The Second Singularity is positioned as more powerful, far-reaching, and sustainable than any AI-based singularity, and as an organic development accelerated through increasingly opening to Light. An extract from the Introduction to the book, the eighth in the Cosmology of Light book series, follows:

"...The future of life, hence, cannot be due to AI. At best, AI, can create a process by which many tasks that usually require utilization of the fundamental light-derived capacity of intelligence in order to be completed, can be completed by an exhaustively repetitive running of algorithms driven by massive computing power, hence giving the illusion of intelligence. Projected forward, the exhaustively repetitive running of algorithms driven by massive computing power, endow a practically ubiquitous digitally-enabled strata to control many tasks, and this may create the phenomenon of a “singularity” – in which humankind effectively cannot even fathom how things are happening anymore and is seemingly outpaced and outthought at every step in every direction by an ‘intelligence’ that appears to be all-knowing, all-present, and all-powerful. But this kind of singularity is fundamentally separated from the light-based edifice behind all things, and from which all things rise. It is hence not a true singularity in the sense of a finite function assuming infinite value, but is fundamentally limited in its scope by virtue of its disconnection from the founts of Life. This does not preclude an AI-based singularity from having massive practical power that can have an enormous destructive or constructive effect on humankind and material life. What it does mean though is that there is another singularity, a human-founded singularity, the Second Singularity, which can exceed the limits of any AI-based singularity due to its fundamental union with the light-based edifice that is behind and informs all of Life... "

Based on the book The Second Singularity, I wrote an IEEE article aimed at mathematically bounding the limits of AI and suggesting the inherent infinity of a second singularity, Limits of AI as Established by a Multi-Layered Symmetry-Based Model of Light, The abstract from the paper follows.

"It has been said that the future of Life is about Artificial Intelligence (AI) and that as AI advances a point will be reached, the Singularity, when humans will no longer have a clue as to what is going on nor why. On the contrary, this article will make the case that the future of Life is enabled by the pre-existent complexity that exists in every iota of it. This pre-existent complexity derives from a multi-layered, symmetry-based model of light from which fundamental layers of matter and life - including the electromagnetic field, quantum particles, atoms, and cells - can be proposed to emerge. As such matter and life are an integral part of a unified light-based edifice proposed to have infinite-potential resident in it. By contrast contemporary AI is based on mind-based processes such as memory, computation, sensing, and learning that operate within a defined and limited conceptual space and are positioned to be substrate independent. This conceptual space and the operating principles that define it limit AI, which in its current incarnation cannot rival the kinds of creations and possibilities inherent in a multi-layered symmetry-based model of light. Unless the gap to such a unified light-based edifice is bridged, AI will always have limits within which its possibilities will be bound."

The presentation at the IEEE conference resulted in a Best Presentation award, and below I share a youtube video focused on the content of the IEEE paper.