We are now entering the steep part of the exponential

I was looking forward to “The Singularity is Nearer: When We Merge with AI”. About how several key areas of change that are continuing to accelerate simultaneously:

• Computing power is becoming cheaper.
• Human biology is becoming better understood.
• Engineering is becoming possible at far smaller scales.

Brain expansion

Eventually, nanotechnology will enable these trends to culminate in the direct expansion of our brains with layers of virtual neurons in the cloud. In addition to increasing speed and memory size, augmenting our brains with nonbiological computers will allow us to add many more layers to our neocortices — unlocking vastly more complex and abstract cognition than we can currently imagine.

7 million times as many computations per second as the unenhanced human brain

The computation inside the human brain (at the level of neurons) is 1014 per second. As of 2023, $1,000 of computing power could perform up to 130 trillion computations per second. Based on the 2000–2023 trend, by 2053, about $1,000 of computing power (in 2023 dollars) will be enough to perform around 7 million times as many…