Ray Kurzweil's "The Singularity is Near"

popo writes "The Wall Street Journal has a (publicly accessible) review of "The Singularity is Near" -- a new book by futurist, Ray Kurzweil. By "Singularity", Kurzweil refers not to a collapsed supernova, but instead to an extraordinarily bright future in which technological progress has leapt by such exponentially large bounds that it will be... well, for lack of a better word: 'utopian'. "Mr. Kurzweil... thinking exponentially, imagines a plausible future, not so far away, with extended life-spans (living to 300 will not be unusual), vastly more powerful computers (imagine more computing power in a head-sized device than exists in all the human brains alive today), other miraculous machines (nanotechnology assemblers that can make most anything out of sunlight and dirt) and, thanks to these technologies, enormous increases in wealth (the average person will be capable of feats, like traveling in space, only available to nation-states today)." On one hand its fantastically (even ridiculously) optimistic, but on the other hand, I sure as hell hope he's right." Got mailed a review copy; I'm not finished yet, but I agree - optimistic perhaps, but the future does look pretty interesting.

Well hurry the hell up then.

Things have pretty much sucked up to this point.

Re:Well hurry the hell up then.

Yes, I'd much rather be plowing fields daily and walking by foot in the snow to the store. Oh yea, things may seem suckey, but only in comparison to your wishes. Trust me, utopia will be sucky too, such is the vastness of human desire.

Re:Well hurry the hell up then.

Trust me, utopia will be sucky too, such is the vastness of human desire.

Exactly. Without a significant shift in human cultures any utopia cannot happen, whether we have the technology or not. We could never agree on what utopia should be like, and would fight about it.

Re:Well hurry the hell up then.

" Things have pretty much sucked up to this point."
Yea we still have thousands of children with Polio in Ironlungs...
Actually the world is a pretty good place in most developed countries. It is even a lot better than it was 50 years ago in the developing countries.
The correct way to look at it is not that the present sucks, but how can we make the future better.

WSJ Writer is Glenn Reynolds of InstaPundit Fame

The writer of the WSJ piece was Glenn Reynolds who is identified as "a professor of law at the University of Tennessee but is probably better know for his InstaPundit.Com Blog. [instapundit.com] Interesting piece - Glenn has been published numerous times in the WSJ and (staying out of politics because people get overly zealous about this), writes some darn good stuff IMHO.

HULK's Halloween decorations webcam is up! [komar.org]

Optimisim sells...

You can sell more copies of a book that talks about how we will all be rich and immortal than you can of one that predicts more of the same.

Re:Optimisim sells...

I don't know; Jared Diamond seems to be selling a lot of copies of Collapse.

Re:Yeah

Though I understand your point, I don't completely agree. I think one of the best example would be the internet and the revolution it brought. Yes, I call a revolution having access to such an infinite source of knowledge, having to rethink many business models because of new consumer habits (*ahem*RIAA*ahem*), allowing people to publish their own thoughts and receive feedbacks without having to be ripped off by some publisher (blogs), letting people compare the news and judge by themselves what's true/right or not (CNN vs AlJazeera, for an extreme exemple), and I could go on and on.

And that's just ONE innovation. A major innovation that brought so many changes that we can tell right away it is revolutionary. Even if in 30 or 40 years, the internet is a thing of the past, some other new type of network will emerge to replace it. The internet changed our way of life so much that we can hardly imagine living without it, IMHO.

Re:Yeah

Folks, I've met Ray and done business with his KAI company. He is freakin' brilliant...and then some. That's not to say his "utopian future" is any more likely than "Jetson flying cars", but he's certainly NOT a goofball or charlatan. I'm currently reading "Fantastic Voyage", his book about life extension. Having a background in medicine, I can say that the things he and the doctor co-author cite are both plausible and in agreement with current research for the most part. Ray is a diabetic who no longer requires insulin injections; he manages his illness through diet and exercise. This quest to fight his illness led to the book. So from his own experience, the quality if not the length of his life has improved through application of some of the ideas in the book. SOO, I'm not going to dismiss the new book until I've read it...he might be right! :o)

Re:Optimisim sells...

From a physics standpoint, you only need "the poor" (really, "the working class") for two reasons:

1. To produce mechanical power
2. To intelligently apply that mechanical power

The former reason is why so many ancient civilizations used slaves. Being able to generate about 200kWs (~500kWs burst) of power may not seem like much, but if you put enough people together you can power ships, lift boulders, hammer out the sides of mountains, and other laborous activities.

