The Singularity

Throughout the years there have been major advancements in technology, especially computers. It has always been for good, like faster internet or easier applications, but what happens when progress of technology back fires on human society. In the article, 2045: The Man Year Becomes Immortal, Grossman describes his view on how he believes that computers will one day be more intelligent than the human race.

“Creating a work of art is one of those activities we reserve for humans and humans only.”(Grossman 2).  As illustrated in this quote, one thing that the Human intelligence has over the computer intelligence is the ability to be creative. However in 1965, Raymound Kurzweil challenged this. “To see creativity, the exclusive domain of humans, usurped by a computer built by a 17-year-old is to watch a line blur that cannot be unblurred, the line between organic intelligence and artificial intelligence”(Grossman 2).  If computers have the ability to have the creative personality as we do, how long is it before they develop a conscious too? When this intelligence is developed by computers, they will have the ability to do everything we can but at a much faster speed. What will we be used for then?

Being authentically human, in my opinion, means to have your own unique personality and opinions about things. You have to have your own sense of individuality. In the Brave New World, the director quotes, “Murder kills only the individual, and afterall, what is an individual.”(Huxley 148). In the Brave New World the humans do not have unique characteristics for themselves because they were born in groups of hundreds. They are more like robots, conditioned to do only what they are made for. How is this different from being a computer? In the article, Grossman mentions many ideas he believes that may occur when computers become smarter than us. For example he states, “Maybe we’ll merge with them to become super-intelligent cyborgs, using computers to extend our intellectual abilities.”(Grossman 2). Is this what happened in Brave New World in a way? They use technology to make people smarter or dumber depending on their needs. Technology may become so advance the concept of individuality could be swept from mankind.

Computers over taking humanity itself is not a good thing in my opinions, but what if they were used to help us live longer or forever. In Grossman’s article he states, “Maybe the artificial intelligence will help us treat the effects of old age and prolong our life spans indefinitely”(Grossman 2). Would this be such a bad thing? We could use technology to be able to live indefinitely. But would we still be considered humans? Or would we lose our sense of humanity? For example, people’s belief in Christianity or other religions would just vanish because there would be no such thing as an afterlife.  A religion is a big part of who someone is and without it they soon believe what everyone else believes. If everyone is like everyone else, soon our world will be just like the "new world" in the Brave New World, without a sense of individuality.