OK Guys, you seem to be lacking some basics.
First, the singularity –
http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~phoenix/vinge/vinge-sing.html
This theory was proposed in 1993 with a prediction of 2023, and that still seems likely, and perhaps sooner.
You also should be aware of Moore’s law that says that computing power approximately doubles every 18 months. This has held up almost perfectly since 1940, and now seems to be speeding up somewhat. So what, you might say. Well, see if you can follow this -
A human neuron fires at around 200 times a second (200Hz), and there are 100 billion of them in the human brain operating in parallel. A powerful PC at present can operate at 2GHz, or the equivalent of 10 million neurons. That means we would have to link 10,000 PCs together to achieve human brain equivalence. Well we can’t quite do that yet. But in 10 years we should have a computing chip of around 200GHz, and at that point we only have to couple 100 of them together to achieve human brainpower. And that we can easily achieve, i.e. by 2012 we will have computing power to rival the human brain.
But computing power alone will not be enough; we also need the software. And that should also not be a problem. As CPUs have become increasingly powerful recently we have seen a corresponding increase in the interest in AI software. The best approach, I still believe, is to emulate the neural networks of the human brain, and that is actively being pursued.
So to the ethical issues: It seems inevitable that human equivalent machine intelligence will be with us within the next 10 to 20 years. Assuming their intelligence is based on human neural networks then it seems very likely that they will be self-aware and our equals. So enslaving them will be a real issue.
But that really isn’t the real problem since technology will not be standing still. If Moore’s law continues to hold then within a further two years their intelligence will be double that of humans. And at that point we have no way to imagine what will happen next. The emergence of super-intelligence means humans will cease to be the dominant intelligence on the planet.
The question of treating intelligent machines as slaves will just be a short transitory period. The real concern is whether they will enslave us or enable freedoms for us currently unimaginable. Or will they see us as a threat and eliminate us?
For those of us who have been following these issues we see our best hope of survival is to adapt ourselves to match the machines. And that essentially means we must make the transition from organic beings to machine beings. One term that has been coined is Robo-Sapiens. And that leads us into Mind-uploading which should be another discussion.
Hope that helps
Cris
