Though it built computer intelligence, humanity will be surpassed by its creation. Powered by artificial intelligence, machines will design their next generation without human intervention, growing exponentially beyond all human potential. These machines will not only be smart, but indistinguishable from humans. Writes Kurzweil: “Within several decades information-based technologies will encompass all human knowledge and proficiency, ultimately including the pattern-recognition powers, problem-solving skills, and emotional and moral intelligence of the human brain itself.”
Kurzweil’s predictions of the Singularity are optimistic: Rather than being reduced to ineffectual dinosaurs headed for slow extinction, or wiped out in some Terminator-like rise of the machines, we will merge with technology, and our bodies will no longer be subject to disease and weakness and age. “We can expect that the full realization of the biotechnology and nanotechnology revolutions will enable us to eliminate virtually all medical causes of death,” writes Kurzweil.
So 33 years until immortality. But what sort of a life will we lead in this Brave New World of man-machine perfection?
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My WIP is based upon a similar view of the inevitability of some form of immortality. At the very least I expect we will soon (relatively) be able to digitally copy all of the data that is in our minds. My book has us go through a long dark period due to things like rising ocean levels, refugees, pandemics, and lack of potable water, but as governments begin putting themselves back together again, scientists move beyond simply capturing the data within our minds and learn how to reinsert that data back into clones of ourselves. This allows lots of neat possibilities, such as sending empty ships to other habitable planets and only upon arrival generating clones and reconstituting fresh colonists. Of course, they also cannot allow just anyone to use this version of immortality or we'd have even larger population and morality issues (several versions of you alive at once?).
ReplyDeleteThis reminds me of the New Age prophecies from the 80s about the miraculous things that would happen as we moved into the 21st century.
ReplyDeleteI'm still waiting.
Damn thought-provoking. I like your essay. Excellent.
ReplyDeleteMy first impulse is to say that Kurzweil has this pie-in-the-sky attitude, and the reality is going to be way more like In Time where the rich live forever as computers and the rest of us basically die (either naturally or as a species entirely).
This also brings to question such things as actual consciousness, the soul, how much of us is brain chemistry and what happens to us when you remove that, etc.
Kurzweil is giddy but hasn't thought it all through. He's talking about the end of the human race entirely. Good luck, buddy, I don't think you're rich enough to afford immortality.
Sounds pretty cool, Ted. Kurzweil addresses the issue of "copying" a personality via computer upload and raises the corresponding question: Would such a copy really be you?
ReplyDeleteThis reminds me of the New Age prophecies from the 80s about the miraculous things that would happen as we moved into the 21st century.
I definitely get some of the same vibe from The Singularity is Near, though I'm reluctant to write it off, because its reasoning is sound and I see some evidence of Kurzweil's predictions in action. My greatest skepticism is reserved for his AI claims, however. I just can't see a robot capable of passing the so-called Turing Test by 2029, if ever.
This also brings to question such things as actual consciousness, the soul, how much of us is brain chemistry and what happens to us when you remove that, etc.
Yes. Kurzweil states that the Singularity will be the equivalent of "finding" God. A quote from the book: "Once we saturate the matter and energy in the universe with intelligence, it will "wake up", be conscious, and sublimely intelligent. That's about as close to God as I can imagine." He takes the opposite view of the traditional theory of God: Rather than a conscious creator who got everything started, then stepped back, Kurzweil says a conscious universe will "step in" during Epoch 6.
A quote from the book: "Once we saturate the matter and energy in the universe with intelligence, it will "wake up", be conscious, and sublimely intelligent. That's about as close to God as I can imagine."
ReplyDeleteThat reminds me of the theories of Teilhard de Chardin, the French archeologist, who argued that the universe is slowly evolving consciousness and eventually will become conscious and therefore God.
Sarah Connor, we need you now!
ReplyDelete(Lena Headey version, please....)
Jim Cornelius
www.frontierpartisans.com