The singularity is defined by Ray Kurzweil as the time when technology is advancing so fast that humankind can no longer keep track of it. That is to say, the birth of a super-intelligent artificial intelligence.

It is considered an unavoidable consequence of the exponential growth in technology which by 2029 will see $1,000 of computing power being a thousand times more powerful than the human brain in the near future.

An intelligence explosion occurs when a seed AI becomes powerful enough to improve itself – which means not only is its power improving, but the thing that is improving its power is improving too, leading to a rapid, self-recursive, super-exponential increase in its intelligence.