Eliezer Yudkowsky, a researcher attempting to create “Friendly” AI, spoke about the three major schools of thought regarding the Technological Singularity:
- Accelerating Change – technology trends follow exponential growth
- Event Horizon – minds that are smarter than humans, including human brain enhancement, interfaces, and even AGI
- Intelligence Explosion – improving intelligence using technology in a positive feedback cycle
These schools of thoughts can at times contradict each other, even suggesting alternative outcomes. For example, if the Event Horizon theory is correct, then predicting the future may be impossible. Accelerating Change proponents, such as Ray Kurzweil, suggest that the future might actually be predictable, because we can plot progress on an exponential graph with time as one of the axis.
However, these schools of thought can support each other’s core or bold claims. Today, these seem to be merged together into an idea of the Technological Singularity.