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The many and the singularity
JOHN HAWKINS marvels at the blithe dismissal of people as a passive mass in a new work that extols the coming merger of human intelligence with AI
The Star's critic MARIA DUARTE reviews Here, Vermiglio, William Tell and Wolf Man
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Emphasising his continuous engagement in labour movement struggles, ALISTAIR FINDLAY salutes John Foster’s contribution as activist, strategist, intellectual and defender of the Morning Star
ANDY MIAH advocates the use of AI to assist people by expanding access to global literature and culture
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The Singularity is Nearer
Ray Kurzweil, Vintage, £12.99
BACK in 2005, Ray Kurzweil told the world that we humans were hurtling toward the technological Singularity and had best prepare for the two generations left in the current paradigm for the merger with smart machines. He wrote a book, The Singularity is Near, which describes a brazen new future and the best practices necessary to get there safely and expeditiously. Folks shrugged.
Kurzweil has a new book out now, The Singularity is Nearer, that seems to gloat about how right he was in his earlier proclamations. To give a sense of the urgency involved, he writes in his update: “For perspective, the moment you’re reading this is probably closer to the creation of the first superhuman AI than to the release of my last book, 2012’s How to Create a Mind … babies born today will be just graduating college when the Singularity happens.” Not much time left until the Big Event, according to Kurzweil.
Who is this guy that he should tell us such things? Another nutter? A latter day Cassandra? Kurzweil is a former engineer for Google, the “Don’t Do Evil” people. Just after his 2012 book drew critical acclaim and had global tech wonks wowed, Larry Page, co-founder of Google, hired him “to bring natural language understanding to Google,” as Kurzweil put it. He is a pioneer in the ChatGPT revolution.
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