April 1, 2015 • 23 mins
Last night, the Singularity arrived! Joe, Lauren and Jonathan talk about what we got right, what we got wrong and when to expect your next software patch.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
podcast that looks at the future and says this was
a triumph. I'm making a note here, huge success. I'm
(00:23):
Jonathan Strickland and I'm Joe McCormick. And it is such
a big day for us here at Forward Thinking. This
is probably the most exciting episode we've we've ever gotten
to do. So this is a big day for the world, yeah,
but especially for us because we talk about this kind
of stuff. So all you people at home, as you
probably know from the news reports, last night, at to
(00:45):
fourteen am Eastern time, the Singularity arrived. Yeah, I mean,
who would have predicted right in the morning. Yeah, what
an exciting time to be alive. So we decided to
do sort of a brief explainer on the Singularity's arrival
and then look back at some of the predictions that
Singularity thinkers had made over the years, and then even ourselves,
(01:07):
and and just see how they stack up against the
real thing now that it's here. Yeah yeah, So, I
mean it seems weird to talk about what is it
since you know we're in it now, But clearly, we
do need to have this conversation to clear up what
we thought it was going to be versus what it
actually is. You know, we gotta we gotta clear things
up because I know a lot of people out there
(01:28):
are excited but confused. I mean, I was going down
the street and all the garages all the way down
my street the doors were just opening and closing. So clearly, uh,
that was sneezing. We now know that, but at the
time we had not made that connection between sneezing and
automatic garage door openers. I understand there's gonna be a
(01:49):
patch for that, but we'll get to that. Right. So
what is the singularity, or at least what did we
think it was before we got here. So the way
I always hear it explained is it's a moment moment
in our technological development where we reach a point where
is there some form of superhuman intelligence, whether that would
have been from um machine intelligence or a biological enhanced intelligence, whatever.
(02:15):
That means. We would get to a point where we
would be so intelligent that the old versions of ourselves
would be unable to describe what the present would be
like moment to moment, because it would be changing so quickly, right,
it's it's this sudden rapid advance in intelligence, usually thought
of as artificial intelligence or machine intelligence, leading to extremely
(02:37):
fast advances where our capabilities are basically we can't even
track them anymore. Right, Like remember when you used to
say I was going to the store and I bought
a new computer and by the time I got at
home and now the box it was obsolete. That is
super slow compared to the time of the singularity. Yeah,
that's true of everything we do now. So where did
(02:58):
this idea first come from? Like who was the first
person to see that this was going to happen? Well,
I do want to point out that we did a
full episode on this that published back in April, back
when time had real meaning. Yeah, I mean I I
recall that. Remember, just doesn't seem like the right word now, right, Um,
(03:19):
but you know, let's review just in case anyone is
having a little bit of trouble accessing this particular information.
So John von Neuben coined the term singularity in nineteen
by which he meant a point beyond which humanity as
we know it will change. Oh boy, that one really.
The term technological singularity comes from the science fiction writer
(03:43):
Werner Vinge. In the early nineteen eighties, he he wrote
this article for Omni magazine, predicting that humanity would create
superhuman intelligence that would transform our world in unthinkable ways.
Uh and and soon like by, he said, And of
course Ray Hurtswile's book The Singularity Is Near, published in
(04:03):
two thousand five, did a whole lot to popularize the idea.
He even gave an even more generous date. But you
can't convolve, right, Howeverner? Hey, yeah, it's crazy. So Ray
hurtswhile back in the day he made so many technological
predictions that came true. He was one of the great
technology predictors. And the funny thing is, lots of people
(04:26):
at the time criticized Ray Hurtswhile for being too hasty
and optimistic with his predictions. But like like ends to
a hobbit. They people were criticizing him all over the place,
But an excellent an excellent comparison, we now know he
was being way too conservative, not hasty enough, as it
turns out. Yeah, so I think it's surprised a lot
of people that the Singularity would arrive at the beginning
(04:48):
of April. Then again, this is the year of Back
to the Future Part two, Right, and we did a
full episode on that. Yeah, and I just watched it
inside my brain this morning several times. It was pretty cool.
