Ray Kurzweil On IT And The Future of Technology 450
Roland Piquepaille writes "In this interview with CIO Magazine, Ray Kurzweil says that one day, software and computers will reside inside us. He adds that by 2020, "we will be placing millions or billions of nanobots -- blood cell-size devices -- inside our bloodstream to travel into our brains and interact with our neurons." He also says that if we're not enhanced by machines, they will surpass us. But he doesn't think it will happen. According to him, machines and humans will merge. In the mean time, he's pursuing his anti-aging quest and takes about 250 supplements to his diet every day! With this regime, he says his biological age is 40 while he's 56 years old. By 2030, there will be very little difference between 30-year-old and 120-year-old people, says Kurzweil. He's certainly a bright person, but I'm not sure that I agree with someone taking daily such an amount of pills. What do you think? This summary contains some selected -- and biased -- excerpts to help you forge your opinion."
Resistance is futile (Score:4, Interesting)
No More Roland Articles Please!! (Score:4, Interesting)
Can you at least add him the the author list so we could at least filter him out?
This guy is using slashdot as his own advert. How come nobody running this site is noticing or addressing it?
Re:Supplements might not be a good idea... (Score:5, Interesting)
I've found that I no longer get sick and am in much better health overall than I was before. My guess is because I let my body do what it should, and not get used to artificial aids that are often not as good as what the body can do anyway. I'm 42, and am often told I look 30. When I have my backpack on my shoulder, as I do frequently, I am still mistaken for a student at one of the local universities. I've had gray hairs -- they show up during stress, then fade a few months after the stressful events. My barber has noticed this, too.
I'm not saying I've found a fountain of youth, but I have noticed dropping out of the 9 to 5 world, running my own business on my own terms, and not letting meds fix everything in my body seems to have made a HUGE difference in how I feel, how much energy I have, and (according to others) in how I don't look anywhere near my age.
Re:2030? (Score:3, Interesting)
Yuck.
I want some anti anti nano machines I can buy from the local kiosk...
This gets really weird if you think about it.
Anything we thought was speculative goes out the window really fast. (and I've been watching the
sci fi perspective for almost 30 years).
Re:I have no problem with this, but.... (Score:1, Interesting)
I don't know where you live but in the country I live in everyone could use another 20 IQ points and I mean right fucking today. George W. Bush has the authority to start a nuclear war and he is about to be elected to a second term.
250 Supplements/"Certain Diet" (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I have no problem with this, but.... (Score:2, Interesting)
To be more specific, I think that everyone should just be grateful that they have a life. "Improving on it" often has devastating results. I'm happy living on a farm, or in a hole. That's just me, and I'm not criticizing anyone for wanting more from their pathetic existence, but it's just playing with fire. No matter what you do, you're still going to die, and the point is to enjoy the time you have.
Re:Machines *in* humans (Score:3, Interesting)
"I wasn't trying to predict the future, I was trying to prevent it." - Ray Bradbury.
Re:Resistance is futile (Score:5, Interesting)
Personally, I think Kurzweil's 20 year estimates are overly optimistic, although the general principles of what he talks about do hold up...
Re:Resistance is futile (Score:3, Interesting)
Because nanotech and fusion power combined will make production of anything dirtcheap. You'll license designs covered by IP rights for your nanofactory, which will build the thing out of basic atoms. There will be free designs, government-made and/or open source. The poor will have access to nearly free production of low-quality goods, and the rich will be able to afford the luxuries of IP-protected designs.
Ofcourse, that presupposes we manage to create viable nanotech and fusion power without destroying humanity in the process, which would be a mean feat indeed.
But it won't matter even if we can create these things dirtcheap. The real problem humanity has with respect to providing basic human rights is that we have no control over our population size. If we provide more food and medicine through technological advances, the global population will just grow to absorb the increase in resources, without actually increasing quality of life. The only way to increase quality of life for all of humanity is by instituting strict birth control policies so we do what nature used to do for us: limit population size so it matches available resources.
