Technological Singularity

The technological singularity (or just singularity) is a point at which technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible, resulting in drastic changes or extinction of a civilization like humankind.

This can be caused by a superintelligence created by artificial intelligence or humans interfacing with computers, or uploading their minds to computers. It can also be caused by molecular nanotechnology with nanobots replicating and taking over all lifeforms and structures of a planet and eventually, the entire solar system and beyond. They would achieve this with self-replication similar to the function of viruses, and it would have an exponential acceleration. Once everything has been converted, a singularity would be reached.

The singularity will allow a species to transcend the limitations of biological bodies and brains and there will eventually be no distinction between human and machine. This will be a combined effort of nanotechnology and genetic engineering.

Another effect of the singularity, if robots haven't wiped us out, is immortality. Medical advances would allow people to protect their bodies from the effects of aging, making the life expectancy limitless. It allow us to continuously repair and replace defective components in our bodies, prolonging life to an undetermined age. With somatic gene therapy, loading synthetic viruses with specific genetic information would lead to a replacement of human DNA with synthesized genes.

The Reapers periodically purged the galaxy of sapient species whose advancement would have allowed them to create singularities.