I was doing that every time I was blinking. It
took a while to find the actual feature to switch
that from default, but that was probably because I never
(05:08):
read the terms of service. Sure, So why were people
such doubters back then? Well, uh, you know, people doubted
our ability to to build and program machines at the
level of complexities that that mirror our own, let alone
to outdo ourselves, right right, Yeah, the the human brain
was thought of to be so complex that the machines
(05:30):
we build would never really match up to that, not
in not in any foreseeable future. At least that was
the thought. Sure, other people pointed out the inherent differences
in the way that human minds work versus the way
that computers process information. Sure, and we know that they
are pretty different, right, although you know, not so different
(05:51):
that turns out? Yeah, that just shows again the limit
of what we knew. Right. Yeah, Well, I I never
would have predicted at a just a hard power cycle
on my brain would cure so many of my problems. Yeah, Well,
I kept on hoping you'd find that control all of
the lead, and now you can. People also argued about
(06:13):
the the role of emergence in intelligence and whether and
whether anything can really be greater than the sum of
its parts. Yeah. So, like this idea of emergence and
intelligence where things add up an unexpected properties evolved from
very complex systems right right where. You know, you never
would have been able to predict that you would actually
(06:34):
get this output from the input, because if you look
at all the component parts, it seems like such output
would be impossible. But as we now know, given the
right amount of complexity, that is entirely possible. You know,
I have to admit I was a Singularity skeptic back
in the day, and I fully admit now I was
totally wrong. I I never thought all this stuff would happen,
(06:56):
that I would wake up with nano robots doing stuff
to my body. I mean, we can talk about that
in a bit. Yeah. Yeah, so I'm really glad that
I'm not allergic to onions anymore. You guys, it's a
been a beautiful morning full of onions, in fact, and
the raw onions eating them like apples. Yeah, it's fantastic
for that. It's all right, because now that we have
(07:17):
complete control of our old factory system, I'm not detecting
anything other than the sweet smell of peppermint. Huh. You
got that old factory and plant high. Yeah, the machines
determined I wouldn't want one of those for me, so
I didn't get one. But maybe I can, Maybe I can,
like actually request one. I'm sure you can. I hear
there's like a lot of things on back order right now,
(07:39):
but from what I understand, time has very little meaning
these days, so you won't have to wait long. By
back order. They probably mean and you know, seven or
eight nanoseconds. Yeah, you might actually already have it now. No,
I was a doubter too, and I have to I
have to apologize. You know, Ray, I already sent you
like forty emails, so you've probably gotten them. And I
(08:00):
think that we really grock each other now. But I
do have to personally apologize for the number of times
on the show that I mockingly said twenty to forty
years is probably what it's gonna happen. Um, my face
would be read if I blushed anymore, But I don't
seem to be in that odd side effect was that
intended or yeah, I used to do that, like whole
(08:24):
head blush familiar and that that scalp. Yeah, you you
should really think about that. No, I didn't even think
about that. You didn't get the blood pressure control over. No, No,
I still blush. You should have seen me when I
was walking by the coffee machine today. It was just
it was it was a social full It's so it's
so old fashioned, it's so quaint, it's cute. Well maybe
(08:46):
I'll keep it just for nostalgia's sake, yeh. But but
along with me, you know, some people were really really
harsh about this virtual reality Pioneer Jarren Linear even called
it and I quote cybernetic totally is him and said
that it was a fanatic ideology along the lines of
Marxism in the it denied scientific skepticism and and stoked
(09:09):
the computer science industries ego with these inflated views of
their own importance to the to the future of humanity. Right,
This idea that that somehow, this uh, this this small
niche science was going to end up totally transforming what
we as a species are all about. That did seem
like it was you know, a pretty outlandish prediction. Of course,
(09:33):
we all have to eat our words. Now. Well, now
that the singularity has occurred, let's take a look back
and and explain what actually happened to kick it into place.
I thought this was interesting. It turns out that the
first superhuman AI that came online last night, it was
created by a team at the Setimentation Lab of balt
Our University, and that was led by a guy we've
(09:55):
talked about on the show before, Dr how Space, So
in the department of ultron Studies. He's actually really cool.
If you see any videos of interviews with him. Yeah,
he's got this very sonorous, commanding voice, and it is
kind of odd though his his his appearance can change
dramatically from one video to the next. So it's possible
that you've seen a video of this guy and not
(10:15):
recognized him because his appearance can change so much between appearances. Yeah,
but what is it that actually happened. Well, there was
a couple of phases of this, the first phase of
which was the integration of machine intelligence with our own
to create superhuman intelligence. It turned out to be much
simpler than we anticipated. Like Lauren was saying, we had
worried that artificial networks and biological material operated so differently
(10:38):
that there'd be compatibility issues that we would have to
work out for decades before this could ever become a reality.
