Update of the Mundane Singularity: Tech Singularity Without Molecular Nanotechnology and Artificial General Intelligence Triggers

This weekend is when the Singularity Summit is being held in San Jose. Let us revisit the idea of technological singularity and the mundane singularity. Later this today there will be coverage of the Singularity Summit talks.

Ray Kurzweil, defines the singularity as a period of extremely rapid technological progress.

Robin Hanson, economist, proposes that multiple “singularities” have occurred throughout history, dramatically affecting the growth rate of the economy. Like the agricultural and industrial revolutions of the past, the technological singularity would increase economic growth between 60 and 250 times.

A Technological Singularity and Transhumanism are often criticized because the primary technologies that enable it are Molecular Nanotechnology and greater than human intelligence general AI, which some believe are not possible.

This site considered how much of the projected benefits of a technological singularity could be achieved even without Molecular Nanotechnology and Artificial General Intelligence as the technology triggers.

How much :
1. Economic abundance
2. Radical life extension
3. Physical and Cognitive enhancement
4. Blood Stream Robots
5. Supermaterials
6. Open Access to space
7. Pollution elimination
8. Computer Advancement
9. Shape changing functional devices like utility fog

This site does not agree that Molecular Nanotechnology (MNT) is not achievable or that greater than human intelligence AI is not achievable.

1. Relative economic abundance with every living person having an personal resources at the affluent level of a current US citizen. $250,000 per person per year in purchasing power parity income. [The income level that Obama would want to tax more heavily if he becomes President]. No shortages of any basic need water, food, medical care [equal to that which is achieving the medical results currently affordable to an affluent person now] and energy [currently a US citizen uses an average of 13,000 kwh per year for electricity and three times that for transportation and a share of industrial energy usage. So abundance is 100,000 kwh for every person and assuming a future population of 10 billion is 1000 trillion kwh.

A manufacturing and construction revolution can be achieved with printable buildings, inflatable electric cars, printable electronics and advanced automated rapid manufacturing.

RECENT: Contour crafting for printing buildings has been funded by Caterpillar, Inc [the world’s largest manufacturer of construction equipment].

Computer simulation and detailed modeling and other enabling technology will enable the revolution.

Paper stronger than cast iron made from plant cellulose is here and will make manufacturing far cheaper.

Stem cell meat factories, advanced aquaculture and vertical farming and more advanced genetically engineered food will enable an abundance of food. The vertical farming would be further enabled by the printing building technology.

Aquaculture (fish farming) already provide over half of the world’s fish.

Genetically modified fish can grow over twice as fast as regular fish and can enable more productive fish farming.

For water desalination is already very advanced and it is becoming more energy efficient and cheaper. More abundant and affordable energy helps to create more water from desalinization.

The mass produced uranium hydride nuclear reactor would be part of a relatively mundane energy abundance solution. These reactors would have far less waste since 50 times more fuel would be burned generating energy. Molten salt reactors are even more efficient and could burn 99% of the uranium and plutonium in the reactor.

Increasing the current level of nuclear power in the world by 450 times would achieve the 1000 trillion kwh level. Increasing the efficiency of so that fuel usage is reduced by 30 to 98 times and being able to use thorium as well as uranium would ensure that there is sufficient nuclear fuel for the 5-15 times more per year that would be needed. There is uranium in seawater and Japanese researchers have been able to extract kilograms of it. [Japan is seriously investigating using gene engineered seaweed for a combination of biofuel and large scale extraction of uranium from seawater. It would cost more but fuel costs are only a small percentage of a nuclear plants operation.

Using deep burn of nuclear fuel and factory mass production of nuclear reactors would allow scaling to 100 times current power usage for twenty thousand years using nuclear fission.

2. Radical life extension: Achieving actuarial escape velocity [which is not eradicating death but radical life extension] whereby life expectancy increases at greater than one year for each year that passes. No age related disease caused deaths. An increased level of increased physical regeneration and restoration. Really bad accidents or destructive weapons would still be able to kill. Advanced technology could create a precise copy of a person, but whether this will be done for ethical and societal reasons or whether the copy is the person is not discussed. A copy of “the mind” could be created in another substrate (ie. not a flesh and blood person but a computer than simulates “the mind”).

