Technological Singularity Explained

The technological singularity is a hypothesis that the creation of artificial superintelligence would trigger a runaway event. It states that an upgradable intelligent agent, such as a computer program or robot, once it has reached human-level intelligence and beyond, will be able to improve itself faster than humans can keep up. This creates an accelerating rate of change from which there is no turning back. The result is strong AI which quickly becomes vastly more intelligent than humans in every respect and proceeds to take over the world with this superior intellect -- potentially without even realizing how humanity could have been prevented from creating it in the first place. The term "technological singularity" was coined by American scientist John von Neumann who said: "ever accelerating progress of technology and changes in the mode of human life, which gives the appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could not continue."