Obviously, animals of burden can provide much more power than humans, but they often fail the latter need. i.e. You can yoke an animal and ask it to move forward, but you'll have a hard time getting it to assemble something for you. That's why humans are still necessary. They know how to apply power.

Today, computers and robotics combined with various power generation techniques have allowed us to manage both requirements with great success. For example, much of the construction of a car is repetitive work. Create a proper computer program and a robot can do the work faster and cheaper.

That's why there's an ever shrinking lower-class population. The focus has gone from doing the work to providing tools and maintenence to do the work. This has placed the majority of the population in a better position than before. A side effect of this "nearly everyone is middle class" change is that more tools can be produced. More tool production means that more work can be done. More work translates directly into more goods and cheaper prices.

The problems of today...

aren't with the technology. We have "utopian" level technology compared to 80 years ago right now. The problem is with the people.

Look at Russia. Rampant alcholism, suicide, murder, gansterism, etc. Yet it is perfectly capable of sending off spaceships and creating high level technology.

I appreciate and welcome all the anticpated advances- but unless we create a worldwide civil society that is robust, honest, and representative; it won't make a dime's worth of difference.

Re:The problems of today...

There's certainly social and political problems keeping a lot of people from improving their quality of life, but I think the whole point of the singularity is that technology will eventually reach a point where there's just no" good" reason for everyone not to be involved.

We've got lots of really cool stuff now, but much of our economy is still based on scarcity. Energy is not free, and the people who control the methods of production have a lot of influence. And so they want to keep it that way. The same thing is true of many raw materials.

But even more than that, there's the labor issue. I don't think anybody's personal utopia involves spending all day out in the sun building roads, but we require that a whole lot of people do that, and other crappy jobs, because it's the only way we have to get it done. The fact that some jobs are crappier than others creates some weird social layering. If there comes a point in the future where we could have machinery efficiently do all those jobs, then things can probably change.

But yeah, it won't be easy, it won't just magically happen because of any particular invention. But technology will continue to make it more likely.

The summary isnt really true

"singularity" says nothing about "bright future" or "utopia" per sé, but more descripes a point where the ever increasing innovation rate makes predictions impossible.

Kurzweil is not an optimist

Pessimist: "That glass is half empty."
Optimist: "That glass is half full."
Kurzweil: "The self-cloning milk in that glass will replicate thanks to nanobots and end world hunger."

Re:Kurzweil is not an optimist

Kurzweil: "The self-cloning milk in that glass will replicate thanks to nanobots and end world hunger."

I'll tell you a secret: The world produces enough food to feed everyone.

But some of that food is fed to livestock to create other food (which isn't an efficient task). And a lot of food doesn't get to where its going because of corrupt governments and economic factors.

Which is probably the problem right there -- we have the technology to make the world a pretty nice place. But we don't. Magical future technology is unlikely to change our behavior.

Sounds like he has read ... Iain M Banks

Iain M Banks (to be confused with the non-sci-fi writer Iain Banks) has written a lot of book about "The Culture" a man/machine symbiosis that has created a utopian society in which people get what they need.

Actually it sounds also like Robert Heinlein, Asimov and most other Sci-Fi writers I've ever read. But mostly like Iain M Banks who books are a cracking read.

Living to 300... of course we will, we'll have to work till we are 280 though.

Kurzweil is dead wrong

Ray Kurzweil is dead wrong. I respect his work but his impossibly optimistic projections are misleading. Here's one numerical example. Kurzweil has claimed [kurzweilai.net] "human life expectancy" was increasing by "150 days, every year," and that shortly, increases in life expectancy would be beating Nature in the footrace:

with the revolutions coming in genomics, perdiomics, therapeutic cloning, rational drug design, and the other biotechnology revolutions, within 10 years we'll be adding more than a year, every year, to human life expectancy. So, if you can hang in there for another 10 years, (don't spend all of your time in the French Quarter!), this will be the increase in human life expectancy. We'll get ahead of the power curve and be adding more than a year every year, within a decade.

The accompanying graph is staggering but only shows five points of data. Its top point shows a life expectancy of 77 years in 1999 or so, which of course is not human life expectancy. Human life expectancy is about 65, ranging from about 43 in poor countries to 79 in the richest country. Kurzweil's statement only applies to the wealthy; in much of Africa, life expectancy fell dramatically during the 1990s.

