The Technological Singularity

by Murray Shanahan

In short, a brain-inspired human-level AI wouldn’t have to waste time finding food, preparing it, and eating it. Nor would it have to spend time (or as much time, in the case of whole brain emulation) unproductively asleep. The time duly saved could be devoted to work, and the resulting increase in its effective workload would confer the same sort of advantage as acceleration, albeit on a less dramatic scale. Of course, most humans would object to having their mealtimes and their sleep replaced by work. But the reward function of a designer brain could be tuned differently. A willing intellectual slave who never eats or sleeps and wants nothing more than to work would be many corporations’ idea of the perfect employee, especially if they don’t require wages. Eliminating the need for food and sleep is one straightforward way to exploit the liberation from biology. Other relatively conservative techniques for getting the most out of brain-inspired AI are easy to imagine. Many humans enhance their cognitive performance using the tried-and-tested pharmaceutical trick of caffeine ingestion. Hallucinogens such as psilocybin (the active ingredient in magic mushrooms) have often been claimed to promote creativity, their legal status notwithstanding. In a simulated brain the effects of such drugs can themselves be simulated, without any unwanted side effects on the rest of the body. Moreover there’s no need to stick to pharmaceutically realistic interventions. With innumerable easi...