Re:the *real* secret to long life (Score:1, Interesting)
BTW: you have the wrong idea about Kurzweil, he most certainly isn't any kind of pill-pusher, he's more of the type of hyper-optimistic person who believes technology will solve all of our problems and transform humanity into something entirely different. He most certainly isn't a health fanatic; more likely he might even encourage someone other than himself (he considers himself an experiment) to go ahead and damage their health, because in the near future we'll be able to fix whatever damage they do to themselves.
In other words, he's crazy, but not in the way you think.
Re:Machines *in* humans (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Supplements might not be a good idea... (Score:4, Interesting)
A few years ago, a large scale study was done on smokers taking vitamin suppliments and, contrary to what the researchers expected to find, certain components in the multivitamin actually proved to be quite harmful.
A Finnish study of 29,000 male smokers, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, showed that participants were 18% more likely to develop lung cancer if they were given beta-carotene.
(See linked article here) [bbc.co.uk]
Now, in case you want to post an insightful reply for a quick infusion of karma, you could start with the obvious fact that smoking isn't the smartest thing to do in the first place...
Extending life isnt the right goal... (Score:3, Interesting)
We should be focused on extending the fun years before the hell begins. I sure don't want more years as a 60 yr old, I want more as a 20 yr old.
Crazy geniuses (Score:4, Interesting)
I remembered reading something about this, so I Googled it. There was a Harvard/U Toronto study [sciencedaily.com] about the linkage between creativity and "latent inhibition". Basically the conclusion is that highly creative people with high IQs don't filter incoming information in the same fashion that the rest of us do.
This is just one study, of course. But it is interesting. One thing I've noticed about the mentally instable people I've met (not that my sample is large), is that they do tend to exhibit more outward manifestations of creativity. Perhaps it's because they are less bound by the need to categorize the world in which they live. We certainly do have a lot to learn about how the mind works.
from my blog (Score:5, Interesting)
But still, he lacked situational awareness, and it was awkward at times. I wanted to ask questions, but there wasn't an option.
The interview linked above is a lot like his talk. He talked about the numerous exponential growths in recent technology, and not just Moore's Law.
He figures that he should try to be healthy until 2020, then a biomedical revolution will keep him healthy for another 20 years, and then a nano-technology revolution will kick in to keep him alive forever.
By "alive", he means that his intelligence propagates in the cold, soul-less heart of a machine. But considering that I agree with him that there is no ghost in the shell, this soulless form doesn't seem that bad. At least you're still sentient!
I agree with the principle, that there is nothing to stop this, that all technology is pushing us in this direction, and that it would prove to be a very positive experience. I do not necessarily agree about the time frame. I can't really trust the curves that he fits with so much confidence. Then again, I'm 32 years younger than him, so if he is off by 32 years, I guess I shouldn't complain
Last night at a party, drunk enough to make the discussion interesting, some folks objected to the extrapolation of the increasing rate of expansion of scientific knowledge. What guarantee is there, after all, to find all the secrets in that time? I would say first that the rate of growth in the number of researchers alone could do it. Also, increases in productivity, have always been accompanied with "this pace can't continue" claims, which have always been wrong.
Also brought up was the notion that life is defined by death. That is a very defeatist thought, which I will fight, err, to my grave. In addition, some thought they would get bored if they lived forever. I would say that I could never complain about there being "more books than i could ever read", which is a great thing. Also, I've always wanted to get really good at GO.
Finally, the notion of replication of machine intelligence was introduced. Someone claimed that I shouldn't discount the important sociological and physical implications of being born from a human whom. I agreed, only to realize that the first few moments of any existence will have a huge implication on the formation of the individual intelligence. So if I copy myself, I'll have to think of a few appropriate words to introduce the other me into this world. So far, all I can come up with is "hi".
