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Thinkism

October 1, 2008
by Kevin Kelly
Founding Executive Editor, Wired

Kevin Kelly

Here is why you don’t have to worry about the Singularity in your lifetime: thinkism doesn’t work. First, some definitions. According to Wikipedia, the Singularity is “a theoretical future point of unprecedented technological progress, caused in part by the ability of machines to improve themselves using artificial intelligence.”  According to Vernor Vinge and Ray Kurzweil, a smarter than human artificial intelligence will bring about yet smarter intelligence, which in turn will rapidly solve related scientific problems (including how to make yet smarter intelligence), expanding intelligence until all technical problems are quickly solved, so that society’s overall progress makes it impossible for us to imagine what lies beyond the Singularity’s birth. Oh, and it is due to happen no later than 2045.

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