HAL's iconic camera eye
The term singularity usually means the inside of a black-hole, the site of mysterious and as yet unexplainable physics. But it has another meaning in culture and science-fiction. The technological singularity occurs when artificial or biologically engineered super brains are developed that can solve complex issues mere humans can’t even frame as a question.
It’s the staple of sci-fi scenarios and speculation, where some futurists see the super brains as terminators and others view them as potential saviors. I was always partial to the idea that they wouldn’t have anything against humans — it’s just that we’re made of atoms they can use for other projects.
Good, evil, or indifferent, we may find out soon, because our friends at IBM are working hard to create the real HAL 9000:
IBM has developed a microprocessor which it claims comes closer than ever to replicating the human brain. The system is capable of “rewiring” its connections as it encounters new information, similar to the way biological synapses work. Researchers believe that that by replicating that feature, the technology could start to learn.
no disassemble! NO DISASSEMBLE!! >:[
Nah…IBM is creating Skynet…. >.>
By changing the tense of a single word, suddenly that sentence became the final sentence of the first chapter of the book “Whatever Happened To the Human Race?” Translated from the original binary, of course.
See asimov’s finest short story:
http://filer.case.edu/dts8/thelastq.htm
There’s an Onion headline here somewhere:
“Scientists building unstoppable Doomsday machine hold press conference to ask, ‘What the **** are we doing?!’ “