The Singularity is an event, predicted by AI researchers, when computers will be able to write programs to improve themselves. They'll soon be able to exponentially increase their intelligence and ability, so that the difference in intelligence between human and computer is far wider than the difference between the smartest human and the dumbest human. Here's an example from music, where a UCSC professor wrote a program to churn out Bach music:

Finally, Cope’s program could divine what made Bach sound like Bach and create music in that style. It broke rules just as Bach had broken them, and made the result sound musical. It was as if the software had somehow captured Bach’s spirit — and it performed just as well in producing new Mozart compositions and Shakespeare sonnets. One afternoon, a few years after he’d begun work on Emmy, Cope clicked a button and went out for a sandwich, and she spit out 5,000 beautiful, artificial Bach chorales, work that would’ve taken him several lifetimes to produce by hand.

Producing 5,000 world-class symphonies in an afternoon sounds right. H/t Jason Kottke.

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