9 ms·

Reality vs. Kurzweil’s expectations

74 points by drpgq 9y ago

partycoder 9y ago
I think Alvin Toffler was much better and down to earth when it came to predicting future trends. Kurzweil's ideas are creative and provoking but are more science fiction than futurism. In contrast, Alvin Toffler created a conceptual framework to understand the paradigm shifts of the post industrial age, and so far it is working.
dheera 9y ago
"You can do virtually anything with anyone regardless of physical proximity. The technology to accomplish this is easy to use and ever present." Try doing anything that involves hardware and inevitably you'll need to have routine conference calls between the US and China. "Can you hear me?" "Sorry can you hear me now?" "How about now?" ... And then there are the calls between the US and US. "I cannot hear you but you can hear me well?" "I still can't hear you" "I guess my computer is directing my speaker signal to my HDMI monitor which doesn't have speakers. Can you please call xxx-xxx-xxxx for the audio? We can keep the video on here."
- deleted 9y ago
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Barrin92 9y ago
Kurzweil just seems like a snake oil salesman to me. Ranging from wrong or overly broad predictions to advocating theories of the mind and brain that are rejected by neuroscience to well.. his literal supplement sales websites. The 'futurist' title seems to reside somewhere between science fiction, pop culture with some business credentials thrown in. I don't know what to make of it.
- Analemma_ 9y ago
  It was bad enough in the 90's and early 00's when it was just him, but now he has kicked off an entire subculture. Kurzweil, de Grey, Hanson, Bostrom, Yudkowsky... all total cranks, and inexplicably popular among ostensibly intelligent people. It's embarrassing.
  - yters 9y ago
    Materialists got religion.
  - pmoriarty 9y ago
    He didn't even come up with the singularity idea. Vernor Vinge originated it, and a whole bunch of people were discussing it at the time. Kurzweil just jumped on the bandwagon and started hyping it up to such an extent that many mistakenly believe the idea originated with him. It didn't.
    - goatlover 9y ago
      And I.J. Good before Vinge regarding the intelligence explosion.
      - Jach 9y ago
        And all three (Good, Vinge, Kurzweil) views of the Singularity are different. This stuff is old: http://yudkowsky.net/singularity/schools/ http://yudkowsky.net/singularity/schools/ It's amazing that people want to lump in anyone associated with it, or just related moral ideas like "death really sucks, what's a general way to end it?" as cranks of the same sort. Or worse compare it to a religion (http://archive.fo/6oI0u http://archive.fo/6oI0u)
        pmoriarty 9y ago
        Yudkowsky is another self-promoting hype machine, in the vein of Kurzweil. I wouldn't take him as the most unbiased source on the history of the singularity idea or how "his" ideas differ from the rest.
  - drcode 9y ago
    It seems like you're basically just saying that any attempt to predict the future is crankery. I think it would be a sad world if everyone just said "If I can't see it in front of my eyes and it isn't relevant to me today it's a waste of time"
- AnimalMuppet 9y ago
  Cynically, "futurist" might be well understood in the category of celebrities who are famous only because they are famous. Kurzweil, though, might perhaps be more accurately viewed as a spokesman for a new religion.
- philipkglass 9y ago
  I see Kurzweil as a sadder figure: someone who achieved a lot as an inventor, and whose overblown prognostications about the future come (largely) from overestimating how quickly everyone else can improve technologies and adopt them. It's sort of a revenge of the mediocrity principle. If you are exceptional, assuming that other people are basically like you can produce disastrously skewed mental models of the world. I'm reminded of the complaint that startups are disproportionately geared toward solving the problems of highly educated, able-bodied adults who have more money than spare time. "I'm like this, my friends are like this, and by the principle of mediocrity we're not unusual... therefore, iOS could use another food delivery app." You need to measure, rather than guess, whether you are unusual relative to large numbers of other people. On top of that Kurzweil appears to have some good old fashioned self-delusion about death: believing he can "bring back" his beloved dead father as software, the life extension supplements, etc. (I don't believe in souls or uncomputable quantum woo in brains. I have no problem in principle with "brain uploads." I think that the obstacles in practice are extremely formidable and typically underestimated by people who have spent more time with computers than with biology.)
  - pishpash 9y ago
    Same with Wolfram, I suppose.
    - shobith 9y ago
      How's Wolfram similar? what thoughts of his are "overblown"? I'm curious because I don't see the parallels between the two, while you seem to imply some obviousness.
      - WorldMaker 9y ago
        There's at least somewhat a sense that Wolfram's rabbit holing down Conway's Game/Cellular Automata and calling it "A New Kind of Math" was relatively overblown. Certainly Wolfram has his ego in play/blinders on about certain subjects, and in that way you can easily draw parallels between Wolfram and Kurzweil, depending of course on what your own personal take/opinion on their various pet projects happens to be.
- trgv 9y ago
  I don't think "snake oil salesman" is apt at all. I don't know the guy, or follow him closely, but I don't think he's dishonest, I just think he's wrong. There's a distinction between a snake oil salesman and someone who actually believes in what they're selling.
