The Singularity and Ethics

Is the Singularity really coming and how will it affect us? These are two unanswerable questions so far, unfortunately. Let's assume that the Singularity is indeed approaching and will arrive at a rate consistent with Kurzweil's predictions. The ramifications are unclear because it is difficult to predict what this will mean for us as humans. Certainly, it would appear troubling, particularly to those of us who have watched the Terminator, that this prediction includes a reality in which machines exceed the intelligence of the average human brain. In this scenario, machines could theoretically build increasingly intelligent machines without human intervention or help. If these machines have no inherent concept of ethics or morals, isn't there a strong likelihood that human and machine goals could become incongruent? In this scenario, isn't it also possible that machines could at some point decide that humans aren't "useful" or "necessary"?

If you believe that humans are imbued with some supernatural conception of ethics from birth, this scenario should be particularly frightening to you. If however you, like me, believe that ethics and morals are a contrivance of a biological survival mechanism, then you should be a lot more optimistic about the future of super-intelligent machines. If machines become highly intelligent, and to be "more intelligent" than humans I believe they would have to be self-aware, it is not at all unlikely that the biological survival mechanism that yields morality in humans would be mirrored by a mechanical survival mechanism that yields a similar machine "morality". In fact, if this were not the case, I would argue that the machines, although highly intelligent, were not yet smarter than humans for this very reason.

Another ramification of super-intelligent machines is the God paradox. To me, God sort of occupies that asymptote that Kurzweil calls the Singularity. God in this sense is a deification of everything we don't know. Disregarding the other purported capabilities of God (see the Omnipotence Paradox), if a machine eventually came to know "all things", and in fact was able to predict all things based on perfect knowledge of the universe and its mechanisms, how would this square with that aspect of God's identity? Could the machine replace God? Wouldn't this undermine our notions of Free Will? In this crazy world, I wouldn't doubt that some people at least would begin worshiping such a machine. Ultimately, as history has shown us, only time will tell, and I find it unlikely that we have the means to stop the locomotive of technological advancement at this point.