Back from a mini tour of Yorkshire and Stockport and cheering for supporting act Indignation Meeting
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
singularity
ALISTAR FINDLAY is mesmerised by this multiple ‘Visions of Scotland’ assault on the audience’s eyes and senses
The Star's critics ANGUS REID, ANDY HEDGECOCK and MICHAL BONCZA reviews I Am Love, The Penguin Lessons, Freaky Tales, The Thicket
MAYER WAKEFIELD has reservations about the direction of a play centered on a DVLA re-training session for three British-Pakistani motorists
New releases from Steve Knightley, Jupiter & Okwess, Jason Palmer, Lisa Knapp and Gerry Driver, Kin'Gongolo Kiniata, Ingrid Laubrock/Tom Rainey, Dan Sealey, Simin Tande, PAZ
JOHN GREEN relishes photography that unfolds a longstanding and poetic relationship with Leeds
A uncomfortably misogynistic authorial voice that sometimes seems to lack insight troubles FIONA O’CONNOR
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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