But as it turns out, if you just pull out
the circuit board for an atari, not an atari. Cannot
stress that enough playing in the big leagues, now, yeah
you don't. You don't want to know what happens if
(10:59):
you if you obstitute it, no but an Atari, and
you wire that to your cerebral cortex. You have to
use a headset from this this toy called mind Flex
that was the one that had a little headset. You
would wear it and you would concentrate really hard and
move essentially a little ping pong ball like thing through
in amaze, just using your thoughts. Who knew this would
(11:19):
change the world? Yeah you well, I mean, no one
had really experimented with this particular combination until Dr Spates
so had really hit upon the nub of it. But
it turns out that if you do that, you can
actually merge machine and human intelligence together, which is what
happened to all of us last night. Uh, well a
lot of us anyway, Maybe you too, dear listener, it
(11:39):
was a super secret operation that happened while most of
us were sleeping in the morning. Well, that's the thing
is that not all of us on your time zone,
if you were asleep with the when the nano robots
arrived at your house, if you were awake, they would
just be nice and move on to the next house,
right right. So I can tell you that those of
(11:59):
us who were conscious during this machine intelligence conversion can
report that it did tingle, and we detected some strange
odors uh Pepperman in my case, which is why I
had that old factory thing put in so that it
was just a pleasant experience. But I understand other people
had different smells, like espresso, and uh mine was more
like jasmine. Oh excellent, all right, that's that's a very nice,
(12:22):
soothing smell. And so also we can all play river
rate in our minds whenever we want to. I've gotten
pretty good, although there's like this one bridge that when
I get to it, time is nearly out and I
haven't figured that part out yet, but I am sure
that I will get through it before the end of
the day. How did you get river rate? I just
got Pitfall and that Texas Chainsaw massacre game. Oh wow,
(12:46):
GOLLI to be fair, I did live through the era
of River Raid, so perhaps it was given preferential treatment
for the people who are actually alive when the games
came out the first time. Do I get to keep
making fun of you for being old anymore? I'm you could,
but doesn't mean anything. Yeah, Now, this was, of course
the first step, Joe, you were talking about there are
(13:08):
downsides to the singularity. Sorry, you were talking about the
cyber nanosurgery which followed in the second way. Sure, yeah, well,
the machine intelligence integration that that was just the first step.
We had to get a lot of implants. Of course,
you want your specific implants to upgrade particular parts of
your brain, all your particular brain organs. Uh. And then
(13:30):
of course the organs of your body. You want these
bionic implants for strength enhancement and so forth. So it
was kind of cool waking up a cyboard when I
didn't expect to, And frankly, I had always imagined I'd
have to pay lots of money and go in for
multiple surgeries to get all these brain implants and bionic
strength enhancements. But according to reports, it was actually at
about four am last night that the overmind solved world scarcity. Uh,
(13:54):
and by dawn it had limitated money, automated mass production
of all the material goods to you know, match projected demand,
and the overnight nanosurgical implantation of all these cool gadgets
was sort of just a bonus for the people who
slept in today. I read this morning that all of
the early risers who were already awake at the time
the nano robots made their house calls, they're going to
(14:16):
get their implants tonight. So that's kind of a bummer
for them. But then again, they're gonna get all the
newer models, and I'm going to be stuck with these
old pieces of junk from last night, right. And one
of the issues that those of us who were asleep
are now encountering is that we are technically early adopters,
and sometimes the when you are an early adopter, the
technology works in ways that were unintended, or perhaps doesn't
(14:40):
work in the proper way, or there's exactly exactly I've
discovered this my own. I mean, we saw the sneezy
and garage doors. That was an issue. I've also discovered
that if I pressed the unlock function on my key fob,
which technically I don't even need to use now. It's
just kind of a habit that as I could just
think about the car being unlocked, and it is. But
(15:00):
if I press that button, it causes me to experience
the film's leprechn lepre Con four in Space and lepre
Con Back to the Hood within the span of five milliseconds,
but none of the others in the series. It knows
your needs better than you do. Yeah, and that's really
the thing I mean. I mean, now you have everything
that you need, including Leprechaun back to the Hood. Yeah.
(15:24):
What's interesting is I did press that button like seventeen
more times after I found out what it was doing.
What did I tell you? Yeah, I don't. That's a
personal issue, though we shouldn't. We can go into other things,
you know. Another thing I did not anticipate, though, and
this might be one of my only gripes, is the
near crippling effect of constant software updates. I mean, I
(15:45):
can barely use my computer these days. I mean, sure,
it is faster than ever and it has the wisdom
of a thousand stages past, present in future, but every
single time you log on. I'm sure you'll have experienced this.
It's barely ninety seconds before it's downloading OS updates and
software patches, and then it's going to force me to
do a restart again. I can't restart my computer that
(16:07):
often and get work done. It's really annoying, you know.
I used to have that remind me in one hour option,
but now every time I try to select that, my
co Clear implant whispers this overwhelmingly persuasive argument that I
should just go ahead and go with the update. Every
single time. It changes my mind. Well, the drones, in
order to help out people who did not receive their
(16:30):
personal implants last last night, are delivering new computers in waves,
you know, so so they're they're delivering them to people
who haven't received those implants first, and you'll get yours
as soon as everyone else's cybernetics are taken care of.
That co Clear implant sounds really interesting. Mine was an
eye ear, so I just end up buying lots of
(16:50):
Apple products, although I still use a Windows based PC,
but I got one of the future ones. It actually
has been updating, uh five minutes from now ever since
I got it, so it's kind of odd that I'm
getting updates before the update is issued. In fact, yeah,
I heard they did so many versions they ran out
of natural numbers. Yeah, we we ran out of numbers
(17:11):
that we just couldn't have any numbers high enough to
describe the Windows, so we had to I didn't even
realize that would happened. Numbers. It turns out that if
you go long enough, you do run out, so we
had to start inventing new numbers. That's why I am
currently on Windows three. It's the version I'm running right now. Yeah,
that's the number right after Niven exactly. It goes Niven
(17:33):
than three. We haven't all decided exactly what the next
number is going to be, but I have high hopes
that by the time this podcast is over and we
can all reconnect to the overmind, I will be updated
to that point. You know. Another gripe is all the robots. Yeah,
I mean there's so many I'm kind of bumping into
them a lot. Yeah. It turns out that that automation
of mass production also meant a huge explosion in robot production. Uh.