  - yters 9y ago
    The best liars believe their own lie.
  - stouset 9y ago
    He literally sells supplements that he suggests will provide longevity. It’s irrelevant if he believes in their efficacy or not. Alternative health practitioners certainly believe in their remedies. Gwenyth Paltow certainly believes in… whatever absurdities she’s peddling nowadays. The Food Babe probably does too. None of that makes them any less snake oil. Edit: A quick search on Wikipedia shows me I’m wrong. Apparently it’s only snake oil if the seller is aware the product is fraudulent. TIL. Edit 2: I might not be as wrong as I believed. A snake oil salesman can also be a quack who promotes medical practices based upon ignorance, which would definitely encompass Gwenyth Paltrow and the Food Babe.
    - tim333 9y ago
      The supplements thing is a bit of a hobby, not his main business.
    - trgv 9y ago
      I think "snake oil salesman" only applies if the target of the epithet is knowingly perpetrating a fraud. You could (accurately, in my opinion) describe the things Kurzweil is selling as "snake oil" but I wouldn't describe him as a "snake oil salesman." A whole lot of medicine practiced throughout human history has been based on ignorance, but I wouldn't describe medieval doctors (or whichever era) as "snake oil salesmen" because they believed in what they were selling. This is a pretty important distinction, in my mind.
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entee 9y ago
Some of Kurzweil's predictions also suffer from the idea that technology will have knock-on effects in less silicon-related fields like biology and medicine. For sure technology helps in those areas, but I haven't seen a fundamental change in how science is done or how our understanding of biology will start increasing at exponential rates. Fundamentally if you have to do things in physical space, there's a limit to your iteration speed. Also, technology is most helpful at solving known unknowns (in which case you're often limited by meat space as described above), but in core basic science, we're often dealing with unknown unknowns, and there technology rarely helps. Luck and creative leaps usually do better.
- drcode 9y ago
  I am kinda hoping we're going to see exponential improvements in biology soon: It seems to me the problems with protein folding and simulating cell biology become more approachable when using modern machine learning approaches and that people will find some fruitful methods of attack on that front in the near future.
  - entee 9y ago
    That's absolutely true, but also keep in mind the limitations of both the examples you give. Protein folding works pretty ok for short proteins on the order of ~200 amino acids. It gets considerably less good as the proteins get bigger. This is unsurprising, bigger proteins represent an exponentially bigger search space and there are fewer and fewer known protein structures as the size of protein increases, so your library of exemplars is smaller (hurting ML approaches). Lets not even speak of protein complexes or dynamic protein interactions. Even at the end of the prediction, you still have to prove your result by getting an actual crystal which is not always easy. Cell biology simulation is a whole other ball game, and I don't know that area nearly as well. But from the little I understand, we have some very basic mathematical models of a cell that work in a limited way at a very high level. To get those things to work a number of extremely simplifying (but useful in some contexts) assumptions are made, which limits the broader applications of those simulations. Simulating a whole cell very quickly gets into the realm of definitely not computationally tractable given the enormous number of entities in the cell. It's a fiendishly hard problem, I hope we get there someday, but I think it'll be a long while.
drcode 9y ago
I think the dude deserves a bit of a break- It really doesn't matter if he got 10%, 50% or 90% of his predictions right, all that matters is whether he made better and more relevant predictions than others at the time. On that measure, I think he scored reasonably well (Though I confess I sold some Google stock when they installed him as Director of Engineering)
- arkades 9y ago
  No, it matters what his reasoning is, too, as it relates to just being lucky (or as I tell my nieces when they’re studying for a science class and guess the right answer: if you’re right for the wrong reasons, you’re still wrong.) If you read his books, there’s an awful lot of hand waving and re- or mis-defining of terms to suit his arguments. It’s the sort of stuff that wouldn’t fly in a HS thesis paper, never mind as something marketed to bright minds.
  - drcode 9y ago
    The article we're discussing is about rating the accuracy of Kurzweil's predictions, it is not about the soundness of his reasoning. I agree that regardless of how we rate his predictions, the strategy he used to make those predictions has issues of its own.
lsd5you 9y ago
The cynic in me sees that Kurzweil's predictions align with his unassisted life expectancy. So in some sense it's not surprising that he's being over optimistic. I'm not generally a fan, but we have to give some credit to 'futurologists' who are prepared to make predictions! At least it makes for some interesting discussion.
- radiorental 9y ago
