Futurist Ray Kurzweil Pulls Out All the Stops (and Pills) to Live to Witness the Singularity
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Re: Futurist Ray Kurzweil Pulls Out All the Stops (and Pills) to Live to Witness the Singularity
#2God bless him; those pills are exactly what will kill him.
The singularity is coming, but Moore's law won't have much to do with it. I remember seeing a few-days-old kitten and for the first time in its little life, it saw a dog. It hissed.
We already have the equivalent computing power of a kitten's brain. What we don't have is the software that can recognize a dog without having ever seen one before.
Re: Futurist Ray Kurzweil Pulls Out All the Stops (and Pills) to Live to Witness the Singularity
#3It would be very hard to argue that the singularity won't arrive eventually, provided humans survive long enough. It's just the date that's tough to predict. Sure, computing power has been growing exponentially, but as they say, "past performance is no guarantee of future results", and there are so many other variables aside from raw processing speed.
Re: Futurist Ray Kurzweil Pulls Out All the Stops (and Pills) to Live to Witness the Singularity
#4God bless him; those pills are exactly what will kill him. The singularity is coming, but Moore's law won't have much to do with it. I remember seeing a few-days-old kitten and for the first time in its little life, it saw a dog. It hissed. We already have the equivalent computing power of a kitten's brain. What we don't have is the software that can recognize a dog without having ever seen one before.
What we don't have is the software that can recognize a dog without having ever seen one before.
Sure we do.
...................
Anyway, there is a problem with the notion of super-intelligent robots. Without getting too much into it, suffice to say that robots will be forced to subscribe to the same survival-of-the-fittest constraints that humans have. When you observe the human species, it might seem strange that there are so many people who enjoy rap music and nascar, and so few who enjoy calculating derivatives in their heads. But nature (read: survival of the fittest) has only portioned out a comparatively small number of superintelligent people in the world, for a reason. It will presumably do the same for robots.
That is, when robots are manufacturing themselves, a moderately intelligent "thug" robot, or "drone" robot, or "worker" robot, or "leech" robot will have certain advantages over a "sit and design better competitors for myself" robot.
Re: Futurist Ray Kurzweil Pulls Out All the Stops (and Pills) to Live to Witness the Singularity
#5God bless him; those pills are exactly what will kill him. The singularity is coming, but Moore's law won't have much to do with it. I remember seeing a few-days-old kitten and for the first time in its little life, it saw a dog. It hissed. We already have the equivalent computing power of a kitten's brain. What we don't have is the software that can recognize a dog without having ever seen one before.
How can you say the pills are dangerous without knowing what they are?
Re: Futurist Ray Kurzweil Pulls Out All the Stops (and Pills) to Live to Witness the Singularity
#6I can't help noticing that while we are making these exponential advances in technology, we are also using exponential amounts of our limited supplies of cheap resources -- things like oil, coal, copper, gold, and helium. I sure hope Kurzweil gets his singularity before any of these limiting factors kick in, or it could put a nasty kink in his graph.
Re: Futurist Ray Kurzweil Pulls Out All the Stops (and Pills) to Live to Witness the Singularity
#7God bless him; those pills are exactly what will kill him. The singularity is coming, but Moore's law won't have much to do with it. I remember seeing a few-days-old kitten and for the first time in its little life, it saw a dog. It hissed. We already have the equivalent computing power of a kitten's brain. What we don't have is the software that can recognize a dog without having ever seen one before.
How can you say the pills are dangerous without knowing what they are?
I'm channeling a pharmacist friend here. Either a pill has no effect (such as Vitamin-C) and just gives you expensive urine, or it has an effect. And if it has an effect, it has a side effect(s). No pharmacist in the world knows what would happen if you mix that many pills, whatever they are, and so, unless most of them are herbal non-drugs, he's taking a big chance, which is exactly what he's trying to avoid. Thus the irony.
Re: Futurist Ray Kurzweil Pulls Out All the Stops (and Pills) to Live to Witness the Singularity
#8God bless him; those pills are exactly what will kill him. The singularity is coming, but Moore's law won't have much to do with it. I remember seeing a few-days-old kitten and for the first time in its little life, it saw a dog. It hissed. We already have the equivalent computing power of a kitten's brain. What we don't have is the software that can recognize a dog without having ever seen one before.
What we don't have is the software that can recognize a dog without having ever seen one before. Sure we do. ................... Anyway, there is a problem with the notion of super-intelligent robots. Without getting too much into it, suffice to say that robots will be forced to subscribe to the same survival-of-the-fittest constraints that humans have. When you observe the human species, it might seem strange that t…
Sure we do.
Really? And we have software that can recognize a cat from a dog (as that kitten can do)? And my face from yours even if I cover my ears (as the kitten will be able to do once it imprints)? I'd like to see that software!
The truth is Kurzweil and others are fooling themselves if they think this is a hardware issue.
Re: Futurist Ray Kurzweil Pulls Out All the Stops (and Pills) to Live to Witness the Singularity
#9>Kurzweil predicts that by the early 2030s, most of our fallible internal organs will have been replaced by tiny robots. We'll have "eliminated the heart, lungs, red and white blood cells, platelets, pancreas, thyroid and all the hormone-producing organs, kidneys, bladder, liver, lower esophagus, stomach, small intestines, large intestines, and bowel. What we have left at this point is the skeleton, skin, sex organs, sensory organs, mouth and upper esophagus, and brain."
What developed country’s government would allow people to experiment with such things? Risk-aversion is a real brake on the singularity, and it tends to increase with wealth.
Re: Futurist Ray Kurzweil Pulls Out All the Stops (and Pills) to Live to Witness the Singularity
#10I can't help noticing that while we are making these exponential advances in technology, we are also using exponential amounts of our limited supplies of cheap resources -- things like oil, coal, copper, gold, and helium. I sure hope Kurzweil gets his singularity before any of these limiting factors kick in, or it could put a nasty kink in his graph.
One of the most striking features of the 20th century is that the economy has gotten lighter per unit of wealth. New goods are made of fewer raw materials and more ideas. Greenspan has a famous piece on this, which unfortunately I was not able to google up. I am with Julian Simon on the issue, I doubt that raw material scarcity will be a significant brake on human advancement.