I recently purchased The Age of Spiritual Machines from Amazon. Ray Kurzweil is one of the most interesting people on the bleeding edge of the singularity. This book was published in 1999, and in it Kurzweil daringly predicts what technological trends will occur within the next 100 years. His predictions are nothing short of astounding. By 2019, he predicts machines will nearly be (if not more) as intelligent as human brains. By 2030, we will have artificial intelligence. Computers will be everywhere, in all sorts of forms. Their exponentially growing computing power and diversity of intelligence will help us unlock genetics, extend life and eventually upload our consciousness into synthetic brains. Sound outrageous to you? There is a method behind Kurzweil’s madness. A simple trend: his primary thesis is that evolution accelerates over time, doubling over on itself until it reaches a critical explosive point, a “singularity.”Secondly, evolution requires chaos in order to generate exponential growth. The technological evolution will reach its singularity very soon. Our biological evolution has its own history; humans have been able to invent and transform themselves faster than ever before. Even before our tool-making ancestors walked the earth, life had its own singularity during the cambrian explosion, or the first rapid apperance of complex life. Paradigms seem to be whizzing by us at alarmingly increasing rates. Kurzweil argues and demonstrates that technology is a produt of evolution, and the future of a new kind of artificial life. Life has extended to inorganic matter.
For a good demonstrate of this whole thesis, check out this TED Talk:
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