And since he's clearly talking about life extension, the reader should be aware that there is no exponential curve at the top of the lifespan. His numbers gained mostly from improvements in child nutrition and antibiotics, and there aren't any continued improvements to be made in those (quite the opposite, actually). If we look at the average continued life expectancy for Americans aged 75, between 1980 and 1985 they gained 0.2 years; 1985-1990, 0.3 years; 1990-1995, 0.1 years; 1995-2000, 0.4 years; 1997-2002, 0.3 years. This is good. But it's not exponential lengthening of lifespan.

Oh, and the "decade" within which he promised we'd be ahead of the curve is now half over. The above quote is from 2000.

The main logical error Kurzweil makes is simply that he thinks computers will get smarter because they get faster. Readers who believe the one has anything to do with the other need to go back to Dreyfus' 1972 classic What Computers Can't Do. From there, start reading over the painful history of what is now called "strong A.I.", and what used to be just called "A.I.", to see how necessarily limited our efforts have become. Kurzweil elides over this distinction in the worst way. He starts by saying that computers are now as smart as an insect -- which is unrefutable because nobody can quantify what that means -- and proceeds to predicting that they will be as smart as people once they get n times faster. No, I'm sorry, all that means is that they will be as smart as n insects. Whatever the hell that means.

Mostly I wouldn't care. Fantasy is fun. Except that Pollyannaish predictions of paradise-yet-to-come persuade people that the problems we create for ourselves are irrelevant. If you think the Rapture or the Singularity is going to make all currently conceivable problems laughable, little things like massive extinction and global warming turn into somebody else's problem. They're not -- and our grandchildren, with their very fast and non-sentient computers, and their non-300-year lifespans, are going to be kind of ticked that you and I spoiled the planet.

Needs

The whole premise is actually kind of simple I think. There's three basic components to everything that we use in our lives. Raw materials, Energy, and Design. Stuff needs to be thought up(design), it requires ingredients to build(raw materials), and it takes energy to make/use/operate it. Some things, like digital media, have negligible raw material requirements, but they still fit the mold.

  So if we can make computers that can actually think well enough to do the design, then getting design done faster just requires better computers. I think it's safe to assume that computers will continue to increase in power. Whether or not they'll become "intelligent" is harder to predict, but lets say for the sake of the singularity that they do.

We also need plentiful energy. If this whole fusion power thing ever pans out, we'll have that.

Raw materials are a little harder. Making things just out of dirt is a bit simplistic. because there's lots of different minerals and such present in dirt, and they're not all suitable for any purpose. There's lots of stuff available in the earth, but extracting it, even if it becomes easy, will most likely be rather destructive. The solution is to make spaceflight reliable enough that we can mine other places, asteroids and the like.

Although that seems to me to be a short term solution, because most things in space are pretty far away. Unless there's some sort of major star trek-ish breakthrough in propulsion, it's never going to be all that simple.

I guess the point is, design and energy are almost like a switch. Either we'll have a couple big breakthroughs that'll bust those two wide open, or we won't. But even if we got cheap brains and cheap energy, the raw materials issue seems like it'd be a harder problem. If you're looking for a long term investment, land would probably be a good one, because it's the hardest thing for us to make more of.

Perhaps Heresy on Slashdot, BUT...

One only has to go back through ancient issues of Popular Science or Life Magazines to read through promised Utopia through technology. Flying cars, personal atomic power plants, smart homes, etc., were the rule of the day back then, and they all had fleetingly brilliant promise to bring a new "wealth" of leisure.

It didn't happen.

Fast forward to the 1970's at the advent of the personal computer revolution and read magazines like "Byte" or similiar. The coming of age of the PC was to free us from mundane tasks, make work easier, give us more leisure time because things were simpler.

That did not happen either, even if Byte and others were correct in saying that the computer revolution was here to stay.

There is a truism in regards to technology: when something is made easier to do, more of it is expected to be done.

Or, if you prefer, back to the PC analogy: PC's have made things like spreadsheets, memos, etc., far easier for the average office worker, but instead of being rewarded with more leisure time, more spreadsheets and memos etc. are expected instead. In other words, instead of making life easier, more work has been created and now we are more or less enslaved to the technology that it is done on.

History is rife with examples of this: cellphones, for example. Now you cannot get away and work goes with you everywhere, all too often 24/7. Enslaved to the never-ending communication, instead of better, we got more.

