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Sandton served as the stage for this year’s two-day SingularityU Summit. An event dedicated to unpacking the ramifications of advancing artificial intelligence technologies, particularly within our globalised world context.
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As the technology on our planet advances, humanity stands on the precipice of a revolutionary paradigm shift with the potential to reshape humans’ relationships with intelligent technologies forever.
What is singularity?
Singularity, in basic terms, is the stage in humanity’s evolution where cyborgs, artificial intelligences, and robots are normal, and an everyday part of peoples’ lives, to an even greater degree than where we are currently.
How far are we from realising singularity?
Morningside resident Dr Mark Nasila – who presented on Securing Africa’s AI Sovereignty at the summit – also took a minute to reflect on the emergence of the singularity. In his address, Nasila urged Africans to embrace the emergent AI-driven future.
Nasila shared why he feels human beings are still a few years away from fully realising a singularity-enhanced global society.
Looking as far back as the 1980s, and using cellphones from 20 years ago as an example, Nasila spoke fluently on how the phase of artificial intelligence’s progress will bring about some form of new intelligence, through which humans may yet find out how intelligent technology can become.
“New forms of consciousness will emerge as technology takes over, theoretically. Though, we are already seeing traces of mathematical intelligence in technology,” Nasila said, contextualising how the exponential growth in technology is building towards human beings realising singularity.
Morningside resident, and Singularity expert, Dr Mark Nasila. Photos: supplied.
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What singularity would look like?
Even though humanity’s full realisation of singularity remains an aspiration, Nasila also spoke about the ways in which society is, globally, introducing citizens to technologies aligned with preparing the infrastructure to support singularity. Commenting on how the advancements we’re seeing in technology being able to perform tasks individually, Nasia revealed what artificial general intelligence (AGI) based innovations still need to learn before they’re perfect.
“Our technology is not mature enough to perform tasks in an interconnected environment yet,” Nasila said. “An example of this, if you watched Elon Musk’s demonstration, we saw robots being able to have a conversation, but, you see, that’s one thing happening at a time. What we, human beings, are good at is understanding the physical world while there are a lot of things interconnecting simultaneously.” In layman’s terms, people can multitask, while AI cannot, for the moment.
Are jobs safe as we realise singularity?
Nasila pointed out the importance of taking things step by step, especially with regards to employing robots in the food and petrol sectors of South Africa.
“Why [robots delivering food] would take a while, is the socio-economic implication,” said Nasila. “We can easily automate self-service access. We have already seen traces of digital self-access when you go to a franchise restaurant. That’s already a starting point. The application of AI, or even traditional automation, has to be realistic within the acceptance of society.”
Nasila concluded that technology manufacturers have to be conscientious to not exclude humans from the South African workforce.
“There is an impact on society that technology designers and adopters must think about. That’s why we’re here with Singularity University, government, and members of the private sector. To put our minds together towards designing this future,” he closed, profoundly. “We don’t have all the answers yet. Technology is just one building block. There are people, and there are implications of technology to society to keep in mind, because we are responsible for the outcomes of how we go about it.”
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