From Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, Third Edition...In Chapter 26, the textbook discussed technological singularity. It quotes I.J. Good, who wrote in 1965:Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultrainteltigent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an intelligence explosion, and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligeat machine is the last invention that man need ever make, provided that the machine is docile enough to tell us how to keep it under control.Later on in the textbook, you have this question:26.7 - I. J. Good claims that intelligence is the most important quality, and that building ultraintelligent machines will change everything. A sentient cheetah counters that Actually speed is more important; if we could build ultrafast machines, that would change everything and a sentient elephant claims You're both wrong; what we need is ultrastrong machines, What do you think of these arguments?It seems that the textbook question is an implicit argument against I.J. Good. Good may be treating intelligence as valuable, simply because man's strengths lies in that trait called intelligence. But other traits could be equally valued instead (speed or strength) and sentient beings may speculate wildly about their preferred traits being maximized by some machine or another.This makes me wonder whether a singularity could occur if we had built machines that were not maximizing intelligence, but instead maximizing some other trait (a machine that is always increasing its strength, or a machine that is always increasing its speed). These types of machines can be just as transformative - ultrafast machines may solve problems quickly due to brute force, and ultrastrong machines can use its raw power for a variety of physical tasks. Perhaps a ultra-X machine can't build another ultra-X machine (as I.J. Good treated the design of machines as an intellectual activity), but a continually self-improving machine would still leave its creators far behind and force its creators to be dependent on it.So, let's repeat my question -- Are technological singularities limited to ultra-intelligences? Or technological singularities be caused by machines that are not strong AI but are still ultra-optimizers?
Can a technological singularity only occur with ultra-intelligent machines, or can other type of maximizers cause technological singularities?
definitions;ultraintelligent machine;singularity
That would be a no for speed or strength, if you have a super strong entity but it cannot research new materials, it will be quickly limited, same thing for speed, Basically, you need something out of their field to improve them, which makes a runaway improvement impossible. Though, we already have super strong and super fast machines, those are cars, trucks, hydraulic presses, industrial exoskeletons etc... But, even though we can build better ones through the use of the old ones, we still need to research stuff that can't be improved by old ones.What we need for a singularity is a field where an improvement in it makes further improvement easier. And I don't know a field where this doesn't involve intelligence. If there is one, that may be possible to have a non intelligence driven singularity there.