Why the “AI Singularity” Will Not Happen

At least not for most of us, and for reasons unrelated to technological progress.

Erik P.M. Vermeulen, PhD
5 min readJun 21, 2024

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Photo courtesy of author

They wanted to know about the specific “singularity camp” I belonged to. And whether I believed “singularity” would happen in the next few years.

“Not every new technology will change the world,” I replied. “Most will barely make a dent in the status quo. This is my key takeaway from being too enthusiastic about new ground-breaking technologies in the past.”

“Optimism and enthusiasm are essential qualities we seek in the keynote speaker for our upcoming conference on the AI revolution.”

The conference organizer didn’t listen and only heard what he wanted to hear.

He believed AI’s self-learning capabilities would lead to artificial general intelligence sooner rather than later, meaning that the AI will perform tasks it hasn’t been trained for.

“We will soon reach singularity.”

And he continued, “AI will quickly surpass human intelligence, leading to a new level of intelligence humans cannot attain. This will result in exponential technological growth that humanity will struggle to keep pace with. Once we reach a point where technology is advancing rapidly and irreversibly, these powerful…

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