What is Technological Singularity? 

I Study the active vocabulary and focus on Ukrainian equivalents of English words.

apprehension  – побоювання

singularity  – сингулярність

collapse  – руйнуватись

implode  – вибухнути

apply  – застосовувати

inflection  point – точка перетину

runaway train  – некерований потяг

build on – ґрунтуватись

artificial intelligence  – штучний інтелект

turn on someone  – нападати на кого-небудь

erroneous   – помилковий

 augment   – збільшити

 cognition  – мислення

rise up  – повстати

offload  – розвантажувати

 prop  – підпора

scaffold  – каркас

stare  – пильно дивитись

reflect  – обмірковувати

incorporate  – включати

manifestation  – прояв

extension  – продовження

 feedback  – зворотній зв'язок

loop  – цикл

shape  – формувати

versus  – проти

distributed  – розподілений

baby step  – маленький крок

capacity  –   здібність

II Vocabulary focus. Study the words and  word combinations, check your understanding using flashcards, practise their translation, spelling. Check your knowledge in the test. Play matching vocabulary game (match words to their translations to make cards disappear)  and save theplanet from asteroids by typing in correct translation of the words.

III Watch the video. Choose the correct option to complete the sentences.

One of the perhaps/apprehensions/affections that people have about this technological singularity, which is really a matter for/metaphor/later for. It’s the metaphor burrow/barrel/borrowed from physics to describe what happens when you go through a black hole/pole/halls. The centre of a black hole is the singularity. The laws/glows/loads of physics as we know them kind of collects/lapse/collapse or implode, they no longer reply/imply/apply. It’s a great metaphor that we borrowed to use to describe what can happen with technology. We’re going to hit this inflection/reflection/inertia point, this singularity, where it’s going to be like a runaway trend/train/gain that builds on itself. And the Terminator scene/character/scenario is that this artificial intelligence, this rhythm/theorem/algorithm is going to wake up, it’s going to achieve senses and it’s going to turn/burn/learn on us. But that’s, I think, an spontaneous/miraculous/erroneous way of looking at it. Some of the more optimistic adventurers/linguists/futurists in Silicon Valley including people like Kurzweil and Kevin Kelly for example who wrote ‘What technology waits/wakes/wants’ say that what’s going to happen instead is that we’re going to continue to implement/augment/increment our own thinking by offloading more and more and more of our own addiction/fiction/cognition, our cognitive apparatus to non-biological/illogical/not logical intelligence.

IV Watch the video. Fill in the blanks in  the sentences with the words you hear.

So it’s not so much that that 1)______ mind is going to rise up against us, but that we’re going to 2)______ to become more 3)______. In other words we already 4)______ cognition onto non-biological 5)______ and scaffolds. When you 6)______ something down on a piece of 7)______ part of your thinking is happening on that paper, part of your thinking is happening by you 8)______ your hand on that pen, part of your thinking is occurring when you stare at the 9)______ of your own mind on that paper and reflect on what you 10)______. We already incorporate non-biological 11)______ into our thinking 12)______. There’s a great essay written by these cognitive 13)______ called David Chalmers and Andy Clark, cognitive philosophers, called “The extended mind thesis” which says that things like an iPhone or a 14)______ are already manifestations and 15)______ of the mind. And that the mind is actually not limited to the 16)______, but that the mind exists in the 17)______ loops between brains, 18)______, and 19)______. So that’s why we say our thoughts 20)______ our spaces and our spaces return the favour. That’s why they say that everything we design is 21)______ us in return. Marshall McLuhan used to say: “We 22)______ the tools and the tools build us”. So what really 1)______ are feedback loops, feedback loops of 23)______. It’s not us versus them. It’s all one large distributed 24)______ that has biological and non- biological parts. That’s why I don’t think that we have anything to be 25)______ of. It’s just 26)______ of baby steps that increasingly extend and 27)______ our creative capacity.   

V Watch all the parts of the video and answer the questions.

1. What are the major apprehensions people have about artificial intelligence and development of technology?
2. What is metaphor? What metaphor is explained in the video? Where was it borrowed from?
3. What is singularity in physics? What does it mean when used to refer to the future of technology?
4. What is Terminator scenario? Do all futurists support this scenario?
5. What are the possible scenarios that relations between technology and human cognition might follow?
6. Can we already see the examples of non-biological cognition today? What media do people use now to express their thoughts?
7. What idea did cognitive philosophers put forward?
8. What is the relation between cognition, tools and environment?