  > but we have to give some credit to 'futurologists' who are prepared to make predictions! I'm sorry, I do have to disagree. It's little more than recognizing a problem and envisioning a solution. Ideas are cheap. And in that sense they are little more than entrepreneurs with grand long term visions that require no commitment. Give credit to those who put blood and sweat behind their visions - and make them happen, not make vague 'predictions'. That's what Hollywood is for. I predict in the future we will be creating food from carbon scrubbed from atmosphere. I predict in the future that humans will communicate with machines through quantum teleportation via implants I predicate that in the future that if these predictions don't hold true, no one I know will be around to call me on it.
  - WorldMaker 9y ago
    > And in that sense they are little more than entrepreneurs with grand long term visions that require no commitment. In light of Kurzweil specifically, he has at least some investment skin in the game in many (most?) cases of his predictions. All VCs to some extent are generally more optimistic than not that at least some of their bets will play out, and in my experience are more than happy to describe many of those bets in wild detail given the chance. (His only real "sin" here seems more that he's captured mainstream intrigue/interest more so than the average VC, whether because they prefer to play their cards a bit closer to their vest and/or mostly just stick to leaving their prognostications here on HN far from the limelight. ;)
    - radiorental 9y ago
      Entrepreneurs ≠ VCs That said, I appreciate Kurzeil has attempted to build products somewhat inline with his visions. E.g. https://www.kurzweiledu.com/products/kurzweil-1000-v14-windows.html https://www.kurzweiledu.com/products/kurzweil-1000-v14-windo... But these are mere tinker toys compared to the grand predictions, and mostly failed products too.
romaniv 9y ago
If you want an example of clear thinking about the future, I highly recommend reading Summa Technologiae by Stanislaw Lem. Instead of predicting low-level tech advances he speaks about what drives technology development in general and drafts several possible trajectories for the future. I've only read it this year and the sheer fact that a 1964 book about technology doesn't seem hopelessly outdated in 2017 speaks in its favor.
- jarmitage 9y ago
  +1 incredible text, thanks for the reminder to re-read
- pmoriarty 9y ago
  Also check out "The Machine Stops"[1] by E. M. Forster (more famous for writing "A Passage to India" and "A Room With a View"). Written in 1909, it foreshadowed the internet, VR, instantaneous global communication, chat rooms, internet addiction, and other things we take for granted now but were incredibly visionary 120 years ago. [1] - http://archive.ncsa.illinois.edu/prajlich/forster.html http://archive.ncsa.illinois.edu/prajlich/forster.html
AnimalMuppet 9y ago
My impression is that his predictions about electronics have done better than his predictions about biology, consciousness, and AI. Unfortunately, the areas he did less well in are the areas where he is placing his hope...
ggm 9y ago
He's a busted flush. Stock market improvements over the same interval did better than his prognostications, which means you would get better trend advice from a one-liner: "follow the money" Hubris appears to have magic flotation properties. I don't expect Mr Kurzweil to stop bobbing along, singing his song, on the sea of emerging trends.
yanivleven 9y ago
Very interesting read. Im a big fan of his work even though some of it might be a bit off. It was part of the inspiration to building my company. This is the first blog I ever wrote about the company: http://blog.panoply.io/why-we-built-panoply.io-and-what-ray-kurzweils-law-of-accelerated-returns-has-to-do-with-it http://blog.panoply.io/why-we-built-panoply.io-and-what-ray-...
gwern 9y ago
> For 2019, Kurzweil predicted virtual reality glasses being in “routine” use. That does not look like it will happen. What? At the most charitable and even holding it to 2019 strictly instead of allowing a few years, you're going to have to parse 'routine' to mean very large numbers, otherwise this is obviously going to be true. Sales of the best-known top-end VR headsets (Oculus+Vive+PSVR) are already around 1m; throw in Gear, Daydream, Cardboard, and the various other Chinese, Microsoft, and miscellaneous projects, and it's at least double that. The last time I walked through a Best Buy, I saw a Oculus demo; the last time I walked through a mall, I saw a Vive demo. And 2017 is not over yet, leaving 2 full years. (For comparison, the Vive & Rift haven't even been out for 2 years.) The cost of the headsets has been dropping rapidly and capabilities improving, with Rift and Touch going for ~$350 in Black Friday sales and the last Nvidia/AMD GPU generation also cut hundreds of dollars off the price of entry. On top of that, everyone expects considerable improvements: untethered/wireless will soon be feasible, the screens are expanding, and tracking is going inside-out. Something like Oculus Go but higher-quality is closer to what you should expect in 2019/2020. Even assuming no growth in sales due to the cost continuously decreasing & quality improving or the buildup of respectable software libraries, that still implies several million top-end VR headsets in use. How is that not 'routine'?
- GFischer 9y ago
  The Google Cardboard-style VR and chinese clones are outselling Oculus and Vives by an order of magnitude at least. Cardboard itself is 10 million viewers: https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/28/google-has-shipped-10m-cardboard-vr-viewers-160m-cardboard-app-downloads/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/28/google-has-shipped-10m-car... Samsung shipped almost 5 million: https://www.tweaktown.com/news/56150/6-3-million-vr-headsets-shipped-2016/index.html https://www.tweaktown.com/news/56150/6-3-million-vr-headsets... The Chinese VR glasses are sold everywhere in Latin America (I'm not sure if they're actually used or just a novelty item), and I expect them to be in the tens of millions too.
