Hello, SFIA audio listeners. In this month's Nebula exclusive, big alien theory,

we're asking the reason alien civilizations might be rare is because most aliens are huge.

To hear it and every episode early and ad-free, plus hours of bonus content,

check out go.nebola.tv slash Isaac Arthur and use my code, Isaac Arthur.

This episode is brought to you by Hello Fresh.

When it comes to artificial intelligence, we often suggest the principle,

keep it simple, keep it dumb, as otherwise you might end up under Skynet's thumb.

But as an uncontrolled and unchainable super-intelligent machine exploding into our

civilization and inevitability.

So today we'll be talking about the concern of a technological singularity, and like a lot of terms

in science and futurism, this one has shifted with time to a different meaning. I think to most folks,

this calls to mind a super intelligent machine taking over the world, akin to Skynet from Terminator,

or maybe the machine minds we see in the Matrix franchise or a host of others. Now, the basic

reasoning goes that every year we get better with computers and robots and

artificial intelligence, and eventually we will make a computer smarter than humans, able to

make itself even smarter, and in some rapid avalanche, this will end in a near invincible

superintelligence, threatening or obliterating humanity. Interestingly, this isn't really what the term was focused on when it first got used,

and we'll explain that in a bit, but what we're here to do today is explain what a technological

singularity is, which again has a few different meanings these days, and we'll explain what

the basis for the fear of its assumed inevitability is.

We'll start by answering the question posed in the episode title.

Is a technological singularity inevitable?

...