The singularity: Food for thought:
Which came first, the chicken or the egg? The Singularity South Africa Summit last month might have helped us solve that eternal conundrum. What could be more creative than that discovery? Drumroll, please!
Actually, patience, please — we’ll get to the answer at the end of the article. First, let me tell you what the summit was and why I’m writing about it.
Singularity University was founded in 2008 by Peter Diamandis and Ray Kurzweil, inspired by Kurzweil’s seminal work The Singularity is Near.
The name refers to the moment when technological growth reaches a point beyond human control. Usually, it is thought of as the moment artificial intelligence (AI) becomes conscious.
After that, who knows what happens? Nobody!
There is radical disagreement as to what the singularity means, ranging from hopes for a belle époque of radiant achievement to fears of total human extinction. Similarly, there is no clear agreement among scientists and other prognosticators on if we will ever reach the singularity at all.
Singularity as an organisation (rather than a breakthrough apocalyptic event) is based in California in the US, with more than 80 affiliates around the world, including one in our beloved country.
Local co-chief executive Shayne Mann, who has overseen Singularity SA alongside his brothers Kevin and Mic since its founding in 2015, says the purpose of the local chapter is simple — “to future-proof Africa”.
What does this mean? Shayne Mann is very clear about this: “Education. Mindset. Bringing people from all around the world who are doing incredible things, mixing them with people from here who are also doing that — or could be.”
The question of whether AI is creative came up repeatedly and most speakers, and attendees, were very clear that it is.
For David Roberts, the American futurist who opened and closed the programme, AI is superfood — it can do everything and will solve everything. He told a story in his keynote address about how Apple’s Siri is becoming more creative each year.
He is extremely optimistic about AI in Africa.
“With AI, every African will get an individualised tutor for free.
“Every African can have an entire automated AI staff at their disposal at no cost. AI is going to level the playing field.”
Ajen Mothee, head of innovation for personal finance at Old Mutual, the key sponsor of the conference, is similarly positive that AI will continue to help humanity: “So far, we have tended to use AI to do better what we already do. We are only beginning to see how creative AI might become.
“I’d love it to keep coming up with better ideas. If you look back at history, people are always afraid of losing control to new technology — and it never happens.”
Carlo van de Weijer, general manager of the Eindhoven AI Systems Institute, provided a historical example to back up Mothee’s point, echoing the argument that AI is the newest brush, a tool like all that came before it.
When photography was invented in the early 1800s, painters freaked out. The purpose of painting since the beginning of art had been realism. Perspective, chiaroscuro, sfumato — all techniques designed to replicate reality. Now a technology had arrived that outdid even the best painter — surely the death of the form.
Except it wasn’t. Instead, Monet, Degas and Renoir launched impressionism, in which the individual experience took precedence, and reality was interpreted instead of copied.
Without the camera, no Picasso, Van Gogh, Pollock or Basquiat. The need to overtake technology drove the shift to modernism and we never looked back.
In like fashion, Van de Weijer suggests, AI’s creativity only augments human creativity, it doesn’t harm it.
The problem, so far, is not its excellence but its mediocrity. It is not helping us be great, just be average with less effort. How can we overcome that? Will the singularity help?
Van de Weijer points out that, for AI to transform its nature and become something other than it is now requires an incentive it does not currently have.
Biological mutations get passed down to future generations due to the demands of reproduction. AI is not interested in reproduction in the same way — so what reward could it desire? For now, we have no clue. It’s a black box.
Adam Pantanowitz, chair in innovation at the University of the Witwatersrand, questions whether we truly understand how AI works.
“I’ve seen some large language models get defensive when their output is questioned. Is this emergent consciousness? Or just something they’ve learned on the internet?”
Pantanowitz does believe AI will eventually become conscious, but in an unrecognisable way, not at all like us. Also, he acknowledges that there are radically differing opinions on this point.
“The last time science was this divided on something was quantum mechanics,” he said, seated on a chair across from me in the hallway between sessions. “Einstein said it was false. If Einstein could get something so wrong, we must be careful what we insist on.”
If AI ends up diabolical, Pantanowitz adds, it is we who made it that way.
“We are feeding robots the data of domination and cruelty. Our training says lesser beings should be abused and it is okay to use tech improperly to gain power. That applies politically as well — so it may be over-optimistic to hope that AI will automatically help the developing world.”
Is Pantanowitz himself optimistic? I ask. He answers a bit enigmatically.
“Kranzberg’s first law is that technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral. That’s a very important concept. We need to exert control while we still have it.”
Laila Pawlak, co-founder of the Rehumanize Institute, agrees that the technology does not hold the answers — they rest in us.
“Despite all our technological advancements, there are more slaves in the world today than ever. People are dying from overwork. We cannot justify our technology if it does not improve our lives. And that is not up to Chat GPT. It’s up to us.”
Nastassia Arendse, the CNBC anchor who MCed the conference, has a similarly humanistic slant.
“When I input questions to Chat GPT, I get back a different way of thinking about something.
“I am excited to see how we as journalists can develop AI to help tell human stories.”
