the singularity[1] – is a hypothetical future point in time when technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible, resulting in unfathomable changes to human civilization.[2][3]
According to the most popular version of the singularity hypothesis, called intelligence explosion, an upgradable intelligent agent (such as a computer running software-based artificial general intelligence) will eventually enter a “runaway reaction” of self-improvement cycles, with each new and more intelligent generation appearing more and more rapidly, causing an “explosion” in intelligence and resulting in a powerful superintelligence that qualitatively far surpasses all human intelligence.
The first use of the concept of a “singularity” in the technological context was John von Neumann.[4] Stanislaw Ulam reports a discussion with von Neumann “centered on the accelerating progress of technology and changes in the mode of human life, which gives the appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could not continue”.[5] Subsequent authors have echoed this viewpoint.[3][6]