In 1993, professor Vernor Vinge of San Diego State University, published a paper predicting a point in the near future where technology itself would be capable of creating greater-than-human intelligence. This point, Vinge characterized, would see large computer networks and their associated users “wake up” as superhumanly-intelligent entities. In such a scenario, technology would be capable of improving upon itself in such rapid succession, that from the purely biological perspective, it would be seen as an “intelligence explosion”. This future point in time at which technological development irreversibly changes the conditions of human civilization, has come to be known as ‘The Singularity‘.
“This change will be a throwing-away of all the human rules, perhaps in the blink of an eye — an exponential runaway beyond any hope of control.
It’s fair to call this event a singularity. It is a point where our old models must be discarded and a new reality rules, a point that will loom vaster and vaster over human affairs until the notion becomes a commonplace. Yet when it finally happens, it may still be a great surprise and a greater unknown.”
– Vernor Vinge, Technological SingularityDue to the rapid progression of fantastically powerful computer networks, this point of no return, the technological singularity, now appears more accurate and imminent than ever. The bitcoin network, for example, has demonstrated exponential growth in total hashrate since it first came online in 2009.
The uniqueness of the bitcoin network, and the manner in which the blockchain verifies large quantities of data, creates the perfect application for artificial intelligence to make sense of communication patterns (transfers of value) which appear seemingly unrelated to the untrained eye. Artificial intelligence will be capable of performing fantastic analysis of the data time-stamped into the bitcoin blockchain. These analyses will give rise to astonishingly accurate predictions.
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