Google co-founder Sergey Brin is out of retirement and back to work at Google, and it seems to be because he believes that one of the most consequential events in human history is soon set to unfold — coming of the the singularity.
Google co-founder Sergey Brin has said that humanity appears to be approaching the singularity. The “singularity” refers to a hypothetical future point in time when technological growth, particularly in artificial intelligence (AI), becomes uncontrollable and irreversible, leading to profound changes in human civilization. It’s essentially a point of discontinuity where the rate of technological advancement becomes so rapid that humans can no longer predict, control, or understand its consequences.
“I think from an intellectual standpoint, you can kind of reason your way through the singularity,” Brin said when asked whether he’d foreseen current events a few decades ago. “Famously, Ray Kurzweil did this many decades ago. I don’t remember what date — he said it was 2037, I think. He put some date on it based on his extrapolation. Today looks like maybe that was kind of conservative,” Brin added.
Ray Kurzweil has predicted that “The Singularity,” would occur by around 2045. He believes this will lead to a time where machine intelligence will surpass human intelligence, and humans will transcend their biological limitations through technological advancements. In essence, Kurzweil had envisioned a future where humans merge with technology, becoming a hybrid species with superhuman capabilities.
“You can intellectually sort of reason through it,” Brin continued. “(But) I think to see it happening is altogether different. I think when you’re kind of talking whatever 15 years ago, I won’t say you’re like joking around, you’re like truly talking about it, but you’re kind of like, you know, imagining the science fiction future. But it’s almost like a game, and you’re just kind of chatting with the other folks who are interested in it. Like, it’s fun. But seeing it actually start to happen, you know, feels very different,” he added.
Brin’s statement felt like an acknowledgement that humanity was well on the path to the singularity. And it’s easy to see why Brin would think this is the case. The last few years have seen some enormous developments, the most crucial of which might’ve been the passing of the Turing Test. It’s now impossible to tell if you’re talking to a computer or a human, which could make it possible for computers to co-exist freely with their human creators. Also, computers have rapidly become intelligent, and Artificial General Intelligence — the ability to do most intellectual tasks as well as humans — seems only a few years away. And most crucially, the pace of change has been truly stunning — it hasn’t been even 3 years since ChatGPT was released which could generate sort of human-like text, but AI models can now generate realistic video, audio, and 50-page research reports. And with AI showing no signs of slowing down, Sergey Brin’s belief that we’re hurtling towards the singularity might actually be true.