Accelerating Returns
The theory of Accelerating Returns has changed how I think of almost everything. I can't tell you how much I have been influenced by this theory and I understand how that could be a bad thing, but it just makes so much sense to me. My vision of the future is completely based on this theory. Accelerating Returns has completely changed my understanding of the human history of progression. If you are a thinker I highly recommend that you take the time to read over this theory and at least just take a second to consider the possibilities.
Published on KurzweilAI.net March 7, 2001.
An
analysis of the history of technology shows that technological
change is exponential, contrary to the common-sense "intuitive
linear" view. So we won't experience 100 years of progress in the
21st century -- it will be more like 20,000 years of progress (at
today's rate). The "returns," such as chip speed and
cost-effectiveness, also increase exponentially. There's even
exponential growth in the rate of exponential growth. Within a few
decades, machine intelligence will surpass human intelligence,
leading to The Singularity -- technological change so rapid and
profound it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history. The
implications include the merger of biological and nonbiological
intelligence, immortal software-based humans, and ultra-high levels
of intelligence that expand outward in the universe at the speed of
light.
We can organize these observations into what I call the law of
accelerating returns as follows:
- rate of progress of
an evolutionary process increases exponentially over time. Over
time, the "order" of the information embedded in the evolutionary
process (i.e., the measure of how well the information fits a
purpose, which in evolution is survival) increases.
- A correlate of the above observation is that the "returns" of an
evolutionary process (e.g., the speed, cost-effectiveness, or
overall "power" of a process) increase exponentially over time.
- In another positive feedback loop, as a particular evolutionary
process (e.g., computation) becomes more effective (e.g., cost
effective), greater resources are deployed toward the further
progress of that process. This results in a second level of
exponential growth (i.e., the rate of exponential growth itself
grows exponentially).
- Biological evolution is one such evolutionary process.
- Technological evolution is another such evolutionary process.
Indeed, the emergence of the first technology creating species
resulted in the new evolutionary process of technology. Therefore,
technological evolution is an outgrowth of--and a continuation
of--biological evolution.
- A specific paradigm (a method or approach to solving a problem,
e.g., shrinking transistors on an integrated circuit as an approach
to making more powerful computers) provides exponential growth until
the method exhausts its potential. When this happens, a paradigm
shift (i.e., a fundamental change in the approach) occurs, which
enables exponential growth to continue.
If
we apply these principles at the highest level of evolution on
Earth, the first step, the creation of cells, introduced the
paradigm of biology. The subsequent emergence of DNA provided a
digital method to record the results of evolutionary experiments.
Then, the evolution of a species who combined rational thought with
an opposable appendage (i.e., the thumb) caused a fundamental
paradigm shift from biology to technology. The upcoming primary
paradigm shift will be from biological thinking to a hybrid
combining biological and nonbiological thinking. This hybrid will
include "biologically inspired" processes resulting from the reverse
engineering of biological brains.
If we examine the timing of these steps, we see that
the process has continuously accelerated. The evolution of life
forms required billions of years for the first steps (e.g.,
primitive cells); later on progress accelerated. During the Cambrian
explosion, major paradigm shifts took only tens of millions of
years. Later on, Humanoids developed over a period of millions of
years, and Homo sapiens over a period of only hundreds of thousands
of years.
With the advent of a technology-creating species, the
exponential pace became too fast for evolution through DNA-guided
protein synthesis and moved on to human-created technology.
Technology goes beyond mere tool making; it is a process of creating
ever more powerful technology using the tools from the previous
round of innovation. In this way, human technology is distinguished
from the tool making of other species. There is a record of each
stage of technology, and each new stage of technology builds on the
order of the previous stage.
The first technological steps-sharp edges, fire, the
wheel--took tens of thousands of years. For people living in this
era, there was little noticeable technological change in even a
thousand years. By 1000 A.D., progress was much faster and a
paradigm shift required only a century or two. In the nineteenth
century, we saw more technological change than in the nine centuries
preceding it. Then in the first twenty years of the twentieth
century, we saw more advancement than in all of the nineteenth
century. Now, paradigm shifts occur in only a few years time. The
World Wide Web did not exist in anything like its present form just
a few years ago; it didn't exist at all a decade ago. It would seem
that we as a species have a sort of built in need to repair and
improve our bodies. As a result surgical science has been driven to
become what it is today, along with the assistance of other
progressing technologies. Like other forms of science and
technology, the progression in surgical science and technology is
accelerating at an exponential rate.