To me, it already it seems like another era. Last October, I wrote a tongue-in-cheeky post called “The Singularity Is Pretty Damned Close…Isn’t It?” I wrote it after the AI art generator revolution had started but before ChatGPT was opened to the public on November 30, 2022. That was only four months ago, of course, but it feels as if everything has sped up since, as if we human beings are now living in dog years. So it’s already high time to revisit the singularity idea.
Are We Living on Hertzian Time Now?
As you may know, the word “hertz” — named after Heinrich Rudolf Hertz, a German physicist who discovered electromagnetic waves in the late 19th century — is a unit of frequency. More specifically, it’s the rate at which something happens repeatedly over a single second. So, 1 hertz means that something happens just once per second whereas a 100 hertz (or Hz) means it’s happening 100 times per second.
So, an analog clock (yes, I still have one of those) ticks at 1 Hz.
Unless you’re an engineer, you probably think about hertz as part of the lingo folks throw around when buying computers. It’s basically the speed at which central processing units do their thing. So, a laptop with a speed of 2.2 GHz has a CPU that processes at 2.2 billion cycles per second. Basically, that’s the speed at which computers carry out their instructions.
So, my (completely fabricated) notion of Hertzian time refers to the fact that, day to day, we humans are seeing a whole lot more technological change cycles (at least in terms of AI) packed into every second. Therefore, four months now feels like, well, a whole lot of cycles whipping by at a Hertzian tempo. Generative AI is overclocking us.
How Wrong Can I Get?
Back in late October, I wrote, “There’s at least one pursuit that AI has yet to master: the gentle art of conversation. That may be the truest assessment of human level intelligence. At least, that’s the premise underlying the Turing test.”
Many Hertzian cycles later, the world looks very different. Now millions of people are chatting up these proliferating LLMs (I just got my access to Bard the other day, btw) every moment of every day, and we’re just getting started.
It’s true that if you get used to conversing with these models, you can tell that they aren’t quite human. And, the main ones go to some length to explain to you, insist even, that they are NOT human.
Everyday Feels A Little More Turing Testy
I recently specifically asked ChatGPT3, “Do you think you could pass the Turing Test if properly prepared?” and it responded: “In theory, it is possible that I could be programmed to pass the Turing Test if I were given access to a sufficiently large and diverse dataset of human language and provided with sophisticated natural language processing algorithms.”
I tend to agree. The newest AIs are getting close at this stage, and I imagine that with only a few modifications, they could now fool a lot of people, especially those unfamiliar with their various little “tells.”
Coming to Rants and Reality Shows Near You
I think society will increasingly get Turing testy about this, as people debate whether or not the AIs have crossed that threshhold. Or whether they should cross it. Or whether AIs have a soul if they do.
It’ll get weird(er). It’s easy imagine growing numbers religious fundamentalists of all types who demand Turing-level AIs who preach their particular doctrines. And who deem those “other” AIs as downright satanic.
Or envision reality TV shows determined to exploit the Turing tests. Two dozen attractive, nubile wannabe LA actors who are trying to out-Turing one another on a tropical island. They win a cool mill if they can tell the (somehow telegenic) AI from the (oh-so-hot) real person on the other side of that sexy, synthesized voice. Think of the ratings!
Kurzweil May Have Nailed It
As I said in that first singularity piece, the futurist Ray Kurzweil has predicted that an AI will pass the Turing Test in 2029. I wasn’t so sure. Now I wonder if it won’t be sooner. (I suspect the answer will depend on the test and expertise the people involved.)
But will the passing of the Turing Test mean we are right smack in the middle of the singularity? Kurweil doesn’t think so. He has his sights set on 2045 when, as I understand it, he thinks humanity (or some portion of it) will merge with the superintelligent AIs.
That still seems very science fictional to me, but then I also feel as if we’re all living right smack dab in a science fictional universe right now, one I never thought I’d live to see….
Those Seas Are Rising Fast
My predictions on the rising seas of AI generated media, however, are still looking pretty good. Of course, I’m not alone in that. A 2022 Europool report noted, “Experts estimate that as much as 90% of online content may be synthetically generated by 2026.”
What’s going to make that number tricky to confirm is that most media won’t be fish or foul. It’ll produced by a combination of humans and AIs. In fact, many of the graphics in my blog posts, including this one, are already born of generative AI (though I try to use it ethically).
Are These the Seas of the Singularity?
The real question to ask now is, “Are we already in the singularity?”
If we use the metaphor of a black hole (the most famous of all singularities), maybe we’ve already passed the proverbial event horizon. We’ve moved into Hertzian time and overclocking because we’re being sucked in. From here, maybe things go faster and faster until every day seems packed with a what used to be a decade’s worth of advances.
These rising seas, the virtual tsnamis, might just be symptoms of the immense gravitational forces exerted by the singularity.
Or maybe not….Maybe such half-baked mixed metaphors that are just another sign of West Coast hyperbole, bound to go as disappointly bust as the Silicon Valley Bank.
Time’ll tell, I guess.
Though it’ll be interesting to find out if it’s normal time or the Hertzian variety.