  The singularity refers to an idea that once a machine having an artificial
intelligence surpassing the human intelligence capacity is created, it will
trigger explosive technological and intelligence growth. I propose to test the
hypothesis that machine intelligence capacity can grow autonomously starting
with an intelligence comparable to that of bacteria - microbial intelligence.
The goal will be to demonstrate that rapid growth in intelligence capacity can
be realized at all in artificial computing systems. I propose the following
three properties that may allow an artificial intelligence to exhibit a steady
growth in its intelligence capacity: (i) learning with the ability to modify
itself when exposed to more data, (ii) acquiring new functionalities (skills),
and (iii) expanding or replicating itself. The algorithms must demonstrate a
rapid growth in skills of dataprocessing and analysis and gain qualitatively
different functionalities, at least until the current computing technology
supports their scalable development. The existing algorithms that already
encompass some of these or similar properties, as well as missing abilities
that must yet be implemented, will be reviewed in this work. Future
computational tests could support or oppose the hypothesis that artificial
intelligence can potentially grow to the level of superintelligence which
overcomes the limitations in hardware by producing necessary processing
resources or by changing the physical realization of computation from using
chip circuits to using quantum computing principles.
