He quotes Prof. Mark Alan Walker: “Person-engineering technologies will make it possible to accomplish in a matter of years what evolution would take thousands of millennia to achieve.” Eric Holloway, by contrast, argues that the Singularity won’t happen, that The Second Law of Thermodynamics eviscerates any technology we might invent:
Let’s take a step back. Most of our problems come down to mathematics and the human will, two things which no amount of genetic and silicon gadgetry can change.
Mathematics is the cause of the second law of thermodynamics, the observation that everything in the universe runs down. This amounts merely to saying that what is most likely to occur is most likely to occur.
Disorder and decay are the typical states of the universe. The complex organization of energy we humans see around us in our verdant fertile nest is enormously atypical. This fundamental law drives right through the heart of any technology, genetic or otherwise, that we might invent …
Eric Holloway, “Are we facing the next, very rapid stage of evolution, via AI?” at Mind Matters News
Don’t bet against 2 Thermo.
You may also wish to read: Will ordinary human intelligence become the new “oil”? At one time, the tech craze was for outsourcing jobs. Maybe it’s time to look at “insourcing” instead. Since we’ve established that the new IT environment will absolutely depend on human intelligence, the next big frontier will be insourcing. (Eric Holloway)