I’ve been reading Ray Kurzweil’s The Singularity is Near. Its been blowing my mind. Its a detailed account of how, when and why artificial intelligence will out do humanity (as it is now) in every way in about 20-30 years.
The book is the real deal. Its over 600 pages with 100 pages of notes. Its a college course and a 10 course meal.
The first thing you have to realize about Ray is that he is not some kook with a sci-fi idea. His ideas are NOT some sci-fi “original movie” trash cooked up by a team of ex-dungeon master, fanboy geeks. Kurzweil is a world class inventor who created the first omni-font optical character recognition system. He is the brains behind text to speech, and next generation of music synthesizers (the one that are able to sound like any instrument).
He is the father of the Law of Accelerating Returns that details about the exponential growth of technological progress and change.
So far, the most startling idea I’ve read in his book is something I read from a Vernor Vinge article a few years back. Eventually, computers will be sentient and a trillion times smarter than us. I’m not just being sarcastic and throughout ridiculous numbers (bajillion kajillion) to get an over inflated point across, I mean LITERALLY the will be a trillion times smarter. If you subscribe to the Howard Gardner theory of Multiple Intelligence computers will able to out do us on everyone of them (plus a plethora of some we don’t yet have the capacity to conceive of). If that doesn’t stir you.. how about this? They will eventually build systems (AI) smarter than themselves. That is when they will be so far beyond us that we (in our current capacity) will not be able to comprehend them fully.
Kurzweil is definitely not gloom and doom. He does not predict (for example) that the machines will send Arnold Schwarzenegger back to 1984 to kill Sarah Connors (Linda Hamilton is still safe). In fact, the book is about “when humans transcend biology”.
Now just think about that… “transcend biology”. It gets me thinking of some sort of “Ghost in the Shell” type world where most people are cybernetically enhanced in a hundred ways. Ghost in the Shell is among my favorite anime franchises because it goes to great lengths to describe its cybernetic world. The singularity is a reality in the world of Ghost in the Shell.
Its a world in which an AI can hack and/or possess anyone/thing with a cybernetic central nervous system. A world where the line between physical and virtual are blurred by visual enhancements and the definition of humanity must be expanded to allow people who are now 90% robotic.
What do I think the Singularity will mean to security? That is a bit of a ridiculous question. Its like asking.. if the sun explodes, what will happen to all the plants. The answer is the same thing that will happen to all of humanity. Perhaps the sun exploding is a bad analogy.. because I don’t think the Singularity will feel the sudden need to enslave all humanity, turn us into batteries and lock us in a matrix like virtual world. I think it will be more of a collaboration between super computer and abacus, Rancher and cattle, Shepard and sheep but not at all like master and slave (well at least not a BAD master). Those of us unwilling and/or unable to change will be like a novelty item, neo-Amish. The Singularity will hack us and herd us like consumer, technology dependent sheeple we have become. And we will do nothing but smile and enjoy our everyday prices.
Speaking of novelty, I can help but think of Terrence McKenna’s mention of an acceleration of everything in his Timewave Zero theory.
The graph shows at what times, but never at what locations, novelty is increasing or decreasing. According to the timewave graph, great periods of novelty occurred about 4 billion years ago when Earth was formed, 65 million years ago when dinosaurs were extinct and mammals expanded, about 10,000 years ago after the end of the ice age, around late 18th century when social and scientific revolutions progressed, during the sixties, around the time of 911, and with coming novelty periods in November 2008, October 2010, with the novelty progressing towards the infinity on 21st December 2012 – wiki
The rate of change is both inevitable and necessary to our nature.
Once again, security is a piss ant in relation to the upcoming changes predicted by these modern mathematical prophets, but I will say this lately things in the Certification & Accreditation world have been changing drastically every 6 months, with each changes bringing in a wave of rumor of yet MORE change. The current rate of change is keeping me very employed.