*That's worth a read.
He's a professor of philosophy at Oxford
(…)
Singularitarians believe in three dogmas. First, that the creation of some form of artificial ultraintelligence is likely in the foreseeable future. This turning point is known as a technological singularity, hence the name. Both the nature of such a superintelligence and the exact timeframe of its arrival are left unspecified, although Singularitarians tend to prefer futures that are conveniently close-enough-to-worry-about but far-enough-not-to-be-around-to-be-proved-wrong.
Second, humanity runs a major risk of being dominated by such ultraintelligence. Third, a primary responsibility of the current generation is to ensure that the Singularity either does not happen or, if it does, that it is benign and will benefit humanity. This has all the elements of a Manichean view of the world: Good fighting Evil, apocalyptic overtones, the urgency of ‘we must do something now or it will be too late’, an eschatological perspective of human salvation, and an appeal to fears and ignorance.
Put all this in a context where people are rightly worried about the impact of idiotic digital technologies on their lives, especially in the job market and in cyberwars, and where mass media daily report new gizmos and unprecedented computer-driven disasters, and you have a recipe for mass distraction: a digital opiate for the masses.
Like all faith-based views, Singularitarianism is irrefutable because, in the end, it is unconstrained by reason and evidence. It is also implausible, since there is no reason to believe that anything resembling intelligent (let alone ultraintelligent) machines will emerge from our current and foreseeable understanding of computer science and digital technologies. Let me explain….
