Ironwolf

I am still slowly plowing my way though Ray Kurtzweil’s The Singularity is Near, with various side trips such as to Greg Egan’s Permutation City. Another thinker I deeply respect, Douglas Hofstadter (author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid) has written an essay entitled Moore’s Law, Artificial Evolution, and the Fate of Humanity, containing his perspective on the “surrealistic” predictions of Kurtzweil, Hans Moravec, and others in the singularitarian camp. His point of view is refreshingly broad, being more willing than many academics to seriously entertain predictions that concern a time in the (possibly near) future about which predictions cannot be made with any accuracy due to the astonishing acceleration of technological advancement.

Hofstadter comes to his open-mindedness through the school of hard knocks, having predicted in Gödel, Escher, Bach both that a computer will never beat a human grand master at Chess, and that a computer will never compose any music that can subjectively be called “beautiful.” Having since been proven wrong on both counts has given him pause and more willingness to consider the great strides that can be made in a single human lifetime.

Ultimately, Hofstadter comes to the comforting (for him) conclusion that a Singularity-like event is not likely, primarily due to the perception that, while Moore’s Law continues to push computing power along an exponential curve, the necessary breakthroughs in software development (either engineering or the simulation of biology) are not in the offing.

While I don’t consider myself a defender of the Singularity as much as an interested observer, I would point out that software development paradigms and technologies proceed by punctuated equilibrium, usually supported by the availability of hardware better by a couple orders of magnitude. I think it likely that the dominant paradigm of software development will shift, possibly several more times, within my own life.

See Also: A Word on Magic

This entry was posted on Friday, June 23rd, 2006 at 4:39 pm and is filed under Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.