The World in 2030

36 The World in 2030
experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century
– it will be more like 20,000 years of progress (at
today’s rate). The ‘returns,’ such as chip speed and
cost-effectiveness, also increase exponentially. There’s
even exponential growth in the rate of exponential
growth. Within a few decades, machine intelligence
will surpass human intelligence, leading to The Singularity
– technological change so rapid and profound it
represents a rupture in the fabric of human history. 66
Ray Kurzweil’s reference to ‘The Singularity’ 67 in the above
paragraph prompts me to explain the reason that I decided
to fix the focus point of this report a quarter-century ahead
and not fifty years hence or some other point further into
the distant future.
Like Ray Kurzweil, I too am convinced (and have been
so for decades) that we are rapidly approaching the point
at which machine intelligence will reach a point of equality
with human intelligence. Most futurists estimate that this
seemingly disturbing phenomenon will occur sometime
during the period between 2025 and 2035 and soon after
this milestone is reached human life and society will begin to
change in ways that are impossible to imagine using human
insight alone.
Within a year or two of machines achieving human-level
intelligence exponential technological development means
that machines will have the potential to become twice as smart
as humans. A year or so later they will be four times as capable.
Soon afterwards their capabilities will be beyond any human
form of measurement and beyond human understanding.