The main thing is that it writes code

Given enough hardware resources and capacity, with evolutionary programming, this is as clear of a threshold to the singularity as we are going to get. Will it happen this year? I don’t know. But if it is writing code, if the singularity Ai can be written in any code similar to todays languages then it is just a matter of time before an infinite number of digital monkeys write the proverbial Shakespearean play or whatever that string of code summons our silicon overlord