(17:58):
I for one did see the robot invasion coming from
a mile away, but that's because we all have remote
sensing technologies at our disposal now. And in fact, as
many of you will be aware, a mile long detection
radius is actually my opic. So I will be having
a laser surgery to improve my sensors after this. Yeah,
(18:19):
and they've I don't know about you. You can download
a patch so that you don't have a sense of
personal space anymore. Oh, yeah, that does that does help. Yeah,
it certainly certainly helps whenever I am being transported by
robot to work now, uh, in fact, it's to a
point where there's just a swarm of them that cover
me and carry me bodily straight to work. I will
(18:42):
also say that I did not anticipate the roomba cavalry
last uh, well, early this morning. I didn't think that
was gonna be a thing. Clearly, the robots were making
use of any systems that they had available to them.
They really swept up the resistance quite handily. Yeah, puns
have not yet been forbidden, but I hear that's on
(19:02):
the table too. Now, I did hear there was one
unit that just ended up bumping into the corner repeatedly.
So again, you know, we're still we're still working at
the right right, you know, Another thing that I have
thought we should do is that now that the machines
have invented time travel, we should actually do a next
episode from the future so we can sort of deliver
(19:24):
a special investigative report from seventy two or whenever we want.
I in fact have a message from two right now. Yeah,
I thought that would be a great way to kind
of wrap up this entire discussion. So the report from
two definitively answers a question that has been of great
(19:47):
import over the last several years on the internet. It
turns out it's pronounced neither gif nor jiff, but bif. Oh. Now,
this is weird because it brings us back to back
to back to the future, to part two, that episode
we did a while back. We actually anticipated this, not knowingly,
(20:09):
it had been implanted into our brains from the future.
And if you go back and listen to that episode,
you will find the coded message about biff being the
proper pronunciation. It's right there in the episode. That's crazy. Yeah,
we didn't. We weren't even aware of it at the time.
I wish I had time traveled this morning. I just
had too much email to get through. Well, I mean,
(20:30):
in my case I had Simply all I did was
put in a Google future search, so it just came
back to me. I haven't actually been to seventy two yet. Okay,
well hold on, I'm gonna go time travel real quick,
just and then I'll come back and let you know
I want to. Let's just try the year one sixty six.
All right, that sounds interesting. Wow, that was amazing, Joe.
(20:58):
You look different. Yeah. So in sixty six there are
only robots and super intelligent apes left, and I don't
look good with that much body hair. So I had
to join the robot legion fair enough. But you know,
I don't really mind it, like I'm so shiny now.
(21:19):
I don't know, it's pretty cool. Yeah, well, I mean
that's that's fantastic news for you, Joe. The other thing
now is that as a robot, I'm no longer driven
by an insatiable lust for power and immortality the way
I was as an organic human. More about something to
you about that. The obsession you had with that ax
(21:40):
was kind of you know, now I can I can
really focus on the things that matter, like gardening and
like machine meditation, and I discovered a new love for
kite flying, have you ever actually flown a kite? I
mean not since I was a kid, but you know
it's beautiful. Well, I mean, that's that's excellent things to
(22:02):
to know, Joe, thank you for taking that upon yourself.
I I think we all look forward to seeing sixty
six as soon as this episode is over. I also
think anyone who doesn't embrace the singularity this April is
being something of a fool. I would agree they are
being a fool in April and absolute April fool. Yes, indeed,
(22:25):
and with that it is time for us to sign off. However,
of course we're going to have plenty to talk about
in the future, since it is arriving so very quickly now,
So stay tuned for future episodes of forward Thinking, and
of course if you have an idea for an episode,
you should get in touch with us. Yeah, we are
backwards compatible, so you can still access some of those
(22:49):
those antiquated systems in case your uploads are are blocked
by all of the video games that I'm uploading. I
also have a lot of ad block software running in
my brain const at least, so sometimes it catches things
that it shouldn't. So if you want to make sure
you get a message to us, send it the legacy
way through email our addresses FW thinking at how Stuff
(23:09):
Works dot com, or drop us a line on one
of those social platforms we all were crazy about yesterday.
Seems like an eternity ago. That would be Facebook, Twitter,
and Google Plus. We are FW thinking at Twitter and
Google Plus. Just search FW thinking and Facebook will pop
right up and we will talk to you again really soon.
