Technological Singularity | Teen Ink

Technological Singularity

June 4, 2015
By Anonymous

Technological singularity is basically humans becoming robots. This has sparked a pretty big debate within the last few years. There has even been a few movies out about it. I for one am against technological singularity. But like everything there has to be good aspects of this topic also. There are some benefits to technological singularity if we improve it and study more into the topic. Although technological singularity is something I am against because of the loss of individuality, the extinction of the human species, and but it could benefit us because of immortality we could have.

 

Firstly, technological singularity is something I’m against because of the loss of individuality. Imagine all of us being the exact same. No variations between us even with complete strangers that we work with or even pass by outside. We would all think the exact same thing and function at the same time. Nothing to make us different from each other. We wouldn't make any mistakes because we would be programmed to do everything right.


Secondly, it is something I’m against because it would mean the extinction of the human species. We wouldn’t have any human life left in us. We would be all machine and not even have a beating heart or a brain that expands and retains further knowledge on its own. We would have our brain programmed with everything we need to know in life. We wouldn't have any more human qualities as we do now. We would simply be artificial intelligence and insides in a human body. The unique qualities that every individual has would go away. We wouldn't ever learn because we'd just be programmed to know everything. We would also be out of jobs because of the machines would take our place. Which would make the economy change drastically. “If a new technology allows cheap automation, fewer employees will be needed, and wealth moves towards capital owners. While new jobs are created sufficient quickly, this is just a retraining issue and the economy as a whole can grow, but when automation exceeds the rate at which new jobs can be created, it becomes a problem.”(www.wfs.com) Says Ian Pearson.


Third, it can be good because we would get immortality. We wouldn't ever die because we wouldn't have any real organs. We would have to be destroyed or powered off to die. We wouldn't get sick with any illness. There would be no more cancer or other serious diseases that we have now. There would be no starvation in the world simply because we wouldn't need food or water to keep us alive. All the diseases that we would potentially get now being human we wouldn’t even have a chance of getting because we would have no immune system because we would be all machine inside. Although some scientists say singularity is something we can’t avoid now or in the near future. Futurist Ian Pearson said on his blog, “Whether via evolution or design, computers will eventually surpass human intelligence, amplify positive feedback still further, and that will lead to the extremely rapid invention with the familiar almost vertical development curve. That is inevitable. Even without evolutionary computing, the singularity will still come, but will be slower, since it would be limited by human knowledge, squandering the potential contribution of machine assistance.”(www.wfs.org)


In conclusion, I disagree with technological singularity. It's not necessarily something that’s a hundred percent negative or without benefits. There's actually quite a few good qualities that it has. I just believe the bad outweighs the good. I’m against it because the loss of individuality, it would mean the extinction of the human species, and it has advantages because of the possibility of immortality.
 



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