Singularity

By the term “singularity” we understand that all the usual known laws lose their meaning and that something explodes, so to speak, causing the entire existence—space and time and humanity—to assume a different form. We call this singularity, and one sees it as a capacity of artificial intelligence, which increases the computing capacity of human beings through artificial intelligence, and to such an extent that what AI will be able to do in one second a human being today could not achieve in a lifetime....

Of course, a chess player also thinks and wonders what the countermove will be to one’s next move. As human beings, we cannot comprehend all possibilities, nor can a computer, but it can put them together and calculate probabilities.

Nevertheless, what is completely ignored is that it is a game, and that the point is the joy of the game. You have to be able to play a game right, but you also have to be able to get it wrong. It is not about perfection competing with perfection, because then there is no point at all. The point is to enjoy the game. But there might come a time when the information cloud can spread across the entire cosmos at speeds faster than light and even radiate through the black holes to outer cosmic areas—i.e., to regions that we cannot yet know.

This book was originally published in Dutch as Singulariteit: Dialogen over kunstmatige intelligentie en spiritualiteit by Uitgeverij Occident, 2019.