The older, original definitions of "singularity" were less about "herp derp superintelligent AI blah blah".

and just about "we cannot really predict beyond certain things" (Vinge's "Singularity" (1993) with its "opaque wall across future")

▲ dwohnitmok 3 hours ago | parent [-]

> The older, original definitions of "singularity" were less about "herp derp superintelligent AI blah blah".

No they were exactly about superintelligent AI!

Vinge's 1993 article literally opens with this!

> What is the Singularity? The acceleration of technological progress has been the central feature of this century. We are on the edge of change comparable to the rise of human life on Earth. The precise cause of this change is the imminent creation by technology of entities with greater-than-human intelligence.

https://frc.ri.cmu.edu/~hpm/book98/com.ch1/vinge.singularity...

	▲	p_l an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		It's one of the options, but not "oh superintelligent AI comes in and we mostly know what that means so we want to speedrun it " - which I'll admit I was not very clear on. In fact, one of the options Vinge considered was a "group intellect" formed from how humans communicate more thanks to internet
	▲	throw310822 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Thanks for your link, this (a few paragraphs from the top) seems to settle it: `Stan Ulam paraphrased John von Neumann as saying: One conversation centered on the ever-accelerating progress of technology and changes in the mode of human life, which 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. Von Neumann even uses the term singularity, though it appears he is thinking of normal progress, not the creation of superhuman intellect.` So the concept of technological singularly precedes and is independent of that of intelligence explosion- although one could argue that the latter is the most logical way for the singularity to come about.