When will the Singularity Occur?
The short answer is that the near edge of the Singularity is due about
the year 2035 AD. Several lines of reasoning point to this date. One
is simple projection from human population trends. Human population
over the past 10,000 years has been following a hyperbolic growth trend.
Since about 1600 AD the trend has been very steadily accelerating with
the asymptote located in the year 2035 AD. Now, either the human
population really will become infinite at that time (more about that
later), or a trend that has persisted over all of human history will
be broken. Either way it is a pretty special time.
If population growth slows down and the population levels off, then
we would expect the rate of progress to level off, then slow down as
we approach physical limits built into the universe. There's just one
problem with this naive expectation - it's the thing you are probably
staring at right now - the computer.
Computers aren't terribly smart right now, but that's because the
human brain has about a million times the raw power of todays' computers.
Here's how you can figure the problem: 10^11 neurons with 10^3 synapses
each with a peak firing rate of 10^3 Hz makes for a raw bit rate of
10^17 bits/sec. A 66 MHz processor chip with 64 bit architecture has
a raw bit rate of 4.2x10^9. You can buy about 100 complete PC's for
the cost of one engineer or scientist, so about 4x10^11 bits/sec, or
about a factor of a millionless than a human brain.
Since computer capacity doubles every two years or so, we expect that
in about 40 years, the computers will be as powerful as human brains.
And two years after that, they will be twice as powerful, etc. And
computer production is not limited by the rate of human reproduction.
So the total amount of brain-power available, counting humans plus
computers, takes a rapid jump upward in 40 years or so. 40 years
from now is 2035 AD.