We should not be privileging the singularity hypothesis | Alan Winfield via The Guardian

by Alan Winfield

03 September 2014

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By worrying unnecessarily [about the Singularity hypothesis] I think we’re falling into a trap: the fallacy of privileging the hypothesis. And – perhaps worse – taking our eyes off other risks that we should really be worrying about: like man-made climate change, or bioterrorism. Let me illustrate what I mean. Imagine I ask you to consider the possibility that we invent faster than light travel sometime in the next 100 years. Then I worry you by outlining all sorts of nightmare scenarios that might follow from the misuse of this technology. At the end of it you’ll be thinking: my god, never mind climate change, we need to stop all FTL research right now.

Read more by Alan Winfield at The Guardian

tags: AI, Alan Winfield, Algorithm AI-Cognition, EU perspectives, The Singularity

Alan Winfield is Professor in robotics at UWE Bristol. He communicates about science on his personal blog.

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