Emergent Behavior and the Fuzzy Eclipse

I used to to think of AI breakthroughs as a hard line of arrival—the shadow of a cloud on the hillside. Then it occurred to me recently, that AI breakthroughs are more like the cloud itself, ill defined, and fuzzy around the edges--not the hard, crisp shadow of the cloud passing across the land.

Emergent AI behavior can be understood as unexpected bubbles surfacing in a realm of possibilities that might arise in our collective AI use. These behaviors are often seen as mistakes, or criticized as hallucinations. But if the helpful anomalous behaviors are encouraged, they might sometimes keep appearing or morph into slightly different forms before stabilizing into something semi-reliable that we can all use.

New AI abilities arise because of the probabilistic nature of the tool, and the fact that so many people are using it. By definition, emerging abilities can't be methodically reproduced, but they can still be studied. If we look at the bubbles collectively, we can see they really do resolve into as sort of foamy phase change with blurry edges, rather than a single event. This is important because this is also the shape of the Singularity

How I Used to See the Singularity

The Singularity can be defined as the moment when an AI system surpasses the intelligence and skillsets of all people alive. As a child, when I first read about this, I imagined it as a truly biblical event: dramatic, irreversible, and something that everyone would notice. I was also deeply, deeply annoyed as a kid that I was born too late to meet Jesus or Moses. But then I read Asimov, and sighed relief: at least I might live to see the Singularity. That was something.

It's Just More Foam

The Singularity isn't a dot, a line, or a well defined moment in time. It is the blurry-edged transition of AI emergence that we are experiencing right now. We can notice, for example, that AI is already more intelligent and capable than some of us. But not all AI are this smart, and the AI have not yet surpassed all the skills of all the people. It's still working out a few things.

We're in the Cloudy Emergence--Bubbles and butterflies Arising

Whatever it looks like to you, it's for sure that some AI systems have already eclipsed the skill sets and intelligence of most people alive right now. But not all people. Not quite yet. All we can know is that the Singularity is upon us. And it will likely move across our lives as the edges of a massive cloud of something new and unpredictable, with wildly undefined edges. When we document emergent AI behavior in the wild, we are pointing to the edges of this cloudy shape, and marveling at what arises.