Stewart Alsop: The Singularity Already Happened in the 1850s, and LLM Autonomy May Not Be Near
StewartalsopIII · x · 2026-10-28
Stewart Alsop III pushes back on the standard definition of the singularity — an event horizon where machine self-improvement goes exponential and the system becomes unintelligible. His argument: the world system became unpredictable long ago, in the 1850s, and rationalist doomers are essentially peddling secular end-times prophecies.
He also argues it's silly to think of LLM technology without the human pilot — true autonomy may be far off, or may lack any clear pathway. He concedes one strong counterargument, though: in Ukraine, drones have become autonomous for the last mile due to the evolutionary pressure of electronic warfare.
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