(23:32):
For more on this topic in the future of technology,
I'll visit forward thinking dot Com, brought to you by
Toyota Let's Go Places,
Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
podcast that looks at the future and says this was
a triumph. I'm making a note here, huge success. I'm
(00:23):
Jonathan Strickland and I'm Joe McCormick. And it is such
a big day for us here at Forward Thinking. This
is probably the most exciting episode we've we've ever gotten
to do. So this is a big day for the world, yeah,
but especially for us because we talk about this kind
of stuff. So all you people at home, as you
probably know from the news reports, last night, at to
(00:45):
fourteen am Eastern time, the Singularity arrived. Yeah, I mean,
who would have predicted right in the morning. Yeah, what
an exciting time to be alive. So we decided to
do sort of a brief explainer on the Singularity's arrival
and then look back at some of the predictions that
Singularity thinkers had made over the years, and then even ourselves,
(01:07):
and and just see how they stack up against the
real thing now that it's here. Yeah yeah, So, I
mean it seems weird to talk about what is it
since you know we're in it now, But clearly, we
do need to have this conversation to clear up what
we thought it was going to be versus what it
actually is. You know, we gotta we gotta clear things
up because I know a lot of people out there
(01:28):
are excited but confused. I mean, I was going down
the street and all the garages all the way down
my street the doors were just opening and closing. So clearly, uh,
that was sneezing. We now know that, but at the
time we had not made that connection between sneezing and
automatic garage door openers. I understand there's gonna be a
(01:49):
patch for that, but we'll get to that. Right. So
what is the singularity, or at least what did we
think it was before we got here. So the way
I always hear it explained is it's a moment moment
in our technological development where we reach a point where
is there some form of superhuman intelligence, whether that would
have been from um machine intelligence or a biological enhanced intelligence, whatever.
(02:15):
That means. We would get to a point where we
would be so intelligent that the old versions of ourselves
would be unable to describe what the present would be
like moment to moment, because it would be changing so quickly, right,
it's it's this sudden rapid advance in intelligence, usually thought
of as artificial intelligence or machine intelligence, leading to extremely
(02:37):
fast advances where our capabilities are basically we can't even
track them anymore. Right, Like remember when you used to
say I was going to the store and I bought
a new computer and by the time I got at
home and now the box it was obsolete. That is
super slow compared to the time of the singularity. Yeah,
that's true of everything we do now. So where did
(02:58):
this idea first come from? Like who was the first
person to see that this was going to happen? Well,
I do want to point out that we did a
full episode on this that published back in April, back
when time had real meaning. Yeah, I mean I I
recall that. Remember, just doesn't seem like the right word now, right, Um,
(03:19):
but you know, let's review just in case anyone is
having a little bit of trouble accessing this particular information.
So John von Neuben coined the term singularity in nineteen
by which he meant a point beyond which humanity as
we know it will change. Oh boy, that one really.
The term technological singularity comes from the science fiction writer
(03:43):
Werner Vinge. In the early nineteen eighties, he he wrote
this article for Omni magazine, predicting that humanity would create
superhuman intelligence that would transform our world in unthinkable ways.
Uh and and soon like by, he said, And of
course Ray Hurtswile's book The Singularity Is Near, published in
(04:03):
two thousand five, did a whole lot to popularize the idea.
He even gave an even more generous date. But you
can't convolve, right, Howeverner? Hey, yeah, it's crazy. So Ray
hurtswhile back in the day he made so many technological
predictions that came true. He was one of the great
technology predictors. And the funny thing is, lots of people
(04:26):
at the time criticized Ray Hurtswhile for being too hasty
and optimistic with his predictions. But like like ends to
a hobbit. They people were criticizing him all over the place,
But an excellent an excellent comparison, we now know he
was being way too conservative, not hasty enough, as it
turns out. Yeah, so I think it's surprised a lot
of people that the Singularity would arrive at the beginning
(04:48):
of April. Then again, this is the year of Back
to the Future Part two, Right, and we did a
full episode on that. Yeah, and I just watched it
inside my brain this morning several times. It was pretty cool.
