The Singularity is a theory that was proposed in 1993 by Vernor Vinge, a science fiction writer who suggested:
When greater-than-human intelligence drives progress, that progress will be much more rapid. In fact, there seems no reason why progress itself would not involve the creation of still more intelligent entities — on a still-shorter time scale. The best analogy that I see is with the evolutionary past: Animals can adapt to problems and make inventions, but often no faster than natural selection can do its work — the world acts as its own simulator in the case of natural selection. We humans have the ability to internalize the world and conduct “what if’s” in our heads; we can solve many problems thousands of times faster than natural selection. Now, by creating the means to execute those simulations at much higher speeds, we are entering a regime as radically different from our human past as we humans are from the lower animals.
I’ve written quite a few articles about this over the past 15 years and I shouldn’t be shocked that we seem to actually be in the Singularity now that the new version of the bot ChatGPT has scored in the top 90th percentile on the bar exam. Pluto in Aquarius, the sign of technology and science will likely upend all of our concepts about the very nature of life and the idea posed by Ray Kurzweil that humans and technology would merge by 2045 is seeming much more likely. Coincidentally (?) Pluto will remain in Aquarius until 2044.
You might be asking yourself at this point “OK, but what about Saturn in Pisces?” Pisces, remember, is the sign in which boundaries become blurred and creativity abounds, and Saturn going through that sign brings challenges in these areas. A new article in the Atlantic called “Welcome to the Big Blur” prompted this post since it so eerily reflects the nature of Saturn going through Pisces.
The difference between GPT-4 and its predecessors is that it’s better, more human-seeming, at more things. The blur is getting blurrier. …
Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, presaged the release of GPT-4 with a remark that reveals just how far removed the technologists are from any serious discussion of consciousness. In a tweet, he predicted that soon “the amount of intelligence in the universe [would double] every 18 months,” as if intelligence is something you mined like cobalt. …
If an artificial person arrives, it will be not because engineers have liberated algorithms from being instructions, but because they have figured out that human beings are nothing more than a series of instructions. An artificial consciousness would be a demonstration that free will is illusory. In the meantime, the soul remains, like a medieval lump in the throat. Natural-language processing provides, like all the other technologies, the humbling at the end of empowerment, the condition of lonely apes with fancy tools.
I’m not sure how we prepare for this. When Pluto leaves Aquarius in 2043-44 it will enter Pisces, a time when wars over water will likely begin and in some ways I think machines will be better prepared to solve some of the problems of the 21st century and perhaps create some semblance of a more equal division of limited resources. I don’t think this will come easily, and attempting to ignore the situation will not help us to prepare.
As kind of a joke, I asked ChatGPT how we humans can prepare for what’s coming. After requiring me to prove I’m human, which I think is hilarious, here is what it told me:
click to enlarge
“Pluto in Aquarius, the sign of technology and science will likely upend all of our concepts about the very nature of life and the idea posed by Ray Kurzweil that humans and technology would merge by 2045 is seeming much more likely. Coincidentally (?) Pluto will remain in Aquarius until 2044.” When was Pluto in this sign last? – that would be helpful to know.
Didn’t Aquarius have much to do with the American Revolution? – many of our Founding Fathers had Aquarian influence Thomas Paine was like an Aquarian on speed and Ben Franklin had a wonderfully placed Mercury in Aquarius trining his ascendent – think of all his inventions!
So the musical question is do we need to merge literally with technology when these principles already merge with us?
Aquarius was discovered in 1783 and that was a time of a great deal of revolutionary activity. Your comment prompted some quick research from my favorite resource astro-seek.com: George Washington had Sun square Uranus. Benjamin Franklin had the Aquarius Mercury that you describe opposite Uranus. Thomas Jefferson: also Sun square Uranus. Thomas Paine: Sun conjunct Jupiter in Aquarius
If Pluto is the tearing down and rebuilding influence, (my generation pluto in Leo no longer willing to follow social convention) would pluto in Aquarius be a tearing down of insensitive but logical capitalism, and even democracies, to build a better system based on humanitarian principles?
I think that’s a good possibility Nancy, but principles of greater humanitarianism and equality often mean changes that are not that comfortable. Communism for example is a very Aquarian political system, where everyone is supposed to get what they need. In practice it didn’t work out that well. Revolutionary activity is often followed by reactionary results: think about the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror which followed.
All of this is dependent on how humans manage the coming changes and how big a role fear of change will play.