  - ashark 9y ago
    Do people actually use phone-based VR for anything? I got to try one of the Google phones in VR mode for a few minutes and was... thoroughly underwhelmed. It was ugly and unconvincing enough, and so low on interactivity (necessarily, best I could tell, having no input device other than the phone itself) that I can't imagine actually using it on a regular basis, and I'm the guy with a 10-year-old TV and similar-vintage monitor, so my standards aren't exactly high. I'd probably sell or throw away one of the headsets, given it for free. Do people actually use them much? And if so, what for?
Chiba-City 9y ago
First, I worked with Arnold Kling. He's a wonderful guy. I appear in his old book Under the Radar. Second, Kurzweil is a creepy promoter of "inevitability." He is a bright guy with good access to privileged programmatic research. But he is a provocative peddling Howard Stern styled futurist. I prefer Bill Joy's rightfully highlighting our policy options and virtues of learned caution. There are many things people can do we police against for good reasons. Theoretical and now even many applied sciences deliver more cautionary signals than go-go-go signals. Software folks should take that as good news. Solving problems makes problems go away. Nice architecture and good food are their own problems without creating new ones.
rrivers 9y ago
It was my understanding from Kurzweil's books that he never meant for his predictions to be taken literally, rather the suggestions he was predicting would be possible based on his Law of Accelerating Returns. (http://www.kurzweilai.net/the-law-of-accelerating-returns http://www.kurzweilai.net/the-law-of-accelerating-returns) With that said unless I am misunderstood a significant % of his predictions have come true within a ~15-year window which from my humble perspective seems like a really strong track record. While I can understanding the frustration people feel with predictions not being accurate does that lessen the impact of his contributions? As the author mentions cultural factors (as well as political and economic) may prevent the full potential of these changes from being realized. So yes, maybe "X" doesn't exist now, but perhaps 'X" could exist (in terms of the capabilities for it to do so) if we as a collective were focused on bringing it to existence.
- pmoriarty 9y ago
  "unless I am misunderstood a significant % of his predictions have come true within a ~15-year window" Could you give some specific examples of such predictions that weren't also predicted by others at the time?
  - rrivers 9y ago
    The Human Genome Project is one of his most cited examples. After 15 years of work the team was at 1% completion. Critics were vocal about how it would take 100+ years to complete. Kurzweil predicted 7 years (7 Doublings of 1 is 128). I interpret your question in response to my statements as you are not a fan because his predictions are not unique, is that what you are saying?
    - pmoriarty 9y ago
      "The Human Genome Project is one of his most cited examples. After 15 years of work the team was at 1% completion. Critics were vocal about how it would take 100+ years to complete. Kurzweil predicted 7 years (7 Doublings of 1 is 128)." When did he make this prediction? Was it before Craig Venter started working it? Can you quote exactly what he said at the time and provide a source? Also, you originally said a "significant % of his predictions have come true within a ~15-year window". You've mentioned only single prediction. Unless he only made a few predictions, that's not a significant percentage. "I interpret your question in response to my statements as you are not a fan because his predictions are not unique, is that what you are saying?" I just have a severe allergy to people who hype themselves as much as Kurzweil does, especially when one of the main things they're known for -- the singularity idea -- came from someone else: Vernor Vinge. This just smells of charlatanism. I'm open to being convinced otherwise, however. So if you've got more examples of Kurzeweil making long-term predictions well in advance of others and consistently being right, I'd love to hear them. However, even if he is a good futurist, he'll still be a self-promoting copycat on the singularity idea he hyped to the heavens, and for which he made himself most famous.
pmoriarty 9y ago
Is there some way to read this article that doesn't require Javascript?
- tim333 9y ago
  http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:dyQ86ys30pAJ:www.arnoldkling.com/blog/reality-vs-kurzweils-expectations/&num=1&hl=en&gl=uk&strip=1&vwsrc=0 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:dyQ86ys... ?
melling 9y ago
“The majority of text is created using continuous speech recognition (CSR) dictation software. .” Aren’t we actually close with this? Dragon is much better than phones, which don’t have the ability to edit your dictation.
0xbear 9y ago
One thing people don’t realize is those phones you’re carrying, strictly speaking contain more than one “computer”. There are 3 classical CPUs alone in an iPhone: main CPU, CPU that runs the Secure Enclave, and CPU that runs the motion coprocessor. Then there’s also an MCU in the WiFi chip, and another one driving the sensors such as gyros and accelerometers. And that’s without considering the GPU as a separate processor. Shit, Apple Watch contains more than one “computer” nowadays. Frickin’ Raspberry Pi runs two operating systems simultaneously: one on the GPU and one on the CPU.

