Kurzweil often uses a simple fable, “The King’s Chessboard,” to illustrate
what happens. To reward a wise man who had done him a great service, a
king agreed to give him grains of rice that would be counted on a chessboard.
The first square would hold one grain. The second square would hold double
that, or two grains. The third square would hold double the previous amount,
or four grains of rice. And so on until all sixty-four squares of the chessboard
were filled. But if the king thought he was getting a bargain, he soon learned
otherwise. The eighth square called for 128 grains of rice, too many to fit on
a single square of the chessboard. As the amount kept doubling, the rice had
to be delivered by the wagonload. And still the rice kept doubling for a grand
total of more than 270 billion tons (245 billion metric tons) of rice. There
was not enough rice in the kingdom to pay the wise man.
In the same way, electronic devices don’t merely improve at a steady
linear pace, advancing in a straightforward manner the way a person
might walk at a constant rate toward a goal. Instead, electronics improve
at a rate that is constantly doubling, with dizzying results, including a
dramatic upsurge in computer intelligence. Such an exponential increase in
computing ability is expected to lead to an “intelligence explosion,” a phrase
first used by mathematician I. J. Good in 1965. Once this occurs, Good
speculated, “The intelligence of man would be left far behind.” This is the
point that Vinge and Kurzweil have dubbed the Singularity.
What will these developments mean for those who live through
them? Some individuals, such as Kurzweil, have a positive vision in which
humanity reaps multiple benefits from the growth in computer intelligence.
Others, like physicist Stephen Hawking and Swedish philosopher Nick
Bostrom, have grave misgivings about sharing Earth with entities more
intelligent than we are.
UTOPIANDREAM
Those who agree with Kurzweil view the Singularity as a gateway to a
utopian dream. They envision a world of clean and abundant energy, an
end to illness and poverty, a life free of suffering and tedious tasks, and
77
The Singularity
