Sally Adee, features editor
Ramona modifies her own code
In Silicon Valley, there’s no overstating the redemptive potential of technology. Tech can make us happier, wealthier, healthier and luckier. It’s almost like a religion.
It should come as no surprise, then, that this religion has its own rapture: the rapture of the geeks known as the singularity. According to this belief system, faster and better machines (a central tenet is Moore’s law) will beget faster, better machines at an exponential rate, and eventually, the machines will become so powerful that they rival human intelligence. Although there are variations, most people who subscribe to the notion of the singularity believe that when it comes, we will upload our consciousness into a computer and live forever. It will be the death of death.
The chief evangelist of this vision is futurist Ray Kurzweil. Kurzweil has serious credentials. He invented the text-to-speech synthesiser, among many other devices. The White House selected him to receive a National Medal of Technology, the highest technology honour in the US. He is in the US Patent Office’s National Inventors Hall of Fame.
He is also famous for consuming up to 150 vitamin pills a day to slow his body’s ageing, so that he will be around to witness the singularity.
The Singularity is Near is a hybrid of documentary and drama, co-directed by Kurzweil, that tries to explain the why and how of its title. Kurzweil’s alter ego, an animated character called Ramona, illustrates the evolutionary arc of thinking machines. She starts out as a primitive, choppy animation but gradually acquires consciousness.
Sonya Kurzweil as Ramona's psychologist
As Ramona goes about her life, at one point seeing a clinical psychologist, her story is interwoven with documentary footage of Kurzweil explaining why the singularity is near. He tells us how machines are becoming atom-sized and how we are already implanting them into the brains of people with Parkinson’s disease.
Threaded throughout, as further proof of the rapid evolution of medical technology, are montages of news footage, notably one in which a man with no arms picks up a milk bottle using the Luke arm, a next-generation prosthesis. These are delivered rapid-fire to illustrate that the era of the cyborg is already upon us.
In the parallel dramatic plot, Ramona takes down a plot by a nefarious nanotech artificial intelligence to destroy the world, but gets in legal trouble as a result, and needs to be coached by motivational speaker Tony Robbins on how to be convincingly human. The narrative arc is equal parts Pinocchio story, Michael Crichton gray-goo horror and TED talk. For the uninitiated, the movie will be a fascinating and convincing entry point.
If you’re already familiar with the story of the singularity, however, there’s not much new here. For a start, the cyborg argument falls apart under shallow scrutiny. Many of the documentary montages stretch the truth with claims that they already enable living cyborgs. Embedded computers haven’t cured Parkinson’s, and the Luke arm is not on the market because insurance won’t cover it and it’s too expensive to find a manufacturer to commercialise it. The claims about developments in nanotechnology are equally inflated.
Ray Kurzweil
Then there’s self-aware Ramona. Kurzweil indicates that because we are on the cusp of understanding the human brain and mind, sentient AIs like her will be inevitable. But there’s a step missing. Smaller transistors may mean greater intelligence, and more intelligent algorithms may help create better brain simulations, but none of this equals consciousness. You can’t live inside a blueprint of a house.
But the main problem with the singularity, and with this film, is that it’s already dated. Singularitarians still treat nanotechnology as if it were magic that will save us from all human frailty. The more mundane reality is found in history: technologies are tools, and after the initial giddiness dies down, they simply amplify our human traits.
The singularity isn’t near. In fact, it might be said that it’s an idea whose time is finally over. It’s not future-facing to be a singularitarian. At this point, this film is a true story about the past.
The Singularity is Near is available for purchase or digital download online
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