74 points by drpgq 9y ago

I think Alvin Toffler was much better and down to earth when it came to predicting future trends. Kurzweil's ideas are creative and provoking but are more science fiction than futurism. In contrast, Alvin Toffler created a conceptual framework to understand the paradigm shifts of the post industrial age, and so far it is working.

dheera 9y ago

"You can do virtually anything with anyone regardless of physical proximity. The technology to accomplish this is easy to use and ever present." Try doing anything that involves hardware and inevitably you'll need to have routine conference calls between the US and China. "Can you hear me?" "Sorry can you hear me now?" "How about now?" ... And then there are the calls between the US and US. "I cannot hear you but you can hear me well?" "I still can't hear you" "I guess my computer is directing my speaker signal to my HDMI monitor which doesn't have speakers. Can you please call xxx-xxx-xxxx for the audio? We can keep the video on here."

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Barrin92 9y ago

Kurzweil just seems like a snake oil salesman to me. Ranging from wrong or overly broad predictions to advocating theories of the mind and brain that are rejected by neuroscience to well.. his literal supplement sales websites. The 'futurist' title seems to reside somewhere between science fiction, pop culture with some business credentials thrown in. I don't know what to make of it.

Analemma_ 9y ago
It was bad enough in the 90's and early 00's when it was just him, but now he has kicked off an entire subculture. Kurzweil, de Grey, Hanson, Bostrom, Yudkowsky... all total cranks, and inexplicably popular among ostensibly intelligent people. It's embarrassing.
- yters 9y ago
  Materialists got religion.
- pmoriarty 9y ago
  He didn't even come up with the singularity idea. Vernor Vinge originated it, and a whole bunch of people were discussing it at the time. Kurzweil just jumped on the bandwagon and started hyping it up to such an extent that many mistakenly believe the idea originated with him. It didn't.
  - goatlover 9y ago
    And I.J. Good before Vinge regarding the intelligence explosion.
    - Jach 9y ago
      And all three (Good, Vinge, Kurzweil) views of the Singularity are different. This stuff is old: http://yudkowsky.net/singularity/schools/ http://yudkowsky.net/singularity/schools/ It's amazing that people want to lump in anyone associated with it, or just related moral ideas like "death really sucks, what's a general way to end it?" as cranks of the same sort. Or worse compare it to a religion (http://archive.fo/6oI0u http://archive.fo/6oI0u)
      - pmoriarty 9y ago
        Yudkowsky is another self-promoting hype machine, in the vein of Kurzweil. I wouldn't take him as the most unbiased source on the history of the singularity idea or how "his" ideas differ from the rest.
- drcode 9y ago
  It seems like you're basically just saying that any attempt to predict the future is crankery. I think it would be a sad world if everyone just said "If I can't see it in front of my eyes and it isn't relevant to me today it's a waste of time"
AnimalMuppet 9y ago
Cynically, "futurist" might be well understood in the category of celebrities who are famous only because they are famous. Kurzweil, though, might perhaps be more accurately viewed as a spokesman for a new religion.
philipkglass 9y ago
I see Kurzweil as a sadder figure: someone who achieved a lot as an inventor, and whose overblown prognostications about the future come (largely) from overestimating how quickly everyone else can improve technologies and adopt them. It's sort of a revenge of the mediocrity principle. If you are exceptional, assuming that other people are basically like you can produce disastrously skewed mental models of the world. I'm reminded of the complaint that startups are disproportionately geared toward solving the problems of highly educated, able-bodied adults who have more money than spare time. "I'm like this, my friends are like this, and by the principle of mediocrity we're not unusual... therefore, iOS could use another food delivery app." You need to measure, rather than guess, whether you are unusual relative to large numbers of other people. On top of that Kurzweil appears to have some good old fashioned self-delusion about death: believing he can "bring back" his beloved dead father as software, the life extension supplements, etc. (I don't believe in souls or uncomputable quantum woo in brains. I have no problem in principle with "brain uploads." I think that the obstacles in practice are extremely formidable and typically underestimated by people who have spent more time with computers than with biology.)
- pishpash 9y ago
  Same with Wolfram, I suppose.
  - shobith 9y ago
    How's Wolfram similar? what thoughts of his are "overblown"? I'm curious because I don't see the parallels between the two, while you seem to imply some obviousness.
    - WorldMaker 9y ago
      There's at least somewhat a sense that Wolfram's rabbit holing down Conway's Game/Cellular Automata and calling it "A New Kind of Math" was relatively overblown. Certainly Wolfram has his ego in play/blinders on about certain subjects, and in that way you can easily draw parallels between Wolfram and Kurzweil, depending of course on what your own personal take/opinion on their various pet projects happens to be.
trgv 9y ago
I don't think "snake oil salesman" is apt at all. I don't know the guy, or follow him closely, but I don't think he's dishonest, I just think he's wrong. There's a distinction between a snake oil salesman and someone who actually believes in what they're selling.
- yters 9y ago
  The best liars believe their own lie.
- stouset 9y ago
  He literally sells supplements that he suggests will provide longevity. It’s irrelevant if he believes in their efficacy or not. Alternative health practitioners certainly believe in their remedies. Gwenyth Paltow certainly believes in… whatever absurdities she’s peddling nowadays. The Food Babe probably does too. None of that makes them any less snake oil. Edit: A quick search on Wikipedia shows me I’m wrong. Apparently it’s only snake oil if the seller is aware the product is fraudulent. TIL. Edit 2: I might not be as wrong as I believed. A snake oil salesman can also be a quack who promotes medical practices based upon ignorance, which would definitely encompass Gwenyth Paltrow and the Food Babe.
  - tim333 9y ago
    The supplements thing is a bit of a hobby, not his main business.
  - trgv 9y ago
    I think "snake oil salesman" only applies if the target of the epithet is knowingly perpetrating a fraud. You could (accurately, in my opinion) describe the things Kurzweil is selling as "snake oil" but I wouldn't describe him as a "snake oil salesman." A whole lot of medicine practiced throughout human history has been based on ignorance, but I wouldn't describe medieval doctors (or whichever era) as "snake oil salesmen" because they believed in what they were selling. This is a pretty important distinction, in my mind.
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entee 9y ago