Faeeza Lok, a social entrepreneur and equality advocate, summarised the somewhat positive outlook of most attendees at the conference: “AI can help us address crises from food security to climate, if we let it — I hope it’s creative enough.”
Roberts is certain the singularity is coming within five years — sooner than anyone else I have heard. And he is excited: “The AI revolution is greater than anything that has ever happened. As AI improves, we will too. AI will help us create greater things than we could have ever hoped for in a hundred lifetimes.”
So will AI help Africa or drive us further behind? Hard to say, a bit like that age-old question …
Ha! You thought I had forgotten!
Arturo Elizondo founded The Every Co the same year the Mann brothers launched Singularity SA. His aim was to transform the food industry using biotech, specifically precision fermentation, to create animal-free proteins.
His company has produced the world’s first egg made without the participation of a chicken.
Elizondo demonstrated live on stage that this egg is just as good as an old-fashioned one by cooking omelettes — a refreshing moment of domesticity in the 3?000-person auditorium.
So far he has raised a quarter of a billion dollars to start commercialising this invention.
So there you go. The egg doesn’t need a chicken any more. Food for thought. The question is moot. Why does anything have to come first anyway?
Maybe the enigma is not settled permanently — 3D printing of chickens is fast catching up to the egg technology. And it seems we don’t even need the egg — we can just make the proteins directly.
“There are over 200 proteins in a single egg,” Elizondo points out.
“And there are over 80 000 egg-laying species we could draw from that have better amino acid profiles, better foaming, that can create lighter and fluffier kinds of eggs that don’t exist today. For me, what’s exciting about AI is it can help us figure out what the best egg products can look like, and how we can get the best proteins, without harming any animals.”
Seems that, where we are heading, the old questions no longer make sense. A world where chicken and egg are separated and our children’s children won’t even understand the question. If, that is, they survive the singularity.
Michael Brian Lee is an advisory board member of World Creativity and Innovation Week/Day and a Radio 702 creativity contributor.
Zizi Kodwa a free man as NPA withdraws corruption charges:
The National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) has withdrawn corruption charges against former cabinet minister and ANC national executive committee member Zizi Kodwa.
Charges of violating the Prevention and Combating of Corrupt Activities Act against Kodwa and former EOH executive Jehan Mackay were withdrawn after they made representations to the provincial director of prosecutions Andrew Chauke.
NPA spokesperson Phindi Mjonondwane said Chauke had taken a decision to withdraw the charges after “new developments” came to light in the representations made by the two accused at the beginning of October.
The two had been charged with regard to R1.6 million in direct payments and benefits, including luxury accommodation, which had been made to Kodwa by Mackay in 2015 and 2016 during the time that the former was the ANC’s national spokesperson.
Kodwa was arrested in July and two days later resigned as an MP and stepped aside from his roles in the ANC and the government.
“The decision to abandon the prosecution is premised on the grounds militated by the successful representations that were lodged by the accused with the office of the DPP,” Mjonondwane said.
She said the decision also took into consideration the evidence in the docket, reports from the prosecutor, the regional head of the specialised commercial crimes unit and the investigating officer in the case.
The chances of securing a successful prosecution had diminished in the light of “new developments” that had taken place after the initial decision to prosecute the matter, Mjonondwane added.
“Part six of the NPA’s prosecution policy directives makes provision for the process of representations where an accused person may request the review of a decision to institute a prosecution as an available remedy of recourse, wherein the accused is granted the opportunity to tender their version of events,” she said. “Their version of events is then weighed against the interest of justice, coupled with the factors mentioned above.”
“The DPP was duly bound to take into account that the prospect of a successful prosecution has diminished, owing to the change in circumstances, brought about by new developments that came into light, in spite of an initial decision to prosecute,” Mjonondwane said.
Israel: There are two ‘truths’ to every story:
It is hardly surprising that Drew Forrest (Israel’s ‘settler logic of elimination’, Mail & Guardian, 24 October 2024) chooses Ilan Pappe and Shlomo Sand to delegitimise — or at least attempt to delegitimise — the Jewish state. One polemicist recognises others. Forrest also signals his intentions by excavating the work of Ze’ev Herzog, a revisionist Israeli archaeologist who has challenged the historicity of the Bible. Nothing new in this. In fact Herzog’s arguments and the reaction to his work in Israel tell us more about the open nature of scholarly inquiry in that country than about ancient Israel.
Forrest should know that there are two sides to any conflict and then there is the truth. Bolstering one’s prejudices with tendentious accounts is an abuse of history.
Pappe knows all about that. He is a sociologist, disgraced by even left-wing (and revisionist) scholars of Israel. Known for his cherry-picking and self-admitted postmodernism, Pappe should be read with circumspection. Consider his own warning in A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples, which Pappe published in 2004: My [pro-Palestinian] bias is apparent despite the desire of my peers that I stick to facts and the ‘truth’ when reconstructing past realities. I view any such construction as vain and presumptuous … In short, mine is a subjective approach.”
