The Singleton Hypothesis Suggests Humanity's Possible Future
Researchers say intelligent life on Earth will eventually form into a "Singleton."
What are the odds of an existential risk befalling humanity?
That's the question being studied by Nick Bostrom, a professor of Philosophy, and director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University. In an attempt to explore this question, he has proposed the singleton hypothesis.
The singleton hypothesis supposes that, at some point in the future, a global government could form based on a world government, a super-intelligent machine, or a dictatorship – and that it might be impossible to overthrow. From national territories to technology and taxation, this 'singleton' would control everything, and no other power in the world would be able to challenge its supremacy.
The singleton could be composed of a group of powerful politicians, an artificial intelligence-based machine, a resourceful corporate entity, or even a power-hungry dictator with a strong army at their disposal. Moreover, the outcomes of a singleton formation can be positive, negative, or even neutral, so there are several different possibilities. A singleton may either provide a positive form of stability to the world, or an authoritarian regime in which everyone was constantly being watched and no one was safe.
Why singleton may overtake the world
Bostrom argues that situations could arise in which there could be broad support for either a technology, like an AI or a single government agency to take control of global society. Examples of such events include wars, pandemics, a failure of infrastructure caused by cyberattacks, technological dominance, or trade conflicts. The League of Nations, and then the UN – formed after World War I and II respectively – can be considered examples of limited forms of singletons created in response to world events. When such events happen, Professor Bostrom argues that human society tends to move towards a higher level of societal organization.
There was a time when humans lived as hunter-gatherers, then coalesced into different communities, cities, states, religions, and countries, and now we live in a globalized world. A singleton could be the next stage of our societal development where, instead of different superpowers, we might see the rise of a super-intelligent agency with unbridled access to knowledge (or data), modern technologies (nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, internet, etc), and military power that functions as a single world government....
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Here are some of the FHI's publications, with links to the rest of the site.