George Santayna said those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it. True. And history here will repeat itself. Technology will make things easier, and when they are easier it will be expected that more of it will be done.

And, as anyone who has sat on a beach with only a cool drink and the waves to contemplate, more work, no matter how "easy" is not Utopia.

Re:Mega Rich

Unfrortunately this will only be accessible to the super mega ultra rich.

I really have no idea why people keep holding to this idea. The "super mega ultra rich" are by no means the powerhouse they once were. Today's society instead revolves around the needs of the middle class. If the middle class will be unable to afford it in the near future, the "super mega ultra rich" aren't going to be able to afford it (or even have it available) now.

Sure, the "super mega ultra rich" can afford nicer stuff than you and I, but they certainly don't have much that you and I don't have. A quick comparison list:

They have -> We have
Expensive Sports Car -> Affordable Sports Car
$3000 Cell Phone -> $0-$500 Cell Phone
Jet Plane -> Cessna
Mansion -> Spacious Home
Ming Vase -> A Vase that you can use

The world isn't what it was in the time of H.G. Wells. I seriously doubt you'll be seeing the "poor" eating the "rich" anytime soon. :-)

Re:Mega Rich

What are you on about? Let me guess: you live in a gated community and you and your other nouveau riche friends occasionally take your Cessna down to Mexico for the weekend. While there you stay in a secure resort, safe from any undesirables. In your Calvinist world, decent people are well off and if anyone has to struggle to pay the bills, you're pretty sure it's due to moral failings. And like any decent American, you would never call yourself rich. You're average! Middle class! "I buy vases you can use, not like those RICH folks with their ridiculous Ming vases! HA HA HA!!"

Wake up. You're upper class. We will eat you.

*cough* so... yeah, crazy weather lately, eh?

Re:Dear Science

Where is my flying car.
Get on it. I was promised one more than 50 years ago.

Dear Public,

We'll deliver you your flying car once you show you can handle the responsibility. They aren't a toy, you know. And your current record with wheeled cars frankly doesn't inspire confidence. Maybe next year.

All the best,

Science

Re:Dear Science

Screw your jet pack, I want loose alien chicks!

Re:Semi-topical link.

Seriously, though, will we be able to actually pinpoint a time and say 'this is when the Singularity occurred'?

I shouldn't think so. Whenever singularities appear in any model of the real world, it generally means a breakdown of the model. So this singularity means an acceleration of technological advance to a point where our ability to forecast breaks down and we really can't say what will happen.

A singularity would have it that we get ever-accelerating advance, heading skyward to infinity at some finite time. I dislike, therefore, forecasts that the singularity will bring utopia. It need not. The singularity could very easily bring extinction. It could bring hell on earth. It could bring a tyranny beyond the dreams of 1984, in which no proletarian revolt could ever succeed because we've all got Seven Minute Specials waiting to go off inside us. To be quite honest, I think our best hope is extinction, but leaving successors - which is, let's face it, the best hope of any species that there ever was. In addition, I don't mind whether this means our genetically enhanced, cybernetic, hyperevolved biological descendants, or our superintelligent quantum-computing AI offspring. What do I care about DNA, after all? A sentient robot I might build is as much my offspring as a human child I might father.

I agree with the concept of the singularity - there are advances coming whose impact on society we won't be able to predict until it happens - but not that it will necessarily be good.

The stuff you have is even more fantastic

Rewind your brain 15 years and imagine what you'd think if I told you:

Your computer will be roughly 1,000 faster than what you're using today. You will probably have more than 4,000 times the memory, and a fast hard drive that stores over 100,000 times as much as that floppy you're using. You can buy these supercomputers for less than $500 at Wal-Mart.

That computer will be hooked into a self-directed network that was designed by the Department of Defense and various universities - along with nearly 400,000,000 other machines. Your connection to this network will be 10,000 times faster than the 300 baud modem you're using. In fact, it will be fast enough to download high-quality sound and video files in better than realtime.

There will be a good chance that your computer's operating system will have been written by a global team of volunteers, some of them paid by their employers to implement specific parts. Free copies of this system will be available for download over the hyperfast network. You will have free access to the tools required to make your own changes, should you want to.

You will use this mind-bendingly powerful system to view corporate sponsored, community driven messages boards where people will bitch about having to drive cars that are almost unimaginably luxurious compared to what you have today.

Remember: in some fields, the singularity has already happened.