Singularity movie is in production, co-director is Raymond Kurzweil

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1049412/

by bemmu • 17 years ago

20 33 17 years ago

clavalle4• 17 years ago

I wish this pseudo-technical, new-age, flim-flam of an idea would die already. Seriously, does anyone with a real technical background that is not directly making money off of seminars, books and articles selling this believe this stuff?

JeremyChase• 17 years ago

No doubt. It isn't the first singularity movie anyway; Terminator, Matrix, Eagle Eye, A Space Odyssey..

zephjc2• 17 years ago

I wouldn't call those singularity movies.

Maybe movies with transhuman/posthuman themes, but the singularity implies things about the rate of technological progress - certainly there wasn't much rapid progress in Terminator after the machines nuked the earth (except, maybe, in the production of new terminator robots, but even that wasn't fast, really).

Retric2• 17 years ago

None of those present god (little g) level AI being created by humans but, AI (2001) is fairly close to the idea. By the end of the movie the robots knew how to bring someone back from the dead for a day and who knows what else.

hegemonicon• 17 years ago

Eliezer Yudkowsky.

listic• 17 years ago

> does anyone with a real technical background... this believe this stuff?

Why not?

Retric2• 17 years ago

There are a large number of assumptions built up around the singularity concept and CPU's are not getting exponentially faster so at least one of them seems incorrect. Honestly, the hardest problem IMO is the idea that intelligence is fungible and twice as much of it will provide anywhere near twice the result. The real world is fuzzy and thinking faster/deeper only get’s you so far.

Let's say we can build a machine smarter than a single person, that’s a long way from building something smarter than humanity so there is not a quick kick off to infinity. Now let's suggest we build a billion of the things and they are all smarter than the average person. Nothing says you can get anything close to a linear feedback between the intelligence designing an AI and how smart the AI is so there would not necessarily be a feedback loop to keep making more intelligent systems. etc.

clavalle4• 17 years ago

Well first of all, we all know the limitations of exponential growth in the real world. What does 'enhancing capability and intelligence to an unimaginable scale' really mean? It all strikes me as uselessly fuzzy and mystical. Good for pop 'science' articles and sci-fi speculation (which, don't get me wrong, is fun in and of itself) but not terribly useful or informative otherwise.

ivankirigin2• 17 years ago

I have a graduate degree in robotics, and I think that robots will be as capable as humans within a few decades. I also think it is likely we can engineer a solution to aging, but I'm not as familiar with the tech there.

jodrellblank• 17 years ago

Define "this stuff" - what, specifically, are you snorting at people believing?

clavalle4• 17 years ago

'this stuff' := The Singularity - The idea that we will be able to design systems with enough 'intelligence' (a difficult term to define itself) as to be imbued with novel creativity that surpasses all human understanding...in turn, these systems create ever more advanced creative systems until (insert your dis/utopian idea of preference here).

zephjc2• 17 years ago

Eh, I don't know about this. It sounds like it has a plot and conflict, but will it be good storytelling? However, it's kind of cool to see so many big AI-community/singularitarian names in the cast credits!

martythemaniak• 17 years ago

Reading The Singularity kinda reminded of a Neal Stephenson novel. You start off with well-grounded reality, you progress smoothly, then you finish and you wonder...wait, wtf just happened? How did I get to this wacky place?

I mean, we'll all me omniscient, immortal demi-gods in 39 years? Really?

tfh2• 17 years ago

May be "humanity becoming immortal demi-gods" is like "having flying cars everywhere". It's always 39 in the future.

http://graphjam.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/song-chart-memes...

NikkiA• 17 years ago

The great thing about youth's obsession with 'immortality' is that once you hit the 35-40 age bracket, and you get the first of your chronic pain sources, the idea suddenly starts to get a LOT less attractive.

geuis• 17 years ago

I did some work earlier this year making some machinima video in Second Life for this movie. From what I've seen so far, it's just a documentary-style movie.

tfh2• 17 years ago

I've read charles stross's accelrando yesterday. One of the best books about singularity. It's also free (Creative Commons License). Probably the best free ebook I've ever read.

heed• 17 years ago

Sort of related: this is one of the best short stories (actually it's a play) I've read on a singularity-esque vision of the future.

http://www.fullmoon.nu/Resurrection/PrimarySpecies.html

Micand• 17 years ago

On a similar, somewhat-related tangent: The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect is a fantastic novella depicting rapid change caused by a technological singularity.

http://www.kuro5hin.org/prime-intellect/

iterationx• 17 years ago

In the movie, an AI hires Tony Robbins to help her become more human. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Robbins

Emotional machines plot? ugh.

simon_2• 17 years ago

Isn't a lot of the singularity idea based on flawed math? I always hear about and see graphs of exponential curves about to "go vertical", but... exponential curves definitely don't do that. You can zoom in on any point of e^x and it will look like it's about to have a singularity...

In more general terms... if ~technology has been getting better with some short doubling time for hundreds of years... why is it that the NEXT doubling is supposed to be the really significant one?

ivankirigin2• 17 years ago

There is a big difference between humans iterating to improve technology and machines iterating to improve technology that improves the machines. The latter is a stronger feedback loop.

But generally, I agree. We're biased to under-appreciate the impacts of past changes.

rms2• 17 years ago

The last doubling was really significant. You know, instant free communication to humans anywhere on the world as well as instant access to the sum total of human knowledge.

simon_2• 17 years ago

Right, and the next doubling will be even better (twice as good!). But the sense that we're right on the threshold of the infinite future has probably been around at least since industrialization.

For example, that bit about instant access to people and knowledge was probably said about the telegraph too.

tel• 17 years ago

I bet that whole light coming from little threads in your walls that kill you if you touch them was quite a doozy too. Commercial airflight. Fertilizer. The idea of foreign pathogens causing diseases.

Which is not to say that internet technology isn't widely more crazy than all of those previous or that there won't continue to be wider and crazier things to come. It is to say that we're not escaping exponential growth and there still isn't anything like a spike in that sort of curve.

The singularity theory proposes an increase from exponential: some technology that speeds new technology's ability to speed new technology. Without the feedback --- without the efficient feedback --- everything "stays exponential". Which is only really depressing if you're looking for hypersmart AI and endless free human life in the next 20 orso.

drhowarddrfine• 17 years ago

Any movie that has co-directors means it's going to be bad. Particularly when one of them is not in the film business at all.

Yes, I'm aware of the films made by "brothers" but those are exceptions to the rule.

Singularity movie is in production, co-director is Raymond Kurzweil

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