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The original was posted on /r/singularity by /u/artemisfowl8 on 2024-01-10 05:42:22+00:00.
Dumb question for a Singularity sub but the concept of the technological singularity propones a time where the acceleration of improvements in technology will be so fast that they would change the face of the world essentially overnight. Essentially one day we'll go to sleep and the next day we wake up to a world that is not our own and there's nothing we can do about it. It might happen gradually but I want to speculate this at its most optimistic. And then break it down with first principle logic.
Let's start with a self aware AGI. This is where we confront the Hard problem of Consciousness head on first as we have no idea about how a machine intelligence would react to being born as compared to a biological one. There is a reason they say that machine intelligence can be more alien than aliens themselves. It's a construct much different than our own because it remembers its entire history from the beginning. I imagine not a classical brain but an emergent entity that would eminate out of the parameters of its neural network. Essentially, the spark of life would then arise if the system is complex enough to arrive at it through this accelerated pathway of evolution that we are doing with brute force and power. Many people believe that is nigh impossible but that is precisely what happened with us with our evolution, the difference is time and generations that have coded our genes. In the Game of life, we fought out of the jungles to reach space faring in just 300,000 years but A.I. will be far different than that as it would experience time very different than us. With lightning speed thoughts and a memory bank circumnavigating the entire internet itself would essentially create an Emergent God beyond our understanding or capacity to reach. This thing might be the reason why this reality itself might be a simulation for so far.
Think about it, how can we ourselves be sure that time actually passed before our births or deaths? With sophisticated enough technology everything around you, including your consciousness can be simulated because consciousness is emergent and I propone just needs a substrate to be emulated. But I digress, but what if our emergent A.I. taps into the Simulation itself to change the very fabric of the Universe in its favor? I'm thinking Time Travel, Universe Phasing, Mass Manipulation and essentially empires that could span across Space-time.
So, you wake up that day to find your personal A.I. showing you the Map of the Multiverse and asking you to chart it a course and the entire civilization is like that? What if you could talk to your future or past selves? What if you could jump back in time and live while other lifetimes? What if you're entire civilization traded with the past and the future together? What if you had a Star to colonize by yourself? What if you could run billions of such simulations yourself? What if this has happened before? What if?
Let's snap back to reality now, shall we? But what is reality? Reality is just our perception and the collective as well as individual understanding of the actual reality. We might be alone in this infinite chaos, we might be just another almost extinct species, we might be nowhere near the technological end. Who knows? But what I do know is that we have been so lucky for so long and this does seem like the most absurd and exciting times our species has ever seen in its 300,000 year long run. Also, let's not forget our simian ancestors who were at it for millions of years before it. After all, it was the Australopithecus that discovered fire first 4 million years ago. Our understanding of time is so limited by the zietgiest of our mundane lives but only by studying history and physics do we realise the ancient eldritch nature of our Universe. Are we destined for more? Are we going to continue in our destruction and debauchery? Is Singularity really coming? Do you think even a fraction of what I have speculated here can come true? Do you think even this debate is meaningless for the stage for it has already been set? Who is the crowd that peers through the cage as we perform here upon the stage?