Popularized by science fiction author Vernor Vinge as well as inventor and now Google director of engineering Ray Kurzweil, the singularity is a theoretical point in future history when artificial intelligences exceed the power of the human mind, become self-aware and dramatically change the balance of power on the planet while simultaneously transforming the very nature of humanity itself.

Google recently doubled down on the idea of using intelligent systems to work as human assistants by hiring Kurzweil to work on machine learning and language processing. […]