[nphardon]

Iirc in the Matrix Morpheus says something like "... no one knows when exactly the singularity occurred, we think some time in the 2020s". I always loved that little line. I think that when the singularity occurs all of the problems in physics will solve, like in a vacuum, and physics will advance centuries if not millennia in a few pico-seconds, and of course time will stop.

Also: > As t→ts−t→ts− , the denominator goes to zero. x(t)→∞x(t)→∞. Not a bug. The feature.

Classic LLM lingo in the end there.

[uv-depression]

> I think that when the singularity occurs all of the problems in physics will solve, like in a vacuum, and physics will advance centuries if not millennia in a few pico-seconds

It doesn't matter how smart you are, you still need to run experiments to do physics. Experiments take nontrivial amounts of time to both run and set up (you can't tunnel a new CERN in picoseconds, again no matter how smart you are). Similarly, the speed of light (= the speed limit of information) and thermodynamics place fundamental limits on computation; I don't think there's any reason at all to believe that intelligence is unbounded.

[energy123]

The "singularity" can be decomposed into 2 mutually-supportive feedback loops - the digital and the physical.

With frontier LLM agents, the digital loop is happening now to an extent (on inference code, harnesses, etc), and that extent probably grows larger (research automation) soon.

Pertinent to your point, however, is the physical feedback loop of robots making better robots/factories/compute/energy. This is an aspect of singularity scenarios like ai-2027.

In these scenarios, these robots will be the control mechanism that the digital uses to bootstrap itself faster, through experimentation and exploration. The usual constraints of physical law still apply, but it feels "unbounded" relative to normal human constraints and timescales.

A separate point: there's also deductive exploration (pure math) as distinct from empirical exploration (physics), which is not bounded by any physical constraints except for those that bound computation itself.

[nphardon]

Kind of, I mean you have to verify things experimentally but thought can go a very long way, no? And we're not talking about humans thinking about things, we're talking about an agent with internet access existing in a digital space, so what experiments it would do within that space are hard for us to imagine. Of course my post isn't meant to be taken seriously, it's more of a fun sci-fi idea. Also I'm implying not necessarily reaching the limits of the things you mentioned, but rather, just taking a massive step in a very short time window. Like, the time window from the discovery of fire to the discoveries of Quantum Mechanics but in a flash.

[snohobro]

Eh, he actually says “…sometime in the early Twenty-First Century, all of mankind was united in celebration. Through the blinding inebriation of hubris, we marveled at our magnificence as we gave birth to A.I.”

Doesn’t specify the 2020’s.

Either way, I do feel we are fast approaching something of significance as a species.

[nphardon]

Got it. Amazing prescience by the Watchowski's. I'm blown away on rewatches how spot on they were for 1999.

[ambicapter]

> Not a bug. The feature.

I actually think this was nice writing, and it didn't strike me as LLM thought at all, specifically because of the terse delivery.

[nphardon]

My Claude uses that exact phrase rather frequently. I actually like it too! Not saying it's bad.

[hard_times]

I don't think people realize how crazy this all is (and might become)