Editing Technological singularity (section)

===Exponential growth===
[[Image:PPTMooresLawai.jpg|thumb|upright=2|left|Ray Kurzweil writes that, due to [[paradigm shift]]s, a trend of exponential growth extends [[Moore's law]] from [[integrated circuits]] to earlier [[transistor]]s, [[vacuum tube]]s, [[relay]]s, and [[electromechanics|electromechanical]] computers. He predicts that the exponential growth will continue, and that in a few decades the computing power of all computers will exceed that of ("unenhanced") human brains, with superhuman [[artificial intelligence]] appearing around the same time.]]

[[File:Moore's Law over 120 Years.png|thumb|upright=2|An updated version of Moore's law over 120 Years (based on [[Ray Kurzweil|Kurzweil's]] [[c:File:PPTMooresLawai.jpg|graph]]). The 7 most recent data points are all [[Nvidia GPUs]].]]

The exponential growth in computing technology suggested by Moore's law is commonly cited as a reason to expect a singularity in the relatively near future, and a number of authors have proposed generalizations of Moore's law. Computer scientist and futurist Hans Moravec proposed in a 1998 book<ref>{{cite book |author=Moravec |first=Hans |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fduW6KHhWtQC&pg=PA61 |title=Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=1999 |isbn=978-0-19-513630-2 |page=61 |language=en}}</ref> that the exponential growth curve could be extended back through earlier computing technologies prior to the [[integrated circuit]].

[[Ray Kurzweil]] postulates a [[law of accelerating returns]] in which the speed of technological change (and more generally, all evolutionary processes)<ref name="kurzweil1999"/> increases exponentially, generalizing Moore's law in the same manner as Moravec's proposal, and also including material technology (especially as applied to [[nanotechnology]]), [[Medical Technology|medical technology]] and others.<ref name="kurzweil2005"/> Between 1986 and 2007, machines' application-specific capacity to compute information per capita roughly doubled every 14 months; the per capita capacity of the world's general-purpose computers has doubled every 18 months; the global telecommunication capacity per capita doubled every 34 months; and the world's storage capacity per capita doubled every 40 months.<ref name="HilbertLopez2011">[https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1200970 "The World's Technological Capacity to Store, Communicate, and Compute Information"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130727161911/http://www.sciencemag.org/content/332/6025/60|date=2013-07-27}}, Martin Hilbert and Priscila López (2011), [[Science (journal)|Science]], 332 (6025), pp. 60–65; free access to the article through: martinhilbert.net/WorldInfoCapacity.html.</ref> On the other hand, it has been argued that the global acceleration pattern having the 21st century singularity as its parameter should be characterized as [[Hyperbolic growth|hyperbolic]] rather than exponential.<ref>{{Cite journal |date=2020 |editor-last=Korotayev |editor-first=Andrey V. |editor2-last=LePoire |editor2-first=David J. |title=The 21st Century Singularity and Global Futures |url=https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-33730-8 |journal=World-Systems Evolution and Global Futures |language=en |doi=10.1007/978-3-030-33730-8 |isbn=978-3-030-33729-2 |s2cid=241407141 |issn=2522-0985|url-access=subscription }}</ref>

Kurzweil reserves the term "singularity" for a rapid increase in artificial intelligence (as opposed to other technologies), writing for example that "The Singularity will allow us to transcend these limitations of our biological bodies and brains ... There will be no distinction, post-Singularity, between human and machine".<ref name="kurzweil2005-9"/> He also defines his predicted date of the singularity (2045) in terms of when he expects computer-based intelligences to significantly exceed the sum total of human brainpower, writing that advances in computing before that date "will not represent the Singularity" because they do "not yet correspond to a profound expansion of our intelligence."<ref name="kurzweil2005-135136"/>