Analysis Of Toby Walsh's 'The Singularity May Never Be Near'

The technological singularity is an interesting concept. Essentially, it promises the ability for a machine to self-improve, resulting in what is commonly called a “runaway growth” of information, aka the “intelligence explosion”. Runaway growth is the idea of exponential growth compounded upon exponential growth. The way this would happen is through artificial intelligence (AI). There are futurists on both sides of the equation. On one hand, the optimists on this matter look to the possibility of a utopian society or at the very least, a chance to make the world a better place through this intelligence explosion. On the other hand, the pessimists are afraid of the technological singularity. Among them are many technology executives and even
There are six different reasons that Walsh shows that attempts to prove that the singularity will never be reached. The first argument, possibly the most persuasive out of the six, is the idea that even though processing power has gotten faster and faster, that does not necessarily lead to an explosion. He uses the metaphor of a dog that can think very, very fast. Then the question is asked, with this ability to think fast, will the dog be able to play chess? This is unlikely. Just as a very fast computer with intelligence doesn’t mean that it will be able to improve itself at an exponential rate. The second argument Walsh uses to tear down the possibility of the singularity is the idea that even if we can get a computer to reach our intelligence, that doesn’t mean that it will be a “tipping point” as many AI researchers believe. For example, it takes humans a very long time to evolve our intelligence, so then why would an AI with our intelligence develop exponentially faster (Walsh,
Often the debate is limited to what the pros and cons of AI would be, rather than focusing on whether AI will happen in the first place. This different angle on the AI debate, however, must be held up to the same scrutiny as the proponents and opponents of AI are held to. There are some strong arguments made in this article. However, what Walsh fails to see in his prediction that humans will never create artificial intelligence is the history of innovation. History has shown time and time again that innovation triumphs over its