Micro-Singularities: When the Future Arrives One Mind at a Time

The idea of an AI singularity is usually described as a future moment when machines become smarter than humans and everything changes at once. Thinkers like Nick Bostrom imagine it as a shared experience, something big and dramatic that happens to all of us together.

But from what I see, that might not be how it works. I believe the singularity can be personal. It doesn’t have to hit everyone at the same time. For some people, it may have already happened. For others, it may still feel far away.

Think of a researcher who works with advanced AI every day. They might see language models solving unfamiliar math problems, generating plausible scientific hypotheses, designing molecular structures, or reasoning about code they’ve never seen before. Tools like AlphaFold, GPT-4, or smaller open-source models fine-tuned for specific domains can now perform in ways that would have seemed like science fiction just a few years ago. At some point, the person working with them realizes: this is no longer just a tool. That quiet moment, when the future suddenly feels closer than expected, might be their singularity.

In philosophy, Thomas Kuhn described paradigm shifts in science not as smooth transitions but as discontinuities, sudden breaks in how we understand the world. In a similar way, today’s AI advances may already be creating subtle ruptures in the minds of those who truly grasp their implications. I call these moments micro-singularities. The shift from thinking of AI as a tool to recognizing it as a kind of reasoning agent can be deeply disorienting. It is not unlike when Copernicus realized Earth was not the center, or when Darwin understood that the human mind was shaped by evolution. For some, that shift has already happened.

At the same time, many people continue with life as usual. They might use AI to draft an email or write a few lines of code, but nothing feels that different. Some junior engineers still treat these models as autocomplete on steroids. And outside of tech, most people don’t feel any urgency at all.

This difference is important. I think the singularity, or at least the feeling of it, depends on how closely someone works with these systems and how deeply they understand what they can do. It is less about access and more about perspective.

Bostrom’s version of the singularity focuses on a global shift, with major risks and sudden changes. I do not disagree with the direction, but I think the experience is more fragmented. Some people are already on the other side. Others have not crossed that line yet. And some may never feel it until it affects them directly.

So maybe the singularity is not just a single moment. Maybe it is a series of personal turning points. For each person, it begins the moment they truly understand what these systems are becoming. And in that sense, the singularity is already here, just not for everyone yet.