This is another phrase that could be understood by itself: 'singularity' in physics is a particular case, which does not conform to laws as expected, and 'technological' is when it refers to an aspect of technology. But it turns out that in the mid-twentieth century the mathematician John von Neumann gave it the meaning that we know today and that is much more specific: "the moment when an artificial intelligence reaches the level of the human". This sparked all sorts of speculation, and when his colleague Irving John Good wrote about "technological explosion" and the possibility of an intelligent machine improving itself it also excited science fiction writers, who imagined a future where machines take control of the world and decide that the human being is a threat so he must be exterminated. The ability of chatbots suggests (erroneously) that a software can acquire self-awareness; but the original idea was actually that a computer could reach the computing power of a human. . . something that already happened a long time ago.