Re:I think Kurzweil is a freaking idiot (Score:2, Interesting)
Kurzweil says that people tend to overestimate the impact of technology in short run and underestimate it in long run. Perhaps he is guilty of this himself. His mistake is tieing more or less specific timeframe to his predictions. Instead he should be using terms like near, medium, and long term future. Specifying dates erodes his credibility and makes him look silly - no one can predict when certain breakthrough will be achieved (unless it is just a matter of deterministic process like in genome project).
You are saying that Kurzweil's predictions are wrong because of "simple facts like Intel scrapping 4gHz chips and any number of other signs that Moore's Law
You state that current computers don't seem to be "intelligent". Does mosquito seem intelligent to you? It seems like a fairly simple automaton to me. Well, modern garden variety computers possess a tiny fraction of mosquito's "computational power", so you can't expect them to act "intelligently", can you?
So Ray's point is that as computational power increases, machines will start acting in more and more "intelligent" ways. Of course, computational power alone doesn't produce intelligence but it will if combined with studying brain structure and mimicking it (or parts of it for starters) in machines. And I don't necessarily mean silicone machines.
Another fundamental point Kurzweil makes is that man and machine will merge at some point. Again, the timeframe he gives for when it will happen is
questionable. However, I have little doubt that new ways for interfacing man and machine will be developed. I mean, keyboard and mouse are getting rather dated. As that interface becomes tighter and tighter, man and machine will become completely entangled. And it doesn't have to be anything Borg-like, meaning that it should still allow humans to stay humans. I effect, humans enhance their own wetware with technology thus substituting technological progress for evolution. I don't think many will complain that evolution will destroy human species, so think of it as "expedited evolution". That also makes perfect sense to me - natural evolution evolved humans to live in caves and feed by hunting and gathering. This is just taking evolution one step further - we've been doing it for centuries; stopping at an arbitrary point is not possible, it is like trying to turn time back.
Re:Kurzweil is a genius (Score:3, Interesting)
It is well-known (I read research dating to 1970s-1980s) that people who are narrow specialists can generally foresee about 7 years of progress in their fields. People who are not specialists in a certain field can do only a few years estimates. Most people are blind - they read the same news, see the same technologies being turned into products, but they can't see the obvious future trends. Some people, like Kurzweil (and many others) can.
Re:I think Kurzweil is a freaking idiot (Score:3, Interesting)
Second, I want to note that to criticise Ray for timeframes one needs to have the same or better understanding of current progress, which I seriously doubt you do. He spends most of the time keeping track of what is being done and what is being planned. He knows much better when we can expect new advances and he knows much better how will they play together to create synergetic technologies like medical nanobots.
Like Alchemy of the middle ages (Score:2, Interesting)
Perhaps nanotech, fusion, and AI research will lead to science and technological developments that we haven't even envisioned, much as alchemy did.
I don't have much respect for 'futurists' like Kurzweill who aren't real scientists and don't give good reasons why their technologies are feasible. Biology is a complex science and is nowhere near fully understood. The higher functions of the brain such as memory, for instance, have not been able to be reduced to chemical and electrical interactions. Perhaps they will in 100+ years, but I don't see it happening within my lifetime.
Re:Supplements might not be a good idea... (Score:2, Interesting)
How much hours of sleep do you get each night?
Do you always go to bed around the same time?
I'm suspecting that these things may also be important to avoid premature aging.
Re:Resistance is futile (Score:2, Interesting)
Regards,
Steve
Re:Supplements might not be a good idea... (Score:3, Interesting)
As long as you get all necessary nutrients, decreasing caloric intake is the fountain of youth. You might not be able to run a marathon but you'll understand that yourself when you hit that wall.
I saw this fact in a documentary with Alan Alda as the presenter. All aging is because of free radicals permanently destroying cell parts, free radicals are produced during metabolism, eating. The science looked good.
They tested various methods of longevity including inti-oxidants. The mice in the anti-oxidant cages looked lethargic and weak, normal for their age. The mice in the low caloric intake cages looked hyper and youthful, unlike their age.