Some of Kurzweil's predictions also suffer from the idea that technology will have knock-on effects in less silicon-related fields like biology and medicine. For sure technology helps in those areas, but I haven't seen a fundamental change in how science is done or how our understanding of biology will start increasing at exponential rates. Fundamentally if you have to do things in physical space, there's a limit to your iteration speed. Also, technology is most helpful at solving known unknowns (in which case you're often limited by meat space as described above), but in core basic science, we're often dealing with unknown unknowns, and there technology rarely helps. Luck and creative leaps usually do better.

drcode 9y ago
I am kinda hoping we're going to see exponential improvements in biology soon: It seems to me the problems with protein folding and simulating cell biology become more approachable when using modern machine learning approaches and that people will find some fruitful methods of attack on that front in the near future.
- entee 9y ago
  That's absolutely true, but also keep in mind the limitations of both the examples you give. Protein folding works pretty ok for short proteins on the order of ~200 amino acids. It gets considerably less good as the proteins get bigger. This is unsurprising, bigger proteins represent an exponentially bigger search space and there are fewer and fewer known protein structures as the size of protein increases, so your library of exemplars is smaller (hurting ML approaches). Lets not even speak of protein complexes or dynamic protein interactions. Even at the end of the prediction, you still have to prove your result by getting an actual crystal which is not always easy. Cell biology simulation is a whole other ball game, and I don't know that area nearly as well. But from the little I understand, we have some very basic mathematical models of a cell that work in a limited way at a very high level. To get those things to work a number of extremely simplifying (but useful in some contexts) assumptions are made, which limits the broader applications of those simulations. Simulating a whole cell very quickly gets into the realm of definitely not computationally tractable given the enormous number of entities in the cell. It's a fiendishly hard problem, I hope we get there someday, but I think it'll be a long while.

drcode 9y ago

I think the dude deserves a bit of a break- It really doesn't matter if he got 10%, 50% or 90% of his predictions right, all that matters is whether he made better and more relevant predictions than others at the time. On that measure, I think he scored reasonably well (Though I confess I sold some Google stock when they installed him as Director of Engineering)

arkades 9y ago
No, it matters what his reasoning is, too, as it relates to just being lucky (or as I tell my nieces when they’re studying for a science class and guess the right answer: if you’re right for the wrong reasons, you’re still wrong.) If you read his books, there’s an awful lot of hand waving and re- or mis-defining of terms to suit his arguments. It’s the sort of stuff that wouldn’t fly in a HS thesis paper, never mind as something marketed to bright minds.
- drcode 9y ago
  The article we're discussing is about rating the accuracy of Kurzweil's predictions, it is not about the soundness of his reasoning. I agree that regardless of how we rate his predictions, the strategy he used to make those predictions has issues of its own.

lsd5you 9y ago

The cynic in me sees that Kurzweil's predictions align with his unassisted life expectancy. So in some sense it's not surprising that he's being over optimistic. I'm not generally a fan, but we have to give some credit to 'futurologists' who are prepared to make predictions! At least it makes for some interesting discussion.

