I was surprised the other day to see a news blurb that a movie based on Raymond Kurzweil's 2005 book, The Singularity is Near, was due for release this summer. I must assume the eponymous film will be loosely based on the book because it is a work of speculative philosophy–not fiction in the traditional sense of fiction.

The Singularity referred to is the supposed tipping point when technology no longer will require human beings to exist or change. Artificial intelligences will evolve to the point they will have the ability to improve and perpetuate themselves continually. Hand in hand with the development of such ?ber-artificial intelligence is a concurrent development of super technologies to support these new “beings.” The implications of such an event are profound and probably would challenge the very future of the human race.

Some speculate a result of the Singularity would be the ability to “download” somehow an existing human intelligence into a super or strong artificial intelligence and achieve a type of immortality. I would hope operating systems will have evolved significantly by the time of the Singularity. I don't know how many blue screens and core dumps my intellect would survive.

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