The Singularity

 Note: unscrewing the bottom lap, to access the fake vagina between its legs, voids the warranty.

WowWee Femisapien v2 - because, let's be honest, there is only one kind of  Robot we'd like to see

The singularity is the purported moment when a self-improving artificial intelligence will appear, and likely take over the world.

There is a ton of reasons why this will not happen any time soon.

Most of artificial intelligence research is veering away, as much as possible, from trying to obtain full scale intelligence.

The failure of AI in the 70s - in delivering to the promises - has deeply scarred the field.

Talk about "hard AI" is a sure way to lose grants and financing, so at the best the aim is to reach an ant-like level of intelligence.

Getting the equivalent intelligence of an ant is already hard enough, but it is also enough to create cars and trucks that drive themselves (way before cars, we'll see automatized trucks and auto-buses(1)...) or robots that can be taught how to flip a new hamburger, by the senior staff in a McDonald, in a quarter of an hour.

It is enough to have completely automatized drones - so, it is no surprise that much of the current robotic research is sponsored by the US military - and, over time, passenger aircrafts without pilots (many modern jet-liners are already automatized to the point that the pilots are there only for landings and take-offs; getting the extra mile would cut some hundred thousand dollar-years-per plane of operative expenses ).

The intelligence of an ant is, hence, already more than enough to leave almost everybody out of job.

So, why some think so hard to the singularity?

Well, if the technology keeps improving(3), risk is it will be reached inadvertently.

And a badly chosen prime motive for an auto-evolving intelligence could, indeed, spell a disaster.

The paper-clip maximizer scenario (where such intelligence exterminates the whole planet to get materials to build paper-clips) is not so impossible...

On the other hand, some may hope.

That a humanist intelligence of this kind could take over the world, and made it a bit more just, overcoming the core of greed and egotism at the heart of almost every man that makes so that millions are starving, while hundreds goes around in a Bugatti.

In other words, some hope that a truly altruistic super-intelligence will give the world a socialism that actually works.

Pretty much like others wait for the return of Christ...

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(1) There is a mine, in a remote region of Australia, where 500 tons robotised trucks are hauling materials even now, with a way dumber than an ant computer as driver. 

(2) Maybe not me, I hope

(3) IF.. the so called "Moore's law" isn't a law, but rather just a business model, a way to force people into buying new computers way before the ones they have are really worn out; the original version of the law, to say so, died already ten years ago. 


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