Advocates of the concept called singularity envision a future in which humans and technology fully converge, but a keynote speaker at the World Future Society conference voiced skepticism about the idea, citing the complexities of the human mind.
Proponents of singularity claim that in 20 years, nanotechnology implanted in people will repair wounds and advanced robots will assist with daily tasks. The concept ultimately calls for people to transcend the limits of biology by using technology to develop into something more advanced and intelligent than human genetics allows.
Wendell Wallach, a scholar at Yale University’s Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics, supports technology but labels himself a “friendly skeptic” on this marriage of people and machines.
While he is “excited by where the science will take us,” Wallach, who spoke Thursday at the World Future Society in Boston, is a “skeptic because we don’t know enough about humans to pull it off.”
Wallach’s critique of singularity focused on areas including understanding the intricacies of the mind, the complexities of developing robots with morals and the question of who is responsible when a robot’s morals prove problematic.
The singularity movement holds that the evolution of the computer will lead to further development of the human mind, since that is also a computer.
Wallach countered that the brain is engaged in massive parallel thinking and that researchers do not fully grasp how this part of the body operates. He compared this ability to a computer, in which “one bit is out of place and Windows locks up,” he said.
He also said that computers face barriers in dealing with vision, language and locomotion.
“We don’t know which of these challenges we’ll master in 20 years. Some will be ceilings,” he said.
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