radiorental 9y ago
> but we have to give some credit to 'futurologists' who are prepared to make predictions! I'm sorry, I do have to disagree. It's little more than recognizing a problem and envisioning a solution. Ideas are cheap. And in that sense they are little more than entrepreneurs with grand long term visions that require no commitment. Give credit to those who put blood and sweat behind their visions - and make them happen, not make vague 'predictions'. That's what Hollywood is for. I predict in the future we will be creating food from carbon scrubbed from atmosphere. I predict in the future that humans will communicate with machines through quantum teleportation via implants I predicate that in the future that if these predictions don't hold true, no one I know will be around to call me on it.
- WorldMaker 9y ago
  > And in that sense they are little more than entrepreneurs with grand long term visions that require no commitment. In light of Kurzweil specifically, he has at least some investment skin in the game in many (most?) cases of his predictions. All VCs to some extent are generally more optimistic than not that at least some of their bets will play out, and in my experience are more than happy to describe many of those bets in wild detail given the chance. (His only real "sin" here seems more that he's captured mainstream intrigue/interest more so than the average VC, whether because they prefer to play their cards a bit closer to their vest and/or mostly just stick to leaving their prognostications here on HN far from the limelight. ;)
  - radiorental 9y ago
    Entrepreneurs ≠ VCs That said, I appreciate Kurzeil has attempted to build products somewhat inline with his visions. E.g. https://www.kurzweiledu.com/products/kurzweil-1000-v14-windows.html https://www.kurzweiledu.com/products/kurzweil-1000-v14-windo... But these are mere tinker toys compared to the grand predictions, and mostly failed products too.

romaniv 9y ago

If you want an example of clear thinking about the future, I highly recommend reading Summa Technologiae by Stanislaw Lem. Instead of predicting low-level tech advances he speaks about what drives technology development in general and drafts several possible trajectories for the future. I've only read it this year and the sheer fact that a 1964 book about technology doesn't seem hopelessly outdated in 2017 speaks in its favor.

jarmitage 9y ago
+1 incredible text, thanks for the reminder to re-read
pmoriarty 9y ago
Also check out "The Machine Stops"[1] by E. M. Forster (more famous for writing "A Passage to India" and "A Room With a View"). Written in 1909, it foreshadowed the internet, VR, instantaneous global communication, chat rooms, internet addiction, and other things we take for granted now but were incredibly visionary 120 years ago. [1] - http://archive.ncsa.illinois.edu/prajlich/forster.html http://archive.ncsa.illinois.edu/prajlich/forster.html

AnimalMuppet 9y ago

My impression is that his predictions about electronics have done better than his predictions about biology, consciousness, and AI. Unfortunately, the areas he did less well in are the areas where he is placing his hope...

ggm 9y ago

He's a busted flush. Stock market improvements over the same interval did better than his prognostications, which means you would get better trend advice from a one-liner: "follow the money" Hubris appears to have magic flotation properties. I don't expect Mr Kurzweil to stop bobbing along, singing his song, on the sea of emerging trends.

yanivleven 9y ago

Very interesting read. Im a big fan of his work even though some of it might be a bit off. It was part of the inspiration to building my company. This is the first blog I ever wrote about the company: http://blog.panoply.io/why-we-built-panoply.io-and-what-ray-kurzweils-law-of-accelerated-returns-has-to-do-with-it http://blog.panoply.io/why-we-built-panoply.io-and-what-ray-...

gwern 9y ago

> For 2019, Kurzweil predicted virtual reality glasses being in “routine” use. That does not look like it will happen. What? At the most charitable and even holding it to 2019 strictly instead of allowing a few years, you're going to have to parse 'routine' to mean very large numbers, otherwise this is obviously going to be true. Sales of the best-known top-end VR headsets (Oculus+Vive+PSVR) are already around 1m; throw in Gear, Daydream, Cardboard, and the various other Chinese, Microsoft, and miscellaneous projects, and it's at least double that. The last time I walked through a Best Buy, I saw a Oculus demo; the last time I walked through a mall, I saw a Vive demo. And 2017 is not over yet, leaving 2 full years. (For comparison, the Vive & Rift haven't even been out for 2 years.) The cost of the headsets has been dropping rapidly and capabilities improving, with Rift and Touch going for ~$350 in Black Friday sales and the last Nvidia/AMD GPU generation also cut hundreds of dollars off the price of entry. On top of that, everyone expects considerable improvements: untethered/wireless will soon be feasible, the screens are expanding, and tracking is going inside-out. Something like Oculus Go but higher-quality is closer to what you should expect in 2019/2020. Even assuming no growth in sales due to the cost continuously decreasing & quality improving or the buildup of respectable software libraries, that still implies several million top-end VR headsets in use. How is that not 'routine'?