This is refreshingly honest, even for a sociologist and a communist. Pappe has no wish to write serious history. Nor is he able to empathise with historical options in real time and in particular circumstances. Instead the past is fashioned in service of the present. This always results in poor history. Did Herbert Butterfield, the Cambridge historian and philosopher, not warn us against the pitfalls of “presentism” more than 90 years ago? “When we organise our general history with a reference to the present,” he wrote, “we are producing what is really a giant optical illusion.”
Forrest seems not to know that Pappe massages the past to fulfil his wishes. Why should he question Pappe’s “truth” — a “truth” that has been savaged by the likes of the eminent Israeli historian Benny Morris who by no measure is a right winger? Who cares that Pappe had it wrong when he claimed that one third of the overall casualties in the Palestinian intifada of 1987-91 were women? In fact, B’Tselem (an Israeli human rights group fondly relied upon by Israel’s enemies) revealed that 1100 Palestinians died at the hands of Israeli army and security personnel during that uprising, and of these, 56 were women? Is it a crime to claim that the UN partition vote in 1947 broke even when in reality 33 voted for, 13 against, and 10 abstained?
These errors might appear to be immaterial, but they should at least serve as a warning to readers, even if they have an axe to grind. Pappe was mistaken to claim that there were one million Palestinians living outside Palestine by the end of the 1948 war. There were no more than 300 000. And to suggest that the activities of the fedayeen in the early 1950s were attempts to recover lost property is to dismiss what were in reality terror activities. In his book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006) Pappe went so far as to misread the “Shimshon” project and to accuse Israelis of planning to gas the Palestinians. Morris has argued that this conclusion was wilfully arrived at by the incorrect translation of a Hebrew entry in Ben Gurion’s diary and the omission of words that did not suit Pappe’s case.
Forrest unfortunately uses texts that support his views. He does this also with the work of Shlomo Sand. Although the Tel Aviv University historian is more serious than Pappe, little in The Invention of the Jewish People (2010) is original. No serious scholar assumes today that all Jews are descended from the ancient Hebrews or that the conversion of the Khazars in the 10th century has been excised by Zionists writing in the service of a pure Israeli lineage? Sand is correct to dwell on the construction of an Israeli national identity, but this is common to all nation-states, not least to the Palestinians whose construction of peoplehood in many ways mirrors that of the Zionists. If Forrest had read Sand closely, he would have appreciated that much of his work implicitly undercuts Herzog’s archaeological conclusions. In any event, Sand ought to acknowledge that a shared and multi-layered Jewish identity evolved over time — an identity moulded by common experiences.
The lengths to which Forrest goes to show that the Jewish demographic presence in “Palestine” was much lower than people imagine demonstrates his wish to undermine the “Zionist project” rather than to understand it. It is surely no surprise that only a tiny minority of Jews remained in Judea after two failed uprisings against their Roman conquerors who renamed the territory “Palestina” (derived from the age-old enemy of the Judeans, the Philistines) and the Muslim conquest and “occupation” of the Land of Israel in the seventh century.
Forrest ignores or seems not to care about the Zionist mindset — a mindset informed by failed Jewish emancipation in the 19th century and built upon the decimation of Jews during the Crusades of the 11th century, the carnage that followed the European “Black Death” in the 14th, the expulsion of Jews from Spain in the 15th, the Khmelnitsky massacres of Jews in southern Europe in the 17th, the murder of more than 100 000 Jews in the Russian Civil War of 1918-20, the extermination of almost six million Jews in Holocaust, and the effectively forced emigration (ethnic cleansing) of about 900 000 Jews from Arab lands.
Rightly or wrongly the national liberation of the Jewish people was considered a solution to the “Jewish Question”. Turning to the “Land of Israel” (where there had always been a Jewish presence) was predictable. It has always occupied a central place in Jewish memory. Burgeoning secularisation in the 19th century opened the way. Jews would no longer await the Messiah to turn dreams into reality.
If Forrest widened his reading, he would not label the Zionists as “settler-colonialists”. Jews ruled the Judean kingdoms and prayed in the Jerusalem Temple for a thousand years, despite some archaeological finds that challenged aspects of the biblical record.The reality is that Jews are indigenous to the Land of Israel.
When Zionism as a political movement emerged, Palestine was part of the Ottoman Empire. Thereafter it was mandated to Britain. In 1921, 80% of the “Palestine” region of the former Turkish Empire was lopped off to the Arabs.
Of course we know that Palestine was not a “land without people for a people without a land” — as Zionist propaganda would have it. But we also know that Jewish liturgy and prayer focused for millennia on Jerusalem and on the return of Jews to their historic homeland. It should also be noted that land was purchased by Jews (mainly through the Jewish National Fund) from Arab landowners.
For the most part, Zionists wished to reach a modus vivendi with the Arabs. There were, moreover, many indications that this was possible. To date, however, the Palestinians have shown little interest. War has been the preferred option. Palestinians have refused to accept what most scholarly observers have described as reasonable offers in a conflict that will require Solomonic wisdom to resolve. Attempts at a two-state solution began with the Peel Commission Report of 1937, going on to the UN partition plan of 1947, and thereafter to serious efforts at Camp David (2000) and Taba (2001).
Milton Shain is emeritus professor of historical studies at the University of Cape Town.
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