I was doing that every time I was blinking. It
took a while to find the actual feature to switch
that from default, but that was probably because I never
(05:08):
read the terms of service. Sure, So why were people
such doubters back then? Well, uh, you know, people doubted
our ability to to build and program machines at the
level of complexities that that mirror our own, let alone
to outdo ourselves, right right, Yeah, the the human brain
was thought of to be so complex that the machines
(05:30):
we build would never really match up to that, not
in not in any foreseeable future. At least that was
the thought. Sure, other people pointed out the inherent differences
in the way that human minds work versus the way
that computers process information. Sure, and we know that they
are pretty different, right, although you know, not so different
(05:51):
that turns out? Yeah, that just shows again the limit
of what we knew. Right. Yeah, Well, I I never
would have predicted at a just a hard power cycle
on my brain would cure so many of my problems. Yeah, Well,
I kept on hoping you'd find that control all of
the lead, and now you can. People also argued about
(06:13):
the the role of emergence in intelligence and whether and
whether anything can really be greater than the sum of
its parts. Yeah. So, like this idea of emergence and
intelligence where things add up an unexpected properties evolved from
very complex systems right right where. You know, you never
would have been able to predict that you would actually
(06:34):
get this output from the input, because if you look
at all the component parts, it seems like such output
would be impossible. But as we now know, given the
right amount of complexity, that is entirely possible. You know,
I have to admit I was a Singularity skeptic back
in the day, and I fully admit now I was
totally wrong. I I never thought all this stuff would happen,
(06:56):
that I would wake up with nano robots doing stuff
to my body. I mean, we can talk about that
in a bit. Yeah. Yeah, so I'm really glad that
I'm not allergic to onions anymore. You guys, it's a
been a beautiful morning full of onions, in fact, and
the raw onions eating them like apples. Yeah, it's fantastic
for that. It's all right, because now that we have
(07:17):
complete control of our old factory system, I'm not detecting
anything other than the sweet smell of peppermint. Huh. You
got that old factory and plant high. Yeah, the machines
determined I wouldn't want one of those for me, so
I didn't get one. But maybe I can, Maybe I can,
like actually request one. I'm sure you can. I hear
there's like a lot of things on back order right now,
(07:39):
but from what I understand, time has very little meaning
these days, so you won't have to wait long. By
back order. They probably mean and you know, seven or
eight nanoseconds. Yeah, you might actually already have it now. No,
I was a doubter too, and I have to I
have to apologize. You know, Ray, I already sent you
like forty emails, so you've probably gotten them. And I
(08:00):
think that we really grock each other now. But I
do have to personally apologize for the number of times
on the show that I mockingly said twenty to forty
years is probably what it's gonna happen. Um, my face
would be read if I blushed anymore, But I don't
seem to be in that odd side effect was that
intended or yeah, I used to do that, like whole
(08:24):
head blush familiar and that that scalp. Yeah, you you
should really think about that. No, I didn't even think
about that. You didn't get the blood pressure control over. No, No,
I still blush. You should have seen me when I
was walking by the coffee machine today. It was just
it was it was a social full It's so it's
so old fashioned, it's so quaint, it's cute. Well maybe
(08:46):
I'll keep it just for nostalgia's sake, yeh. But but
along with me, you know, some people were really really
harsh about this virtual reality Pioneer Jarren Linear even called
it and I quote cybernetic totally is him and said
that it was a fanatic ideology along the lines of
Marxism in the it denied scientific skepticism and and stoked
(09:09):
the computer science industries ego with these inflated views of
their own importance to the to the future of humanity. Right,
This idea that that somehow, this uh, this this small
niche science was going to end up totally transforming what
we as a species are all about. That did seem
like it was you know, a pretty outlandish prediction. Of course,
(09:33):
we all have to eat our words. Now. Well, now
that the singularity has occurred, let's take a look back
and and explain what actually happened to kick it into place.
I thought this was interesting. It turns out that the
first superhuman AI that came online last night, it was
created by a team at the Setimentation Lab of balt
Our University, and that was led by a guy we've
(09:55):
talked about on the show before, Dr how Space, So
in the department of ultron Studies. He's actually really cool.
If you see any videos of interviews with him. Yeah,
he's got this very sonorous, commanding voice, and it is
kind of odd though his his his appearance can change
dramatically from one video to the next. So it's possible
that you've seen a video of this guy and not
(10:15):
recognized him because his appearance can change so much between appearances. Yeah,
but what is it that actually happened. Well, there was
a couple of phases of this, the first phase of
which was the integration of machine intelligence with our own
to create superhuman intelligence. It turned out to be much
simpler than we anticipated. Like Lauren was saying, we had
worried that artificial networks and biological material operated so differently
(10:38):
that there'd be compatibility issues that we would have to
work out for decades before this could ever become a reality.
