h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Howdy!

First the fuzzy stuff. Good, thought provoking artical. Good information and content. Great graphic! All in all one of the best articals I've read. So congrats!

Now onto some of my thoughts (if indeed, anyone cares ).

In my oppinion the sigmoidal concept is the most likely, but not because of some inbuild 'limit' of knowledge, but more because of human nature. My theory goes as follows:

We reach a certain level of computer technology and hand over construction of computers to an advanced AI and give it the basic instructions of 'make yourself better'. I then thought that as soon as this AI had improved itself to a point where it was capable of adding constructively to its own programming (of course, only on 'user' level, where 'admin' level contains all the important "Don't Perform Any Action Which Will Directly Or Indirectly Harm A Human", "Don't Try To Destroy The World" type code), thus getting smarter than humans, we could then start to hand over research projects to it and allow it to further our understanding of other areas, all the while maintaining the original 'make yourself better' program.

This would then allow us to get an unprecidented level of research done, and allow understanding of very complex ideas quickly. All of this new understanding would be contained in the machine, and it would of course use this to further its main program, self improvement. Soon the computer comes up with a way that it can emulate human curiosity so that it need not be fed projects and can instead think of things to research.

After a while this would lead to your singularity as the computer would hit hyper drive and research everything and anything possible.

The reason I think that this wouldn't become hyperbolic, is that the humans would see what was happening and either choose not to use any information which was 'over their heads' or would just decide that going back to the old ways of reasearching for yourself, of actually achieving knowledge rarther than being handed it, would be better.

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Just my thoughts, I may have totally missed the point, I may have just re-stated exactly what was in the artical in more (less?) detail, I could have even just gone totally mad. Who knows? I'm sure if I've missed the point someone will be 'kind' enough to point it out to me...