Where were you when the Singularity hit?

I am an avid but picky science fiction reader.  I never really had much use for stylists like Gibson or other cyberpunk-y, edgy authors.   Give me a good space opera, like Asimov’s Foundation series, or Peter Hamilton’s apocalyptic Reality Dysfunction trilogy.  Still, I think my favorite SF author is a former UCSD professor of computer science by the name of Vernor Vinge.  If you have never read them, Vinge’s A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky are epic treats.  Besides being excellent stories, both books probe the nature of consciousness and identity with an insight that is, well, out of this world.  His short story True Names, written in 1987, is eerily prescient of the Internet and virtual reality-supported metaverses.

Vinge’s most disturbing writing, though, is not fiction, but a rather an essay he presented at a NASA-sponsored conference in 1993 entitled “Technological Singularity”.   The article is worth reading in its entirety, but I can summarize it in a sentence or two:  We are on the edge of creating intelligences greater than human, either computer-based or via genetic engineering or some combination thereof.   Once that happens, all bets are off.  Who can extrapolate the future when we cannot imagine the present?  To quote Vinge: “Any intelligent machine … would not be humankind’s “tool” — any more than humans are the tools of rabbits, robins, or chimpanzees.”   

He is quite specific about when this will happen:  “I’ll be surprised if this event occurs before 2005 or after 2030.”   And he provides some clues as to what to watch for: “Another symptom of progress toward the Singularity: ideas themselves should spread ever faster, and even the most radical will quickly become commonplace.”   Remember, Vinge wrote this before Google became a verb.     

There has been a frisson of concern about the capabilities of artificial intelligence lately.  While scientists tend to be smug, pointing out factual inaccuracies in AI-generated articles, the creative arts world is more worried:  AI-generated visual and literary work is hard to distinguish from human product.  Teachers are worried about students’ writing assignments really being products of ChatGTP, a free on-line accessible AI.   In the interest of scientific inquiry, I posed a question to ChatGTP this morning:  “What would a modern Shakespeare sonnet be like?”  (Not a particularly elegant question, but it was very early, before my coffee). 

It took less than two seconds for ChatGTP to reply.  It gave me a reasonable explanation of what it thought the Bard might do, and also an example: 

Shall I compare thee to a smartphone?

Thou art more sleek and less obtrusive, Rough pixels not thy gentle touchstone, And screens have not the beauty of thy visage.

In a world where screens are all around, Thou art the one I hold most dear, With thee I share my thoughts profound, Thy light guides me through the darkest sphere.

But as the battery drains, so does the love, And in the end, we must say goodbye,

Though in thy absence, I still think thereof, And keep the memories in my sigh.

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Okay, not perfect, but it looks like the million monkeys banging on typewriters just wrote some Shakespeare.

Professor Vinge said that science fiction writers cannot imagine what happens after the Singularity, but can only look over the precipice.  I don’t know about you, but I think I have vertigo.