The #Singularity isn't singular at all. There have been many and more will come.
— Brett Haase (@brett7three) November 3, 2013
Importantly you should note immortality alone is not the Singularity, it is only one aspect, it is only one marker but it is an good marker at present because people are not immortal. Immortality is a step closer towards the Singularity. We could have immortality shortly before the Singularity, which means people could be immortal but the Singularity will not be happening despite being very close.
Another way to describe the Singularity is Post-Scarcity. Post-Scarcity means everything is free because resources have become limitless due to advanced technology. Technology is a scarcity liberating process. Things only have prices due to scarcity thus if things have a price the Singularity has not happened. The Singularity is all about limitlessness, it is about overcoming limits, it is beyond the limitations of scarcity, it is Post-Scarcity, which means limitless intelligence creates an intelligence explosion. All resources depend on intelligence for their existence thus the intelligence explosion is a resource explosion because the greatest resource is intelligence, which means intelligence is the engine behind all technology.
We're considering truly colossal explosive intelligence, it isn't a mere leap of intelligence similar to various historical examples of progressive intelligence. The Singularity is very different to previous advances because it entails eradicated scarcity, a limitless bypassing of constraints. The ability to leave Earth, our solar system, our galaxy, to live forever totally independently in Space for free, in total limitless self-sufficiency, with total control of matter and our genome, this is what makes the Singularity very different to historical pre-Singularity progress.
If people age then die, if people suffer from diseases, and if things have prices, if things are not free, and if intelligence is limited, then the Singularity is not happening.
The reason I am clarifying again why the Singularity is not happening is because I noticed, highlighted via B.J. Murphy, a blog-post published 7th May 2013 titled: "Human Intelligence has been replicated. The singularity is here." The blog-post in question is by someone who is into "SEO in a big way," thus perhaps our investigations should stop at this point. My personal opinion is SEO people are mainly interested in gaming search engines; SEO is all marketing with no substance, although I am sure they will disagree.
The company responsible for the alleged creation of human level AI, regarding the 7th May blog-post, is called ScIAM. B.J. Murphy has unfortunately decided to give ScIAM the opportunity to explain their assertions. Have they really created human level AI, a Human Intelligence Emulation? Via various posts on his blog and an IEET article B. J. Murphy explores their assertions.
Software company ScIAM develops ‘Human Intelligence Emulation’? http://t.co/9u9yDHCWNc
— B.J. Murphy (@SciTechJunkie) August 15, 2013
After the dust has almost settled let's analyse the situation. Here we are 6 months since it was first revealed human level AI had been created (according to the Lime Tree Online blog 7th May 2013), but no breakthroughs attributable to ScIAM have occurred in 3D-printing, nanotech, medicine, or computing. Surely you would expect the ScIAM HIE (Human Intelligence Emulation) to at least win Jeopardy!? I think their claims are BS. Look at Robot Adam, a narrow-AI (bioinformatics); Adam was able to quickly make a discovery humans could not make. Via IEET August 14th 2013 we were informed, regarding the ScIAM HIE: "This intelligent software isn’t yet available to the general populace it would seem, but will in the next few months, along with an actual demonstration by the company itself. When exactly is not yet known."
So here we are almost a few months since the IEET article mentioning an unveiling, but there is a big silence. To be fair let's give them until the end of November or even mid December but despite that being 7 months since the initial announcement and 4 months since the "few months" announcement via IEET I doubt their HIE will prove to be anything remotely resembling human-level AI.
It seems ScIAM has created at best narrow-AI, or maybe they have not attained a minor level of narrow intelligence. Certainly, if you ask me, they have not attained human level intelligence. Their website describes a mundane type of software: "Set-it is the world’s first enterprise social strategy software."
Did you think human-level AI would be so slow, unproductive, and uneventful?