GFischer 9y ago
The Google Cardboard-style VR and chinese clones are outselling Oculus and Vives by an order of magnitude at least. Cardboard itself is 10 million viewers: https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/28/google-has-shipped-10m-cardboard-vr-viewers-160m-cardboard-app-downloads/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/28/google-has-shipped-10m-car... Samsung shipped almost 5 million: https://www.tweaktown.com/news/56150/6-3-million-vr-headsets-shipped-2016/index.html https://www.tweaktown.com/news/56150/6-3-million-vr-headsets... The Chinese VR glasses are sold everywhere in Latin America (I'm not sure if they're actually used or just a novelty item), and I expect them to be in the tens of millions too.
- ashark 9y ago
  Do people actually use phone-based VR for anything? I got to try one of the Google phones in VR mode for a few minutes and was... thoroughly underwhelmed. It was ugly and unconvincing enough, and so low on interactivity (necessarily, best I could tell, having no input device other than the phone itself) that I can't imagine actually using it on a regular basis, and I'm the guy with a 10-year-old TV and similar-vintage monitor, so my standards aren't exactly high. I'd probably sell or throw away one of the headsets, given it for free. Do people actually use them much? And if so, what for?

Chiba-City 9y ago

First, I worked with Arnold Kling. He's a wonderful guy. I appear in his old book Under the Radar. Second, Kurzweil is a creepy promoter of "inevitability." He is a bright guy with good access to privileged programmatic research. But he is a provocative peddling Howard Stern styled futurist. I prefer Bill Joy's rightfully highlighting our policy options and virtues of learned caution. There are many things people can do we police against for good reasons. Theoretical and now even many applied sciences deliver more cautionary signals than go-go-go signals. Software folks should take that as good news. Solving problems makes problems go away. Nice architecture and good food are their own problems without creating new ones.

rrivers 9y ago

It was my understanding from Kurzweil's books that he never meant for his predictions to be taken literally, rather the suggestions he was predicting would be possible based on his Law of Accelerating Returns. (http://www.kurzweilai.net/the-law-of-accelerating-returns http://www.kurzweilai.net/the-law-of-accelerating-returns) With that said unless I am misunderstood a significant % of his predictions have come true within a ~15-year window which from my humble perspective seems like a really strong track record. While I can understanding the frustration people feel with predictions not being accurate does that lessen the impact of his contributions? As the author mentions cultural factors (as well as political and economic) may prevent the full potential of these changes from being realized. So yes, maybe "X" doesn't exist now, but perhaps 'X" could exist (in terms of the capabilities for it to do so) if we as a collective were focused on bringing it to existence.

pmoriarty 9y ago
"unless I am misunderstood a significant % of his predictions have come true within a ~15-year window" Could you give some specific examples of such predictions that weren't also predicted by others at the time?
- rrivers 9y ago
  The Human Genome Project is one of his most cited examples. After 15 years of work the team was at 1% completion. Critics were vocal about how it would take 100+ years to complete. Kurzweil predicted 7 years (7 Doublings of 1 is 128). I interpret your question in response to my statements as you are not a fan because his predictions are not unique, is that what you are saying?
  - pmoriarty 9y ago
    "The Human Genome Project is one of his most cited examples. After 15 years of work the team was at 1% completion. Critics were vocal about how it would take 100+ years to complete. Kurzweil predicted 7 years (7 Doublings of 1 is 128)." When did he make this prediction? Was it before Craig Venter started working it? Can you quote exactly what he said at the time and provide a source? Also, you originally said a "significant % of his predictions have come true within a ~15-year window". You've mentioned only single prediction. Unless he only made a few predictions, that's not a significant percentage. "I interpret your question in response to my statements as you are not a fan because his predictions are not unique, is that what you are saying?" I just have a severe allergy to people who hype themselves as much as Kurzweil does, especially when one of the main things they're known for -- the singularity idea -- came from someone else: Vernor Vinge. This just smells of charlatanism. I'm open to being convinced otherwise, however. So if you've got more examples of Kurzeweil making long-term predictions well in advance of others and consistently being right, I'd love to hear them. However, even if he is a good futurist, he'll still be a self-promoting copycat on the singularity idea he hyped to the heavens, and for which he made himself most famous.

pmoriarty 9y ago

Is there some way to read this article that doesn't require Javascript?

tim333 9y ago
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:dyQ86ys30pAJ:www.arnoldkling.com/blog/reality-vs-kurzweils-expectations/&num=1&hl=en&gl=uk&strip=1&vwsrc=0 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:dyQ86ys... ?

melling 9y ago

“The majority of text is created using continuous speech recognition (CSR) dictation software. .” Aren’t we actually close with this? Dragon is much better than phones, which don’t have the ability to edit your dictation.

0xbear 9y ago

One thing people don’t realize is those phones you’re carrying, strictly speaking contain more than one “computer”. There are 3 classical CPUs alone in an iPhone: main CPU, CPU that runs the Secure Enclave, and CPU that runs the motion coprocessor. Then there’s also an MCU in the WiFi chip, and another one driving the sensors such as gyros and accelerometers. And that’s without considering the GPU as a separate processor. Shit, Apple Watch contains more than one “computer” nowadays. Frickin’ Raspberry Pi runs two operating systems simultaneously: one on the GPU and one on the CPU.