanding. But the characterization itself is misleading. To be consistent with Searle’s own assumptions the Chinese Room system that Searle describes would have to be as complex as a human brain and would, therefore, have as much understanding as a human brain. The man in the analogy would be acting as the central-processing unit, only a small part of the system. While the man may not see it, the understanding is distributed across the entire pattern of the program itself and the billions of notes he would have to make to follow the program. Consider that I understand English, but none of my neurons do. My understanding is represented in vast patterns of neurotransmitter strengths, synaptic clefts, and interneuronal connections.
  
• The “criticism from the rich-poor divide”:
  It’s likely that through these technologies the rich may obtain certain opportunities that the rest of humankind does not have access to
  . This, of course, would be nothing new, but I would point out that because of the ongoing exponential growth of price-performance, all of these technologies quickly become so inexpensive as to become almost free.
  
• The “criticism from the likelihood of government regulation”:
  Governmental regulation will slow down and stop the acceleration of technology
  . Although the obstructive potential of regulation is an important concern, it has had as of yet little measurable effect on the trends discussed in this
  book. Absent a worldwide totalitarian state, the economic and other forces underlying technical progress will only grow with ongoing advances. Even controversial issues such as stem-cell research end up being like stones in a stream, the flow of progress rushing around them.
  
• The “criticism from theism”:
  According to William A. Dembski, “contemporary materialists such as Ray Kurzweil . . . see the motions and modifications of matter as sufficient to account for human mentality.” But materialism is predictable, whereas reality is not. Predictability
  [
  is
  ]
  materialism’s main virtue . . . and hollowness
  [
  is
  ]
  its main fault
  .” Complex systems of matter and energy are not predictable, since they are based on a vast number of unpredictable quantum events. Even if we accept a “hidden variables” interpretation of quantum mechanics (which says that quantum events only appear to be unpredictable but are based on undetectable hidden variables), the behavior of a complex system would still be unpredictable in practice. All of the trends show that we are clearly headed for nonbio-logical systems that are as complex as their biological counterparts. Such future systems will be no more “hollow” than humans and in many cases will be based on the reverse engineering of human intelligence. We don’t need to go beyond the capabilities of patterns of matter and energy to account for the capabilities of human intelligence.
  
• The “criticism from holism”:
  To quote Michael Denton, organisms are “self-organizing, . . . self-referential, . . . self-replicating, . . . reciprocal, . . . self-formative, and . . . holistic.” Such organic forms can be created only through biological processes, and such forms are “immutable, . . . impenetrable, and . . . fundamental realities of existence
  .”
  ¹
  It’s true that biological design represents a profound set of principles. However, machines can use—and already are using—these same principles, and there is nothing that restricts nonbiological systems from harnessing the emergent properties of the patterns found in the biological world.
  

I’ve engaged in countless debates and dialogues responding to these challenges in a diverse variety of forums. One of my goals for this book is to provide a comprehensive response to the most important criticisms I have encountered. Most of my rejoinders to these critiques on feasibility and inevitability have been discussed throughout this book, but in this chapter I want to offer a detailed reply to several of the more interesting ones.