The Singularity Is Near
[Warning! For mad scientists only.]
Just read a summary of this book in Wikipedia...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Singularity_is_Near
The summary does not say when we will stop needing checks, bridges, houses, or insurance, but surely that's in the book somewhere.
It seems like we've always been 10-20 years from artificial intelligence. We have vastly more powerful computers and they still can't pass a simple Turing test (a chess program is a picnic compared to programming a lively conversation). But that's good. It means this guy gets to keep writing the same book with all new evidence every five years.
Yeah, but what if there are actually TWO singularities? OR maybe there is a singularity for every dimension. Think about it...
I looked at the Wikipedia page about it and saw this, "That through a law of accelerating returns..."
I think that the real revelation is that we might start seeing a "law of diminishing returns!"
Take some comfort, Bob, in my prediction sequence on what will become obsolete first: checks, bridges, houses, insurance. The computers will want insurance.