Calorie restriction mimicking drugs could be available within five years according to a leading researcher and should provide 3-13 years of increased life span

Treatments to boost the human immune system against cancer and effective and cheap early detection of cancer cells will enable a massive decrease in cancer deaths.

The SENS project has raised over ten million dollars and is launching projects for each of the seven parts of the initial program to substantial extend human lives. This would be a major first step on the actuarial escape velocity path.

Regenerative medicine is making substantial advances with stem cells, tissue generation, and increasing the regenerative capability in humans to be more like salamanders (able to regrow limbs.) This research is well funded by the US defence department with the AFIRM (Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine funded for $250 million for five years) project.

3. Cognitive and physical enhancment: Enhance various performance aspects of the human body. Various medical and mechanical enhancements will be discussed which will be significant advances to existing performance enhancement.

Effective and safe myostatin inhibition will likely be developed which will enable most people to become several times stronger and closer to the best levels achievable now (one in one million people already have myostatin inhibited and it is four times as effective as high doses of steroids).

Cognitive enhancement is already here and will become more effective.

Craig Venter, billionaire and enabler of new gene therapy and synthetic biology technology, has indicated that very strong cognitive enhancement is possible, desirable and a goal that he wants to achieve.

From the Eric Drexler website – things that Molecular Nanotechnology would enable.
– desktop computers with a billion processors
– inexpensive, efficient solar energy systems
– medical devices able to destroy pathogens and repair tissues
– materials 100 times stronger than steel

4. Blood stream robots or achieving the goals (cellular surgery and repair) for which blood stream robots were proposed using other means. [medical devices able to destroy pathogens and repair tissues]

There are several major research institutes (including Carnegie Mellon) who are making major progress making more capable robots that are pill size to the size of bacteria.

Nanoparticles, existing blood stream robots and guideable containers and cellular repair are being proven and people are working to improve and deploy them.

5. Materials 100 times stronger than steel [cheap and commonly used] : Production or access to diamond and carbon nanotubes increased by 1000 times and using diamond as a primary material for house sized objects and for electronics.

Carbon nanotube production will be ramped up which will become very cheap and will be deployed widely

Very large (multi-carat) diamonds can be produced very fast since 2005 Current methods can produce, three-dimensional growth of colorless single-crystal diamond in the inch-range (~300 carat) is achievable. Large scale production and scaling up diamond creation is an active and well funded area.

6. Open access to space [within the solar system for human and robotic travel and small probes up to a significant fraction of light speed for interstellar access]

Ten near term developments for greatly improved space access were covered here

Mirrored laser arrays are achievable with refinement of current technology as is nuclear propulsion.

7. Pollution “elimination” : Reduction of pollution into the environment and nearly complete elimination of deaths caused by pollution.

The use of the uranium hydride and molten salt reactor would greatly reduce the use of fossil fuels.

This sites proposed energy plan is a fast, affordable, and low technology development risk path to eliminating fossil fuels and enabling abundant clean energy.

8. Desktop computers with one billion processors (or performance greater than one billion of todays processors)

500 cores in new teraflop chips for less than $200 for the processor.

Berkeley and Tensilica already working towards energy efficient and affordable exaflop computers for the 2015-2017 timeframe

Design conferences have been held to work out details on zettaflop computers

9. Shape changing functional devices like utility fog

Claytronics has been funded by Intel.

Todd Mowry, leading the work on claytronics, claims he will produce a “3-D fax” by 2012.

RECENT: Today I saw Justin Rattner (Intel) slides showing millimeter 2d and millimeter 3d sized claytronic catoms. They have built 2D mm and 3d mm scale catoms that can move with electrostatics.Justin Rattner, who is also senior fellow and vice president of the corporate technology group at Intel. “And we’ll go from millimeters to microns, I guess, some time over the next five to 10 years.”

Precise 3 dimensional manufacturing is progressing

Conclusion
So how much of some of the key goals of a transhuman singularity can be achieved without fullblown molecular nanotechnology, AGI or fusion ? Quite a bit. which is why the real deal with molecular nanotechnology, AGI and fusion will be really impressive. The mundane technological singularity shows the kinds of societal shifts that will be needed in order to fully take advantage of the upside. A lot of systems and processes have to be redesigned. The mundane singularity is 100 to 1000 times faster in terms of production and various capabilities.