But as it turns out, if you just pull out
the circuit board for an atari, not an atari. Cannot
stress that enough playing in the big leagues, now, yeah
you don't. You don't want to know what happens if
(10:59):
you if you obstitute it, no but an Atari, and
you wire that to your cerebral cortex. You have to
use a headset from this this toy called mind Flex
that was the one that had a little headset. You
would wear it and you would concentrate really hard and
move essentially a little ping pong ball like thing through
in amaze, just using your thoughts. Who knew this would
(11:19):
change the world? Yeah you well, I mean, no one
had really experimented with this particular combination until Dr Spates
so had really hit upon the nub of it. But
it turns out that if you do that, you can
actually merge machine and human intelligence together, which is what
happened to all of us last night. Uh, well a
lot of us anyway, Maybe you too, dear listener, it
(11:39):
was a super secret operation that happened while most of
us were sleeping in the morning. Well, that's the thing
is that not all of us on your time zone,
if you were asleep with the when the nano robots
arrived at your house, if you were awake, they would
just be nice and move on to the next house,
right right. So I can tell you that those of
(11:59):
us who were conscious during this machine intelligence conversion can
report that it did tingle, and we detected some strange
odors uh Pepperman in my case, which is why I
had that old factory thing put in so that it
was just a pleasant experience. But I understand other people
had different smells, like espresso, and uh mine was more
like jasmine. Oh excellent, all right, that's that's a very nice,
(12:22):
soothing smell. And so also we can all play river
rate in our minds whenever we want to. I've gotten
pretty good, although there's like this one bridge that when
I get to it, time is nearly out and I
haven't figured that part out yet, but I am sure
that I will get through it before the end of
the day. How did you get river rate? I just
got Pitfall and that Texas Chainsaw massacre game. Oh wow,
(12:46):
GOLLI to be fair, I did live through the era
of River Raid, so perhaps it was given preferential treatment
for the people who are actually alive when the games
came out the first time. Do I get to keep
making fun of you for being old anymore? I'm you could,
but doesn't mean anything. Yeah, Now, this was, of course
the first step, Joe, you were talking about there are
(13:08):
downsides to the singularity. Sorry, you were talking about the
cyber nanosurgery which followed in the second way. Sure, yeah, well,
the machine intelligence integration that that was just the first step.
We had to get a lot of implants. Of course,
you want your specific implants to upgrade particular parts of
your brain, all your particular brain organs. Uh. And then
(13:30):
of course the organs of your body. You want these
bionic implants for strength enhancement and so forth. So it
was kind of cool waking up a cyboard when I
didn't expect to, And frankly, I had always imagined I'd
have to pay lots of money and go in for
multiple surgeries to get all these brain implants and bionic
strength enhancements. But according to reports, it was actually at
about four am last night that the overmind solved world scarcity. Uh,
(13:54):
and by dawn it had limitated money, automated mass production
of all the material goods to you know, match projected demand,
and the overnight nanosurgical implantation of all these cool gadgets
was sort of just a bonus for the people who
slept in today. I read this morning that all of
the early risers who were already awake at the time
the nano robots made their house calls, they're going to
(14:16):
get their implants tonight. So that's kind of a bummer
for them. But then again, they're gonna get all the
newer models, and I'm going to be stuck with these
old pieces of junk from last night, right. And one
of the issues that those of us who were asleep
are now encountering is that we are technically early adopters,
and sometimes the when you are an early adopter, the
technology works in ways that were unintended, or perhaps doesn't
(14:40):
work in the proper way, or there's exactly exactly I've
discovered this my own. I mean, we saw the sneezy
and garage doors. That was an issue. I've also discovered
that if I pressed the unlock function on my key fob,
which technically I don't even need to use now. It's
just kind of a habit that as I could just
think about the car being unlocked, and it is. But
(15:00):
if I press that button, it causes me to experience
the film's leprechn lepre Con four in Space and lepre
Con Back to the Hood within the span of five milliseconds,
but none of the others in the series. It knows
your needs better than you do. Yeah, and that's really
the thing I mean. I mean, now you have everything
that you need, including Leprechaun back to the Hood. Yeah.
(15:24):
What's interesting is I did press that button like seventeen
more times after I found out what it was doing.
What did I tell you? Yeah, I don't. That's a
personal issue, though we shouldn't. We can go into other things,
you know. Another thing I did not anticipate, though, and
this might be one of my only gripes, is the
near crippling effect of constant software updates. I mean, I
(15:45):
can barely use my computer these days. I mean, sure,
it is faster than ever and it has the wisdom
of a thousand stages past, present in future, but every
single time you log on. I'm sure you'll have experienced this.
It's barely ninety seconds before it's downloading OS updates and
software patches, and then it's going to force me to
do a restart again. I can't restart my computer that
(16:07):
often and get work done. It's really annoying, you know.
I used to have that remind me in one hour option,
but now every time I try to select that, my
co Clear implant whispers this overwhelmingly persuasive argument that I
should just go ahead and go with the update. Every
single time. It changes my mind. Well, the drones, in
order to help out people who did not receive their
(16:30):
personal implants last last night, are delivering new computers in waves,
you know, so so they're they're delivering them to people
who haven't received those implants first, and you'll get yours
as soon as everyone else's cybernetics are taken care of.
That co Clear implant sounds really interesting. Mine was an
eye ear, so I just end up buying lots of
(16:50):
Apple products, although I still use a Windows based PC,
but I got one of the future ones. It actually
has been updating, uh five minutes from now ever since
I got it, so it's kind of odd that I'm
getting updates before the update is issued. In fact, yeah,
I heard they did so many versions they ran out
of natural numbers. Yeah, we we ran out of numbers
(17:11):
that we just couldn't have any numbers high enough to
describe the Windows, so we had to I didn't even
realize that would happened. Numbers. It turns out that if
you go long enough, you do run out, so we
had to start inventing new numbers. That's why I am
currently on Windows three. It's the version I'm running right now. Yeah,
that's the number right after Niven exactly. It goes Niven
(17:33):
than three. We haven't all decided exactly what the next
number is going to be, but I have high hopes
that by the time this podcast is over and we
can all reconnect to the overmind, I will be updated
to that point. You know. Another gripe is all the robots. Yeah,
I mean there's so many I'm kind of bumping into
them a lot. Yeah. It turns out that that automation
of mass production also meant a huge explosion in robot production. Uh.
