The Two Singularities

Time for Coffee & Conversation with best selling AI author, speaker & futurist Calum Chace. Who will share from his best selling books "Surviving AI" and "Pandora's Brain" http://www.amazon.com/Calum-Chace/e/B00PUM096S
and his upcoming book "The Economic Singularity" which he will be providing a review copy of to all who attend either in person or via the live webinar. (Join the meetup and request the webinar link from the group organizer.)

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Two people in attendance will win an autographed book "Surviving AI." You can learn more about Calum Chace, his writings and talks via his blog at http://pandoras-brain.com/

So what is "Singularity" you ask? Well there are many types and definitions but it usually speaks to a point of divergence from which there is no turning back.

The technological singularity is a hypothetical event in which artificial general intelligence (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_general_intelligence) (constituting, for example, intelligent computers, computer networks, or robots) would be capable of recursive self-improvement (progressively redesigning itself), or of autonomously building ever smarter and more powerful machines than itself, up to the point of a runaway (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_effect)effect —an intelligence explosion that yields an intelligence surpassing all current human control or understanding. Because the capabilities of such a superintelligence (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superintelligence)may be impossible for a human to comprehend, the technological singularity is the point beyond which events may become unpredictable or even unfathomable to human intelligence. Ideas as to what it will usher in also very and range from Utopia to Dystopia.

John von Neumann (http://www.singularitysymposium.com/john-von-neumann.html) was quoted as saying that "the ever accelerating progress of technology ... gives the appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could not continue." His definition of the Singularity was that the Singularity is the moment beyond which "technological progress will become incomprehensibly rapid and complicated."

Another type of Singularity is Economic Singularity, thatis the point when technology in machines becomes so advanced & productive that the world gross domestic product will exceed our needs as a species. A signpost for this is the growth of human labor outgrowing the use for human labor. Likely because of robotics and intelligent machines this will present logistical problems to the distribution of wealth in a population that will theoretically no longer have to work to sustain the economic viability of a comfortable existence for that population.

There is much debate on this topic and so we are in for some great thoughts and conversation about the role AI will have in "The Two Singularities" with one of the most sought after authors and speakers on this subject Calum Chace.