- So the other day I was taking a stroll through the park,
thinking about whether machine intelligence
would ever overtake human intelligence,
basically making us obsolete,
you know, the day often referred to as the singularity.
And then I started thinking about black holes
and how the center of them is also called a singularity.
And then I was like, wait, what do machines becoming smart
have to do with black holes?
Surely it's not just a coincidence they happen
to be called the same thing.
What is a singularity exactly?
I spent the next few days finding out
and now I'm gonna share with you guys.
So the English word singularity really just means
a unique event with profound consequences.
Like the time JFK was shot, for example,
small event, big consequences.
It was then adopted by mathematics to describe
the point where a function is undefined.
So do you guys remember in math class when your teacher
was like you can't divide by zero because that's undefined
but they probably didn't really tell you what that meant.
But also if you're anything like me
you probably did not ask
'cause you were like, hey, less work for me.
And then one day in your mid-20s,
you're tryna write a script about singularities
and this whole undefined thing comes up
and you finally stopped to think,
hey, what does that actually mean?
Well, let's take the function one over x
and plot a few points.
When x is one, y is one, when x is 0.1, y is 10.
And when x is 0.01, y is 100.
And if we wanna get crazy,
when x is 0.000000000001, y is a really big number.
So you can see that as x gets
really, really, really, really, really small,
y gets really, really, really, really, really big.
If we wanna put this into math talk, we can say
that as x approaches zero, y approaches infinity.
So it's pretty tempting to just say that when x equals zero
y equals infinity, but what about when x is negative?
If we plot y for negative x,
we see that as x approaches zero
y goes to negative infinity.
So, what's y at x equals zero then?
Well, mathematicians don't know.
They couldn't come up with a good answer
so we just say it's undefined.
This is where our understanding of mathematics breaks down
and we just call it a singularity.
So that's what a singularity is in math
but it still doesn't answer the initial question.
What do machines becoming smart have to do with black holes?
Well, let's start with black holes.
Believe it or not, this is actually the simpler of the two.
This is a black hole and this is its event horizon.
The event horizon has often been called
the point of no return.
It's the boundary where the pull of gravity becomes
so strong that once anything goes past it,
it can never come back out, even light,
which is why black holes are so well, black.
According to general relativity, beyond the event horizon
physics starts acting a bit crazy.
Our current understanding tells us
that right in the center of the black hole,
gravity and density become infinitely large.
We call this point a gravitational singularity
but what does it mean to say that a physical quantity
like gravity is infinite?
We don't know, that's where our understanding breaks down.
Comedian Steve Wright put it best when he said
"Black holes are where God divided by zero."
So basically when things start acting in a weird way
and we can't think of any good answers,
we just call it a singularity.
And now finally, what has all of this
got to do with the singularity?
That distant day where AI intelligence outstrips our own
and we're overtaken as the dominant life form on Earth.
The legendary mathematician, John Von Neumann
was the first to use this phrase
to describe this lovely day when he said
"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."
(upbeat music)
Okay, so two things here.
I just wanna clear up that when he says
"Human affairs as we know them, could not continue,"
he doesn't mean that the human race will die out
or become extinct.
He just means that humanity, as we know it
could not continue.
There's a big but subtle difference.
Basically there's no way that when this event happens
that the way humanity functions now
or any kind of model we have for humanity could continue.
The second thing is,
if you don't know who Jonathan Neumann is, Wikipedia him
first thing after this video, he is a legend.
Nobel Prize winning physicist Eugene Wigner once said
"Only he was fully awake."
Something else in Von Neumann's original quote
I'd like to point out is the bit where he says
"The ever accelerating progress of technology."
What does he mean by that?
Well, let's look at a little history, shall we?
Humans are fascinated with flying for centuries.
We found sketches by da Vinci of
helicopter-type contraptions
which date back to the 15th century
but it took 400 years for the world's first airplane,
the Wright brothers plane to see flight,
but then it only took another 66 years
to build a rocket to the moon.
How?
Well it's because breakthroughs in technology make way
for new technology.
The invention of the combustion engine
which gave way to the Wright brothers' plane
led to more sophisticated engines, which eventually
made the moon landing possible.
This is called the law of accelerating returns
and it tells us that the growth of computing power
is exponential, not linear.
The most well-known example of this is probably Moore's law
which applies specifically to the number of transistors
in an integrated circuit.
To really grasp the power of exponential growth,
let me tell you a little story.
There was once a great Indian King who loved to play chess.
One day, a traveling sage was challenged by the King
and to motivate his opponent, the King offered to reward her
anything she could name.
The sage had a rather unusual request.
She was to be given a grain of rice on the first
chess square and double it on every next one.
The King lost and being a man of his word
summoned a barrel of rice from the kitchen.
He then started placing grains of rice
according to the arrangement one, two, four, eight,
but he quickly realized his mistake
because by the 20th square
he'd have to put down 1 million grains of rice.
And by the last square, he'd have to put down
more than 18 billion billion grains of rice
which is about 210 billion tons
which is enough to cover the whole of India
with a meter thick layer of rice.
Now imagine that the rice is computing power
and right now, we're about here on the chess board.
According to the law of accelerating returns,
we'll reach a point where technology starts expanding
so rapidly it will get completely out of our control.
Beyond this, it will become impossible to predict
the future of humanity, a technological event horizon.
That point has been deemed the singularity
and that my friends is what black holes
have to do with machines becoming smart.
But wait, I've got a challenge for you.
See if you can figure out how what I'm about to say
is a singularity.
Ready?
This sentence is false.
That's it, I'm looking forward to reading
all of your answers in the comments.
I'm Jade, you're watching Up and Atom
and now you know what a singularity is.
Thanks so much for watching guys.
I hope you enjoyed it.
If you did make sure to leave a like.
If you don't already follow me on Twitter, I often do polls
about what kind of videos you guys wanna see.
This video was actually a result of one of my polls.
So, follow me on Twitter so you can participate in those
because ultimately I wanna make videos
that you guys wanna see.
So yeah, there's that.
Oh, and a big thank you to my Patreons, especially Anne
who got to feature in this week's episode
as the traveling sage.
So, if you're interested in featuring in one of my videos
as the cartoon, head over to my Patreon page.
Yeah, that's all from me
and here's some cool quotes about John Von Neumann, bye.
(upbeat music)