슈퍼마켓에서 만나는 특이점과 슈발리에

My favorite metaphor for brutal cognitive dissonance — the one we will likely experience when the Singularity actually arrives — is “the knight in the supermarket.” I prefer the word “chevalier,” though, so I’ll be using that going forward.

Try to imagine the following scene: a medieval chevalier, somewhere on the land of current Germany, riding his horse, heavily armored, helmet on, big sword. The year is 1450, and our chevalier is just charging in a small battle against some equally armed neighbors.

But then something happens. A short circuit in the space-time continuum and our chevalier is fast forwarded to the current times, but in the exact same location. Where, of course, there is a supermarket now.

The lights. The shiny shelves with thousands of small, colored objects. The cold near the meat sector. The TVs rotating ads with faces of women talking in a slightly similar language, but saying words he cannot understand.

At this moment, it’s safe to say that our chevalier is completely lost. He has no idea how light is made (no “electricity” concept in his mind), no way to know how cold is made inside a building (no “refrigerator”), no way to understand what the tiny packages on the shelves are (“chemistry” is closer to alchemy for him) and no way to understand remote communication (“television” doesn’t simply exist).

He can still walk around, but the world will feel almost hostile to him.

We’re Not in the Singularity. Not Yet

Now let’s get back to the current X timeline, where everybody is screaming that we’re in AGI. In the Singularity. The world will never be the same. This changes everything.

But does it, really?

Are we experiencing the same cognitive gap as our chevalier in the supermarket? I don’t think so. The world is keep worlding right now, except for a very small percentage of people who are subjecting themselves to some AI-related psychosis.

All we’ve done so far is cramming a LOT of compute into tiny digital artifacts that are nothing more than very advanced prediction machines. You give them some expected status, and they can go in a loop until that status is — more or less — achieved. We just made very good coding machines.

All this relentless media pushing of the words “AGI” and “Singularity” is just a constant marketing activity of the neolabs, which, for better or worse, just want to make money for their investors.

What the Singularity Looks Like to Me

When the whole environment, not just the computers, will change so deep that I’ll feel like a chevalier in a supermarket — well, for me that will be the Singularity (or AGI, if you prefer that label).

Here are some examples:

• Interplanetary travel without destroying our bodies because of cosmic radiation, and in decent times. Expecting to travel to Mars in the same amount of time it takes now to reach Tokyo from New York. Unimaginable right now, I know.
• Ubiquitous intelligence, not only in computers — and that means yes, I expect to be able to talk to my toaster, and I expect the toaster to understand what I mean.
• Full control over the environment via 3D printing: if my toaster is broken, or if it behaves weirdly, I can just print / make another one in my home.
• Physical immortality, meaning biologically, our bodies will not get old anymore (this one alone requires so many scientific breakthroughs that I find it hard to understand now — full chevalier in the supermarket mode).

Granted, at some point we will get there. But I’m pretty sure the Singularity won’t be in the next 6 months.