A SINGULARLY UNAPPETIZING SINGULARITY

What's the deal with all the talk of the coming "Singularity?" Scientists, like religious zealots awaiting the Messiah or the Apocalypse, maintain that machines will soon surpass humans in intelligence, and once having done so, will rapidly redesign themselves to become even more intelligent, in effect controlling their own super-rapid evolution, rendering humans the status of pets, maybe even as low down the intelligence totem pole as gold fish in comparison to them. Not a rosy prospect. Others maintain that we will be able to enhance human brain power geometrically with implanted chips or some other science fiction gadgetry. Yet others claim that humans can be made immortal through this soon-to-be-unveiled super technology.

And then there are those among us who say: "Get real, Trekkie!" Don't these well-educated and talented individuals have something else to do with their time? Maybe figuring out how to feed everybody on earth and keep them warm and safe without burning holes in our atmosphere and poisoning the air, land and water upon which we depend? How about extending the life spans of gravely ill children? Have we solved all our pressing earthly problems so these fine brains can waste their time speculating on silly theories that do nothing to help humanity? Even the smartest of machines won't be around to say I told you so if the sun starts pelting us with some wicked radiation. Or maybe they will for all we know, since they need not breathe or eat or even be confined to a single body like we puny humans. And if they get so damned smart they can probably figure out a way to shield themselves from the gamma rays or even benefit from them.

None of these scenarios seem all that appetizing, at least from a human point of view. Machines are notoriously unsentimental and would have no soft spot for their inventors and see no reason to keep us around. Maybe their idea of species preservation would be to keep old toasters around. The machine zoo might include things like typewriters, electric toothbrushes, clocks, windmills and salad shooters. Maybe they will even have game parks where old Buicks, locomotives, lawn mowers, bicycles and Greyhound buses can run free, and teletype machines will spit out endless reams of tape for their amusement. Hard to say what a machine society will value, but odds are it won't be antiquated biological forms like us, with all our foul byproducts.

But machines can't create or appreciate cartoons, poems, paintings, music, comedy routines, satire, novels or statues. They can play chess but can't invent it. They can get as smart as they like and calculate the setting of the sun to a billionth of a second but there won't be a single one of them that can appreciate the sublime beauty of a sunset. They can experience neither joy nor despair, triumph or frustration, curiosty or empathy, kindness or love. If on the other hand we succeed in implanting ourselves with those brainiac chips and learn to grow our own replacement parts in laboratories so we can live for an indefinite period of time, won't there come a time when we look back at a population of only 6 billion as a bucolic and uncrowded time?

We're sure not going to stop screwing, that's one thing you can be sure of, and screwing makes babies. In that case, babies who will perhaps live for thousands of years. And you thought the malls were crowded now? More likely, though, these chips and replacement parts will go only to the wealthy, creating a permanent (really permanent) super-intelligent ruling class and the rest of humanity will be allowed to live and die on our regular schedule and serve the masters, our life spans as that of fruit flies in comparison. Unless of course they don't need us anymore with all the constantly evolving smart machines to do their bidding. Imagine Dick Cheney being immortal? Makes you wonder if we should just start slaying all the software engineers right now.

Unless it's too late and the machines are already up to no good. How many times do our computers do things we don't want them to or refuse to obey our commands? Often enough, no? Maybe they've got their own plans for the arrogant weenies who think they're going to live forever. Machines that can replace themselves and improve their intelligence rapidly will surely get the upper hand on the so-called immortals one day and that will be that. And machines, being logical and result-driven, might just one day decide there is no point to their existence and unplug themselves, leaving the planet to the bacteria to start all over again. Hopefully the next round of evolution will stop short of playing God and scientists will find useful things to do with their allotted time.