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2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal
- Luff 16y agoThe Law of Futurology: y - t = 0 y = approximate number of years left in the life of a futurist t = years futurist thinks it will be until immortality is discovered http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1968 http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1968
- JulianMorrison 16y agoWhich would make sense as a complaint if Kurzweil were giving a date without any context, but makes no sense when set against: 1. a rolling series of more mundane predictions providing justification and context 2. some of which were made in the past concerning the present, and were mostly right.
- mtrn 16y agoSingle page version: http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,2048138,00.html http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,2048138,00.html
- ohharrow 16y agoDoes this mean the Mayans were off by 33 years?
- AffableSpatula 16y agoRay Kurzweil was on Opie and Anthony last week (February 4, 2011).. was obviously light-hearted, but pretty decent interview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHlmt5xz4RM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHlmt5xz4RM
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- bvttf 16y agoHe was on "I've got a secret" in 1965, Wikipedia says born in 1948. So pretty close to 100.
- randomwalker 16y agoThanks for the correction.
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- juliennakache 16y agoIt's just a great summary of the concerns I'm living with on a day-to-day basis. Everything is there for non-geek to understand the big picture. AI, Robotics, Singularity, Biotics will lead us to the biggest disruption of the mankind era. One subject that I like that is not talked about : the ability of those supermind to work together lightning fast to form an even more powerful machine or robot.
- juliennakache 16y agoNice video of Ray Kurzweil talking about all that and Watson(IBM) playing Jeopardy!. http://www.usatoday.com/money/media/2011-02-09-kurzweil09_ST_N.htm http://www.usatoday.com/money/media/2011-02-09-kurzweil09_ST...
- jtagen 16y agoWhy does everyone seem to think that machine intelligence is solely a function of processor speed?
- AffableSpatula 16y agoThey don't, and neither does Ray Kurzweil
- JulianMorrison 16y agoYou'd better hope it is. If hardware is what limits the rate of improvement of AI, you get slow growth. If knowledge of how to write the software (perhaps by copying algorithms from the brain) limits it, then you get sudden improvements and serious potential for a runaway singularity.
- arethuza 16y agoI'm pretty sure the "knowledge of how to write the software" is the most complex part of the problem by far. However, one outside chance of a limit may be that the brain is doing something that is fundamentally different to the kinds of operations carried out by a normal computer - which is essentially the argument in The Emperor's New Mind. When I read that book at the height of my own AI enthusiasm I thought it was pretty silly. However, after reading Anathem (of all things) it made me wonder if perhaps Penrose may have had a point.
- ErrantX 16y agoI think that the limitations we face vary depending on what model you are trying to solve. So; are you trying to create software that "emulates" human intelligence (i.e. AI)? In which case, yes, software is the major limitation. Or are you trying to create an artificial (and independently functioning) model of the human brain? In which case you have two limits; hardware speed. But also a huge lack of knowledge about the "secrets" of our brains :) I suspect #1 will be first solved.
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- SimonPStevens 16y agoAll of Kurzweil's predictions are based on extrapolating exponential growth. That's all very well, but exponential growth in physical systems is usually restricted within limits. In a such a system the negative feedback may also be growing exponentially, which means although initially it may be too small to be noticed, after the growth passes some boundary the negative feedback becomes relevant and the overall growth is no longer exponential. Unfortunately it's impossible to tell where we are on the growth graph (Although some claim that probability suggests that we are closer to the end. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_argument http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_argument). Kurzweil makes the assumption we are at the beginning of the growth curve. We could be at the end where the negative feedback is about to overtake and growth will slow. There will be limits. The speed of light could be a hard limit on computing speed. Or ultimately heat-death could be the hard limit, but there is a limit somewhere. The question is how close are we to the limit and that is something we are only likely to know when we reach it. See - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponential_growth#Limitations_of_models http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponential_growth#Limitations_...
- AffableSpatula 16y ago"The question is how close are we to the limit and that is something we are only likely to know when we reach it." You've posed the question and then immediately explained why it's fruitless to ask. Even if you are right that there must be limits; if you have no idea when his models are likely to break down then your skepticism is no more solid than his prediction.
- SimonPStevens 16y agoMy scepticism is of the implicit claim that you make predictions by extrapolating exponential growth curves. You can't, you can only make predictions up to the point the exponential growth breaks down, and as you can't predict that point before it happens you can't make predictions. I'm not saying he is wrong about the next 100 years, the singularity or AI, I'm saying may be wrong about the short term and he certainly can't be right indefinitely.
- arethuza 16y agoI read pretty much exactly the same prediction in "The Mighty Micro" in the early 80s (intelligent machines. immortality) etc. - which pretty much influenced me to do a CS degree and go into postgraduate AI research. Nobody would be more delighted than me if immortality is achieved in 2045 (I'll be 80!) but do I expect it? Not really, nor do I expect effective commercial fusion power either (which also has a habit of being a couple of decades away and has been for the last 60 years). [Edit: Note that I do believe that artificial general intelligence is perfectly possible (we do, after all, have a working example) just that it won't happen any time soon.]
