Recently, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) announced that its supercomputer was ranked the most powerful artificial intelligence (AI) computer among all universities worldwide. With enough data, MIT hopes to teach the supercomputer algorithms it can then use to solve problems on its own. Beyond this level of problem solving lies the point of singularity, which is a permanent threshold when unsupervised AI becomes capable of performing tasks indistinguishable from humans. Also known as the Turing Test, AI that could pass this test would have surpassed human intelligence and be able to autonomously improve upon itself at an acceleratingly infinite rate. Many great minds believe MIT’s accomplishment is a sign that singularity is inevitably close. For example, Ray Kurzweil, Google’s director of engineering, predicts computer intelligence will be comparable to humans by 2029 and reach singularity by 2045. According to him, humans will ultimately merge with AI, effectively multiplying their intelligence by a billion.