Eat almost nothing and you'll live like a young'un for most of your life. Think of it like a machine, if you burn more fuel through it, it wears out sooner.
Re:the nut (Score:2, Interesting)
You can also go straight to the source of above 100,000 and 10 year info: chech out Herbert A. Simon's Sciences of the Artificial.
I would put up a link to Amazon but I'm very unhappy with them right now.
bs detector (Score:3, Interesting)
You certainly are right about the instantaneous BS detector. You set mine off several times with your other comments.
You haven't even managed to keep your own arguments on the same page. At one point you cite the memorization of a phone book as evidence about the chunk-scale of human intellect, apparently forgetting that computers already exceed this extreme data point on human performance by a rough factor of a billion. Phone numbers are in no way the "chunks" of human processing that make human processing interesting.
The failure of computer hardware to perform "random access" information assessment is not a property of digital hardware, Wogger Penrose notwithstanding. It's a property of a class of algorithms appropriate to a scale of computation which we are rapidly exceeding.
We already have classes of algorithms which perform exceptionally well at random access classification: neural networks and statistical models encoded using hashing techniques. What seems to be apparent is that the human brain encodes information at a higher level of dimensionality than our toy neural networks.
I regard the Penrose algorithm as entirely circular. I'm altogether unimpressed with the creativity of the human brain. Open your eyes. Every day I witness hundreds of computational tasks orchestrated by the human brain that humans do badly or barely at all.
For example, the driver who makes three dangerous S-style lane changes from behind to pass you and gain 50 yards of progress before ass kissing the next obstruction and then coming to a grinding halt at the next red light, which you could see was red half a block back. Meanwhile, having coasted down to 10mph and arrives by good planning at the intersection just as the light changes green, the "laggard" car comes out the other side 20 yards ahead at half the gas consumption, and zero wear-and-tear on his break linings.
Then there are the large number of cases concerning how rarely most people even recognize the incompetence of human intellect all around them.
Of course, if you conceive of yourself as off-the-scale brilliant at the pinnacle of human intellectual achievement (creativity is usually trotted out) as Wogger does, then of course you need quantum mechanics to explain this.
If Wogger really were that bright, he might have noticed the circularity of his own argument. We need quantum mechanics to achieve this level of competence? I think not.
Re:Life extension w/o nanobots (Score:3, Interesting)
Fitness is relative. Some of the fitter people I know are over seventy - there's a sport that involves navigating between different points on foot for twenty-four hours and those in the super-veteran catagory regularly beat most of other teams. You can't gauge apparent age.
Re:Supplements might not be a good idea... (Score:3, Interesting)
Basically I learned I am not one who works well for others and that I HAVE to do things my way. (You can psychoanalyze that however you want!) I am a writer, first and foremost (I came VERY close to selling to Star Trek: TNG a few times!), and I realized I had to start creating the life I wanted and that worked for me if I ever wanted any happiness. I realized if I didn't, I'd be angry at everything and everyone, and living on Pepto.
I know there will be a time when I use medications again, but at this point I don't need them. Sometimes I get headaches from lack of sleep, and meds have NEVER helped me with that (actually, meds never were a help to me with headaches and other symptoms like colds). I've learned how to "release" (I can't think of any other word for it) headaches through meditation, or by figuring out what is causing me the headache (as in where is the stress coming from), and being able to deal with it.
I've seen times (like this month), when my entire family comes down with a stomach flu and is sick for several days. I don't know if it effects me, but during that time, I did have two days I was exhausted and had to take long afternoon naps. I don't know if that was how my body dealt with the infection, or if it was from something else.
If/When I need it, I'll use meds, but for now there's been no need. You are right about letting the pendulum stop in the middle. It just seems like it hasn't reached the end of the arc and isn't ready to swing back yet.
Oh, and I never used meds as a cructh. I used them when needed, and may have taken them at times in anticipation of how bad I expected a backache or something to get, but I was basically to damn cheap to spend much on meds unless I needed them.
Re:the nut (Score:3, Interesting)