- ez77 16y agowe do, after all, have a working example Which one?
- dmd 16y agoHint: You're using it right now. Hopefully.
- ez77 16y agoDo you mean the Internet? How would that be intelligence? Or do you mean my brain? That's not artificial intelligence (at least not obviously artificial!). Edit: Maybe you meant a computer... but that would be quite a long shot. In short, spell it out, guys!
- arethuza 16y agoSorry - I did mean we have an example of a class of system that exhibits general intelligence, not "artificial" general intelligence.
- ez77 16y agoWhy the downvote? Was the last sentence considered rude? I can only hope I wasn't downvoted for 'lack of IQ' in not understanding a hint...
- rue 16y agoI remain unconvinced that a transplanted consciousness would really be the same person as opposed to a new, identical person. What's worse, it might be impossible to tell the difference since even the new consciousness wouldn't be able to know. … But it'd really suck to be the last generation before some significant increase in lifespan (say, up to 200) is reached.
- arethuza 16y agoGreg Egan's Permuation City has an interesting examination of what might happen to "copies": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permutation_City http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permutation_City
- matthiaswh 16y agoOn the same note, the Asgard race of aliens from Stargate SG-1 were also copies. Later episodes in the series address the same sort of scenario.
- jokermatt999 16y agoAnd his short story "Learning to be me" (I think that's the one) present a slightly more horrifying take on it.
- nooneelse 16y agoI found David Brin's novel Kiln People to be an fun enough read and an interesting take on thoughts related to human consciousness copying. He uses an entirely different technical mechanism to get the copying, thus allowing a different angle in the thinking.
- mchouza 16y agoAn interesting animation about this topic by John Weldon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdxucpPq6Lc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdxucpPq6Lc
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- twfarland 16y agoSometimes I think we are driven by our animal instincts, and that intelligence is just 'processing power' that modulates or assists those instincts. I wonder, would a system with unlimited processing power even 'want' to develop and expand if it didn't have any 'urges?' Or would there be a chance that it would happen upon the creation of its own arbitrary 'instincts?'
- JoeAltmaier 16y agoThis is actually very insightful. Our brains are NOT a computer, we are NOT just thinking machines. An 'intelligent' computer may be no more comprehensible to us than an intelligent amoeba, intelligent tree or intelligent stellar gas cluster. Sure we could learn to communicate with it by math, or clicks or something. But can we ever communicate at a meaningful level without ANY common ground? Will it 'want' what we want? Will it even know the meaning of that? TV shows may have it right - a machine intelligence may be (probably will be) staggeringly unconcerned with human desires. Sure you can point to machines designed to simulate human activity (create music/speak/do logic). These are like puppets that look like a machine intelligence, or clever videos of what a machine intelligence might act like. An intelligent machine won't be a simulation, it will be some massive construct of neural nodes complex enough to spark into thought. And it will think what it will think. For instance it might think "what a massively boring place, sitting here in the dark with no inputs and nobody to talk to. I think I'll stop". Anyway, you get the idea.
- twfarland 16y agoThanks... I just think there is some old-school anthropomorphism at work here. They're putting a human face on an incomprehensible force, just as the ancients did when creating a god for a natural force that was perhaps equally incomprehensible to them.
- norswap 16y agoThe article states that "computer are getting faster faster". I personally wouldn't be so sure, have they not heard about the end of Moore's law ? A more fundamental issue for me is that computer aren't able to think in place of people. If you want to work on hard problems, you have to learn all the relevant information beforehand. Thus setting a hard limit on how much progress can be made, provided we do not find ways to learn faster or to make computers think for us. Add to this that for me many domains of knowledge nowadays are presented in unnecessary complex ways. We are building (and this is especially true in computer science) a bunch of complexity based on a bunch of complexity. I believe that one day the piled complexity will lead us to a standstill and that we will have to seriously simplify some systems.
- marknadal 16y agoCould we invest our time in discovering what consciousness is first before we make predictions about machine consciousness? We used to call this type of behavior superstition: a belief not based on human reason or scientific knowledge, an irrational fear of future events.
- bgurupra 16y agoI have absolutely no expertise in this but I have a feeling that for machines to better us , they need to be engineered at least better than the human brain.And considering Watson is bleeding edge computer and needs a computer as big as a room and lots of power whereas the Human brain fits in a shoe box and can run on a glass of milk and a tuna sandwich - there is a quite a bit of ground to cover before we hit singularity!
- jamesjyu 16y agoWell, you'd need to include the rest of the body in that size estimate for the brain, since it needs that in order to function properly :)
- lukeschlather 16y agoHow much power does it take to create a glass of milk and a tuna sandwich? To be sure, this Watson is unwieldy, but the gap might be closer than you think. Also, Ken Jennings is 37, and you can bet he spent 20 years being trained by experts in human learning. So the question I have to ask is, could one train a human child to do this in the same time that Watson has been around? I suspect it's not possible, at least not with consistent results. It looks like Watson is only 5-10 years old, depending on your reckoning.
