I think about this a lot. From the POV of a medieval peasant, we likely reached the singularity a long time ago.

You both seem to be using a different definition of "singularity" from the one I'm familiar with. I've always understood it to mean a rapid feedback loop in which AI creates successive, increasingly capable generations of AI outside human control, rather than simply a level of technological advancement that would be incomprehensible to someone

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advael a day ago | parent | next [-]

The reason the term "singularity" was used when that term was coined was in analogy to a black hole, which has a point on its radius called the event horizon where the gravitational pull is strong enough to stop light from escaping, thereby making it impossible to see beyond that horizon. "Technological singularity" itself here refers to the technological event which causes this, like a black hole is sometimes explained as a gravitational singularity

This is important to the framing of the idea: "the technological singularity" refers to a point in the future past which further developments can't be meaningfully foreseen or maybe even understood. This is often associated with particular paths people think will cause this, but not defined by those. As such, the prior comments are making the claim that you can get there not just by accelerating technological progress, but also by reducing the ability of everyone to comprehend what's happening, which I agree is unfortunately a plausible outcome in the current world

	▲	ben_w 14 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Indeed. To expand on this, I prefer calling this "the event horizon" rather than "the singularity", as that makes it clear (I hope) that I mean "can't predict" rather than "goes to infinity". With this framing, my prediction for that horizon has been "around 2030" for over a decade now, as several different currently-exponential growth trends start giving results with weird implications around that year. (LLMs look like they're ahead of schedule for this, but consider their power requirements and limitations on AI in robotics that mean they're not quite good enough on the "G" part of "AGI" to affect non-desk jobs).

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Izkata a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The singularity is when an AI can improve itself, which among the results include humans no longer being able to understand its code and exponential improvements so we can't catch up either.

It requires a level of self-driven intent LLMs aren't capable of on their own.

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nullsanity a day ago | parent | prev [-]

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