Ray Kurzweil's Vision of the Singularity, In Movie Form 366
destinyland writes "AI researcher Ben Goertzel peeks at the new Ray Kurzweil movie (Transcendent Man), and
gives it 'two nano-enhanced cyberthumbs way, way up!' But in an exchange with Kurzweil after the screening, Goertzel debates the
post-human future, asking whether individuality can survive in a machine-augmented brain.
The documentary covers radical futurism, but also includes alternate viewpoints.
'Would I build these machines, if I knew there was a strong chance they would destroy humanity?' asks evolvable hardware researcher Hugo de Garis. His answer? 'Yeah.'" Note, the movie is about Kurzweil and futurism, not by Kurzweil. Update: 05/06 20:57 GMT by T : Note, Singularity Hub has a review up, too.
Better Review at Singularity Hub (Score:3, Informative)
Waaaay more than Moore's Law (Score:2, Informative)
He's talking about genetic enhancement, nano technology, robotics, AI and more.
And you "only" need one of these to reach a critical level for the Singularity to occur.
For instance:
*Genetically enhance humans to be better at genetically enhancing humans, rinse and repeat.
*Make strong AI capable of creating stronger AI, etc
I recommend his book "The Singularity Is Near".
Free preview at google: http://books.google.com/books?id=88U6hdUi6D0C&printsec=frontcover&dq=kurzweil#PPA19,M1 [google.com]
His website has some interesting stuff, including opposing points of view.
http://www.kurzweilai.net/ [kurzweilai.net]
Re:All about dates now. (Score:3, Informative)
Not exactly. He says, cool stuff is getting more and more frequent.
And this isn't just about human discoveries, it is observable in evolution of life as well.
And that's what makes it scary, what if we were not the first :)
Then definitely we won't be the last.
Re:All about dates now. (Score:5, Informative)
No, his argument is that lots of cool stuff happened in the past, and the cool stuff is happening more and more rapidly as time goes on. Basically, each major 'cool thing' that happens increases the amount of processing power being used to solve the next problem and create the next cool thing.
Agriculture led to a massive population increase that in turn led to more human beings working to solve problems. Iron tools reduced the time it took to do tasks and freed up more time for other pursuits. The printing press led to the education of vast numbers of people who would otherwise have remained ignorant. Computers aid research in ways that no one could have imagined 70 years ago.
If you grant that progress is happing at an accellerating rate, there comes a time in the future where things change dramatically in very short periods of time. If you chose to call that point "OMG ponnies!!!!!" so be it.
Re:I think Kurzweil is an unrealistic optimist. (Score:5, Informative)
They may choose not to more now, but to the extent they do it is largely due to media-driven hysteria; while the actual incidence of the kinds of crime that are the focus of the fears behind that decision has declined while the perception of the incidence of those crimes has increased.
Re:As Jon Stewart would put it.. (Score:3, Informative)
Pardon me... what the hell is "faster than real time"? Does that mean it comes up with the answers before you ask the question?
Faster than the human brain thinks.
IIRC, the human brain fires off at like 200 mhz. That may not be 100% accurate, I cannot recall where I read that factoid and a quick Google search doesn't collaborate -- but ultimately the specific numbers don't matter.
Assuming a brain does go at 200mhz... Once a simulated human brain goes faster than 200 mhz, by definition you have something that can think faster than a human.
Currently a cheap desktop will run at about 10-20 times faster than that, speaking in pure mhz. In 10-20 years 200mhz will be something the little CPU in a teddy bear runs at or the little kit you can buy at Radio Shack for a 5 year old science geek in training to play with.
We won't be talking about Gigahertz, Terahertz, or even Petahertz. We MIGHT be talking about Exahertz, if the term isn't meaningless by then.
So assuming that we have a working emulated brain by then, it's not unreasonable that we'll just run it at 200thz instead of 200mhz. Instantly you have someone who is seeing "weeks" pass per second. Combine that with the not unlikely idea that that simulated person will be hooked up -- and gaining all the benefits of -- a computer with an network connection, and it's not unreasonable to imagine that said person is going to be really, really good at thinking new stuff up. Especially when you consider the first people they'll likely do this to are the people that are working on doing this in the first place.
And that's assuming we're not able to reverse engineer our consciousness by just looking at what this simulation does. And once we have someone hooked up to one of these systems reverse engineering one of these systems... well, sure, it might take hundreds of years to get done, but when those hundreds of years are passing in a few days in a computer simulated brain...
Don't discount the effects of new hardware on software projects. They said the human genome project was a huge waste of time because computers at the time would take hundreds of years to finish the project. Computers got better, that time got cut down exponentially. This may look insurmountable right now, but in 20 years we won't recognize computers as they are now.
Re:Machines won't destroy us. (Score:5, Informative)
Machines have deprived millions of people of a decent living under their own control.
Oh good grief. Machines and technology in general are the only reason any of us have a "decent living" in the first place.
The initial promise of machines was that they would free us from the drudgery of work, but all they have done is make us work in boring jobs
As opposed to the hotbed of excitement in subsistence farming? Well, I suppose there's a certain thrill in finding out each week whether or not you're going to starve.
So tell me again about how the Luddites were wrong.
Because your romanticized version of the past never existed.