Singularity Countdown

I've just read two works of fiction that each have as part of their premise the potential extinction of the human race as a result of a technological singularity. What struck me, other than the plausibility of such a scenario, was how strikingly differently the stories handled it.

[Message Contains No Recognizable Symbols], by Bill Hibbard, is a dark and serious look at an inhumane future. After Life, by Simon Funk, is just as serious, although presented in a way that makes one almost long for the panacea of extinction. Both are freely available online, although After Life is also available in dead tree format.

[Message Contains No Recognizable Symbols]

The first, a short story [Message Contains No Recognizable Symbols], by Bill Hibbard, takes a hard look at the dangers of Strong AI, with a depressing result. The main characters, researching their own network intelligence, realize they are not alone in their study of emergent technology, but the realization comes possibly too late as the profound effects reverberate through the human institutions defining their lives. The story is a nihilistic warning of just where our society is headed when its gods are profit and progress at all costs.

His pessimism is not unfounded. Emeritus Senior Scientist at the Space Science and Engineering Center (SSEC) of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Hibbard is involved primarily with its Machine Intelligence Project. He is also the author of Super-Intelligent Machines, which warns about the inequalities in human society that will become even more pronounced after the emergence of machine intelligence.

Rather than taking control from humans, AI threatens to give control to a small group
of humans. Financial markets, economic competition in general, warfare and politics
include variants of the adversarial sequence prediction game. One reasonable
explanation for the growing income inequality since the start of the information
economy is the unstable computational resources arms race associated with this game.
Particularly given that in the real world algorithm quality is often an important
computational resource. As the general intelligence of information systems increases,
we should expect increasing instability in the various adversarial sequence prediction
games in human society and consequent increases in economic and political inequality.
This will of course be a social problem, but will also provide an opportunity to generate
serious public interest in the issues of AI ethics. (From Adversarial Sequence Prediction, by Bill Hibbard.)

After Life

The second, After Life, by Simon Funk, is more light-hearted but just as serious story. The main character of this novella slowly awakens to a post-singularity reality that takes some time to understand.

The book is fast-paced, twisty, lightly humorous at parts, and wonderfully original in its execution. Its vision of the post-human, similar to Hibbard's, has no place for humanity. But the method in that madness is more gentle.

After Life is also available freely online.