Technological Singularity

There is a sequence in the film “2001: a Space Odyssey” when HAL (IBM) has a human response to the idea that David could shut it down. HAL was facing death/deactivation.

The technological singularity—or simply the singularity—is a hypothetical point in time at which technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible, resulting in unforeseeable changes to human civilization. According to the most popular version of the singularity hypothesis, called intelligence explosion, an upgradable intelligent agent will eventually enter a “runaway reaction” of self-improvement cycles, each new and more intelligent generation appearing more and more rapidly, causing an “explosion” in intelligence and resulting in a powerful superintelligence that qualitatively far surpasses all human intelligence.

Wikipedia

Isaac Asimov (the writer) and Stanley Kubrick (the director) were both trying to get across to us, the consumers, that computers (artificial intelligence) could someday take over the world unless we put a stop to IT. Most people saw the book and the film as science fiction, so nothing to really worry about.

Who’s Sorry Now?