(17:58):
I for one did see the robot invasion coming from
a mile away, but that's because we all have remote
sensing technologies at our disposal now. And in fact, as
many of you will be aware, a mile long detection
radius is actually my opic. So I will be having
a laser surgery to improve my sensors after this. Yeah,
(18:19):
and they've I don't know about you. You can download
a patch so that you don't have a sense of
personal space anymore. Oh, yeah, that does that does help. Yeah,
it certainly certainly helps whenever I am being transported by
robot to work now, uh, in fact, it's to a
point where there's just a swarm of them that cover
me and carry me bodily straight to work. I will
(18:42):
also say that I did not anticipate the roomba cavalry
last uh, well, early this morning. I didn't think that
was gonna be a thing. Clearly, the robots were making
use of any systems that they had available to them.
They really swept up the resistance quite handily. Yeah, puns
have not yet been forbidden, but I hear that's on
(19:02):
the table too. Now, I did hear there was one
unit that just ended up bumping into the corner repeatedly.
So again, you know, we're still we're still working at
the right right, you know, Another thing that I have
thought we should do is that now that the machines
have invented time travel, we should actually do a next
episode from the future so we can sort of deliver
(19:24):
a special investigative report from seventy two or whenever we want.
I in fact have a message from two right now. Yeah,
I thought that would be a great way to kind
of wrap up this entire discussion. So the report from
two definitively answers a question that has been of great
(19:47):
import over the last several years on the internet. It
turns out it's pronounced neither gif nor jiff, but bif. Oh. Now,
this is weird because it brings us back to back
to back to the future, to part two, that episode
we did a while back. We actually anticipated this, not knowingly,
(20:09):
it had been implanted into our brains from the future.
And if you go back and listen to that episode,
you will find the coded message about biff being the
proper pronunciation. It's right there in the episode. That's crazy. Yeah,
we didn't. We weren't even aware of it at the time.
I wish I had time traveled this morning. I just
had too much email to get through. Well, I mean,
(20:30):
in my case I had Simply all I did was
put in a Google future search, so it just came
back to me. I haven't actually been to seventy two yet. Okay,
well hold on, I'm gonna go time travel real quick,
just and then I'll come back and let you know
I want to. Let's just try the year one sixty six.
All right, that sounds interesting. Wow, that was amazing, Joe.
(20:58):
You look different. Yeah. So in sixty six there are
only robots and super intelligent apes left, and I don't
look good with that much body hair. So I had
to join the robot legion fair enough. But you know,
I don't really mind it, like I'm so shiny now.
(21:19):
I don't know, it's pretty cool. Yeah, well, I mean
that's that's fantastic news for you, Joe. The other thing
now is that as a robot, I'm no longer driven
by an insatiable lust for power and immortality the way
I was as an organic human. More about something to
you about that. The obsession you had with that ax
(21:40):
was kind of you know, now I can I can
really focus on the things that matter, like gardening and
like machine meditation, and I discovered a new love for
kite flying, have you ever actually flown a kite? I
mean not since I was a kid, but you know
it's beautiful. Well, I mean, that's that's excellent things to
(22:02):
to know, Joe, thank you for taking that upon yourself.
I I think we all look forward to seeing sixty
six as soon as this episode is over. I also
think anyone who doesn't embrace the singularity this April is
being something of a fool. I would agree they are
being a fool in April and absolute April fool. Yes, indeed,
(22:25):
and with that it is time for us to sign off. However,
of course we're going to have plenty to talk about
in the future, since it is arriving so very quickly now,
So stay tuned for future episodes of forward Thinking, and
of course if you have an idea for an episode,
you should get in touch with us. Yeah, we are
backwards compatible, so you can still access some of those
(22:49):
those antiquated systems in case your uploads are are blocked
by all of the video games that I'm uploading. I
also have a lot of ad block software running in
my brain const at least, so sometimes it catches things
that it shouldn't. So if you want to make sure
you get a message to us, send it the legacy
way through email our addresses FW thinking at how Stuff
(23:09):
Works dot com, or drop us a line on one
of those social platforms we all were crazy about yesterday.
Seems like an eternity ago. That would be Facebook, Twitter,
and Google Plus. We are FW thinking at Twitter and
Google Plus. Just search FW thinking and Facebook will pop
right up and we will talk to you again really soon.
(23:32):
For more on this topic in the future of technology,
I'll visit forward thinking dot Com, brought to you by
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Hosts And Creators
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Joe McCormick
Lauren Vogelbaum
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