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On Wednesday, writer David Brin introduced that Vernor Vinge, sci-fi writer, former professor, and father of the technological singularity idea, died from Parkinson’s illness at age 79 on March 20, 2024, in La Jolla, California. The announcement got here in a Fb tribute the place Brin wrote about Vinge’s deep love for science and writing.
“A titan within the literary style that explores a limitless vary of potential destinies, Vernor enthralled thousands and thousands with tales of believable tomorrows, made all of the extra vivid by his polymath masteries of language, drama, characters, and the implications of science,” wrote Brin in his put up.
As a sci-fi writer, Vinge received Hugo Awards for his novels A Fireplace Upon the Deep (1993), A Deepness within the Sky (2000), and Rainbows Finish (2007). He additionally received Hugos for novellas Quick Instances at Fairmont Excessive (2002) and The Cookie Monster (2004). As Mike Glyer’s File 770 weblog notes, Vinge’s novella True Names (1981) is frequency cited as the primary presentation of an in-depth take a look at the idea of “our on-line world.”
Vinge first coined the time period “singularity” as associated to know-how in 1983, borrowed from the idea of a singularity in spacetime in physics. When discussing the creation of intelligences far larger than our personal in an 1983 op-ed in OMNI journal, Vinge wrote, “When this occurs, human historical past may have reached a sort of singularity, an mental transition as impenetrable because the knotted space-time on the middle of a black gap, and the world will go far past our understanding.”
In 1993, he expanded on the thought in an essay titled The Coming Technological Singularity: Tips on how to Survive within the Submit-Human Period.
The singularity idea postulates that AI will quickly develop into superintelligent, far surpassing people in functionality and bringing the human-dominated period to an in depth. Whereas the idea of a tech singularity generally evokes negativity and concern, Vinge remained optimistic about humanity’s technological future, as Brin notes in his tribute: “Accused by a few of a grievous sin—that of ‘optimism’—Vernor gave us peerless legends that always depicted human success at overcoming issues… these proper in entrance of us… whereas posing new ones! New dilemmas which will lie simply forward of our myopic gaze. He would typically ask: ‘What if we succeed? Do you assume that would be the finish of it?'”
Vinge’s idea closely influenced futurist Ray Kurzweil, who has written concerning the singularity a number of instances at size in books resembling The Singularity Is Close to in 2005. In a 2005 interview with the Heart for Accountable Nanotechnology web site, Kurzweil stated, “Vernor Vinge has had some actually key insights into the singularity very early on. There have been others, resembling John Von Neuman, who talked a couple of singular occasion occurring, as a result of he had the thought of technological acceleration and singularity half a century in the past. Nevertheless it was merely an off-the-cuff remark, and Vinge labored out a number of the key concepts.”
Kurzweil’s works, in flip, have been influential to workers of AI firms resembling OpenAI, who’re actively working to convey superintelligent AI into actuality. There’s at present an excessive amount of debate over whether or not the strategy of scaling massive language fashions with extra compute will result in superintelligence over time, however the sci-fi affect looms massive over this era’s AI researchers.
British journal New Worlds revealed Vinge’s first quick story, Apartness, in 1965. He studied laptop science and acquired a PhD in 1971. Vinge was additionally a retired professor of laptop science at San Diego State College, the place he taught between 1972 and 2000.
Brin studies that, close to the tip of his life, Vinge had been below take care of years for progressive Parkinson’s illness “at a really good place overlooking the Pacific in La Jolla.” In line with Vinge’s fellow San Diego State professor John Carroll, “his decline had steepened since November, however [he] was comparatively comfy.”
This story initially appeared on Ars Technica.
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