The Singularity: The Exponential Race From Our Humanity

As I imagine my world and what it will be like in say, thirty or forty years, I once envisioned it simply looking a lot like how it does now—no exponential changes of any sort. However, I’ve learned that that future not only might be changing exponentially, but it might soon become something that is stranger than science-fiction.

As it turns out, according to Raymond Kurzweil and Gordon Moore as stated in the article “2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal”, the progression and advancement of technology is exponential. According to Moore’s law, “the microchip doubles about every two years” (Grossman). One certainly doesn’t have to stretch their imagination too far to realize that technology is advancing quickly, and as technology advances, the quicker it picks up speed. What is a stretch though, is just beginning to try to put those facts into what Kurzweil considers a logical and realistic perspective. In his perspective, the progression of technology is so exponential that in just a few decades, artificial intelligence will rule over human thought, man will literally merge with machine, and that death will no longer be imminent.

This view, (“The Singularity” as it’s called), sounds interesting, perhaps even exciting to some. Becoming immortal? If one could never die, one’s problems would dwindle until they completely disappear. Kurzweil states that “we'll be able to transfer our minds to sturdier vessels such as computers and robots” (Grossman).

When we gain the ability to do that though, we lose our humanity. We’re no longer functioning as mind and body. By trapping ourselves inside machinery, we’ve eliminated our species. When we have finally created a transcendent metal demi-god from microchips and artificial intelligence, we’re putting ourselves at risk of being wiped out entirely. We’re creating a predator.

In addition to that though, by supposedly uploading our thinking mind into a motherboard, have we successfully uploaded our consciousness? Our emotion? Sure, with artificial intelligence, a machine could, in theory, feel sad or happy, but could it dwell on it? Could it write poetry on it? Act impulsively because of it? Be ashamed of it? Would we still think? Or would it just be ones and zeros in a hard drive? How could we ever know?

But death is what all life leads up to; it’s what makes us make the decision to shape our lives. Right down to it, it’s the soul reason man chooses to create art, produce variety, ponder philosophically. Once we eliminate death, we’ve eliminated beauty.