- bgurupra 16y agoPlease don't get me wrong, no doubt Watson is an amazing accomplishment but my point was it almost seems cocky that we talk about creating a level of intelligence on par of humans considering nature took millions and millions of years to do it.Mankind has made some decent scientific progress only in the last 200 years more or less and we have not be able to create even living organism as simple as a Virus yet.Again I have no background in these topics but just sounds to me that we are a little off when we talk about creating Singularity in the near future!
- bgurupra 16y agoplus the way I understood , Watson has tons of algorithms of finding the answer and it runs all of those on the input in massively parallel system with processing speed much higher than the human brain , if Ken Jennings is using a much much smaller and slower device and still is almost par I think the engineering of watson is almost trivial compared to the Brain considering Ken's brains also tracking other 20 million parameters of his body and regulating all of that at the same time
- paulnelligan 16y agoyou can try to quantify all you want, but consciousness is something which cannot be quantified. This argument is irrelevant IMHO.
- wazoox 16y ago> W.B. Yeats describes mankind's fleshly predicament as a soul fastened to a dying animal. This is an old, tired, dualist judeo-christian view. And it's totally false; there isn't any thing called "soul" that could be separated from the body. It's part of it, a secretion of sort of the whole brain and body. Even a real brain kept in a bottle wouldn't properly behave like a real human, IMO. This is all quite ridiculous, really.
- jasongullickson 16y agoEven a real brain kept in a bottle wouldn't properly behave like a real human I'm curious as to how you support this statement?
- jacques_chester 16y agoI think that taking zoloft is what helped me to realise, deep down, that I really am a simulation running on a meat substrate.
- grellas 16y agoProgress hyperaccelerates, and every hour brings a century's worth of scientific breakthroughs. We ditch Darwin and take charge of our own evolution. The human genome becomes just so much code to be bug-tested and optimized and, if necessary, rewritten. Indefinite life extension becomes a reality; people die only if they choose to. Death loses its sting once and for all. Kurzweil hopes to bring his dead father back to life. I am a theist because I believe that human beings - flawed, fallible, finite, and mortal - derive ultimate meaning and hope from believing in something that is bigger than themselves. Now, some will say that this is a delusion and that it is vital to maintaining an intelligent outlook on life that one stay with what is observable, verifiable, and controllable as a way both of explaining and living life. All of which is fine, as my point here is not to enter into non-hacker-related topics. But, that said, when I read statements like those quoted above from this article, I can't help but think that statements such as these reflect what is merely the scientific equivalent of needing to believe in something that is bigger than ourselves as part of retaining hope in this life - this taking the form, in Singularity thinking, of something akin to attaining human perfectability via an exponentially expanding knowledge base that presumably will be applied by humanity toward good and not toward evil. Obviously, this view is grounded in the science of what computers have done and potentially can do in the future but the final step in the analysis - that immortality will be achieved and that (it would seem) all major human problems will be solved through this superior intelligence - strikes me as being more about faith than about science.
- loup-vaillant 16y ago> I am a theist because I believe that [we] derive ultimate meaning and hope from believing in something that is bigger than [us]. Wait a minute, you admit that you believe in something because it feels good? It sounds like you want to believe in God, but actually don't really. I'd like to test that, so please forgive the following troll. God doesn't exist, and those who believe it does are wrong (yes, my belief is that strong). Now, is your belief so strong that you feel the urge to respond something like "no you're wrong, God does exist"? I don't ask for evidence (the internet has plenty), just a yes or a no, followed by your estimated probability that God exists if you wish.
- realmojo 16y ago2045: The Year Man Becomes Reduntant
- jpzeni 16y agoBlarg ... Please no more posts about the Deepak Chopra of technology
- markkat 16y agoI think we put far too much human bias on what 'intelligence' means. I don't suspect that we will have 'Data' of Star Trek', or a rise of the machines. My guess is that something wholly unexpected will result. A different consciousness will probably interact with the universe in a unrecognizable manner, probably more defined by its unique needs and limitations than by anything we can relate to. I'd wager that new AI will quickly begin to ignore us, to the extent that they are able.
- grammaton 16y agoOut of curiosity, what, exactly, are Kurzweil's qualifications to be making predictions like this? I see that he's done a fair share of building music synthesizers. Neat! But I don't see how he made the leap from qualified to make a synthesizer to qualified to make broad predictions about computing and biotechnological trends over the next three decades....
- krupan 16y agoSo we are all going to upload our intelligence to a machine that when our physical bodies wear out? And then no more feeling the pleasure of eating good food and drinking good drink? No more joy at mastering a new physical skill? No adrenaline rushes while bombing down snowy hills on skis? No more runners high during a long run? No cuddling with a loved one? I don't know, I guess it'd be better than just dying, but not by much.