UPI Article on Ray Kurzweil Saturday, Jun 5 2010
futurism 12:32 pm
There’s an interesting article about Ray Kurzweil up at UPI, which gives more perspective than usual for a news article, and quotes interesting people besides Ray. The title is “Commentary: the Singularity is Here”.
I think this year will be a big one for the rising awareness of the ideas in the technological singularity. Michael, have you got any concerns about this moving more into the mainstream?
You’re right, more perspective than usual – but the article morphs into a cybersecurity piece about halfway through – not that cybersecurity isn’t a big part of accelerating change, but I thought it was a strange direction to go considering all the implications described in the first two graphs.
When is that Singularity movie of his finally coming out?
Also… wasn’t he writing an essay in which he defends the idea that 89 of his 108 predictions for 2009 came true?
Nathan, yes, many concerns. My primarily concern is insufficient attention to the apocalyptic risks of hard takeoff from AI with inadequate or improper goal system content.
Arnie, definitely, it just seems like their effort to bring it back around to important contemporary issues.
Jay, for your first question, use Google. As to your second question, I believe so but I haven’t heard anything about it since that last letter.
Yeah, definitely more thoughtful than many articles I’ve read on Kurzweil.
Thoughtful? You mean “not disagreeing”. What I would like to see is what will Kurzweil say&do in 20 years time. Because right now he is just an interesting example of techno-(science)enthusiasm a’la Descartes. His correct predictions have made him famous, but till today those predictions were of easy kind and honestly-most of people interested in technology have made them on one point of time or another. So his exceptionality is based on fact that he had written book about it, gathering all ideas together and that’s it. The problem is that there is no idea, wheather it is scientific or not-that goes unchanged forever. Finally it is falsified -partially or in whole-and has to be adjusted. The same goes to Kurzweil’s Singularity. This has not yet happened. BTW Singularity is disturbing-but from complately different reason. Not armaggedon-like disturbing, rather like “stupidity always prevails” one. Once people will “transcend their biological boundaries” (whatever does it means, there are always boundaries of some kind, so this sentence is just typical transhumanist mumbo-jumbo) and will be able to think 2000 faster the rate of stupid things done will increase also ;) No? That’s not possible, you say, because we will be much more inteligent (and in FUTURE, of course). But maybe, in order not to fall into that trap it would be usefull not to build artificial inteligence but artifical stupidity first. I think thats worth any money-it’s simply better than any singularity. once we will eleminate stupidity there is nothing more to do adn everything will beocme clear. So kurzwiel is waiting for his AI-fuleed Singularity, I’m waiting for my AS (artificial stupidity) fueled dawn of new age. Age of not stupid humans. Beacuse even in case of singularity they will dominate.
Artificial stupidity… LOL
I don’t completely follow you, Sulfur. Yes, it’s reasonable to worry about stupid and/or destructive actions from superhuman intelligence, That’s what Michael and company are all about.
The last couple of years have pretty much convinced me that technological progress is slowly grinding to a halt. Fewer and fewer technological innovations seems to be making it from the lab into the wider world. Battery technology is a good example. I’ve lost count of the number of battery technologies that have been ‘just a few years away’ for the last 5 years or so that have promised much higher energy densities and many more cycles than existing systems. Yet commercial remain elusive
Look at the iPhone, robotics, nanotechnology, and brain scans. Certain fields seem to be moving along just fine.
Ross, you’re ignoring a central feature of all technological progress: punctuated equilibrium. Particularly significant “big” technologies are usually preceded by 10-30 or more years of basic research. Also, before new kind of research, that has the possibility to lead to something entirely new or radically improved, can be initiated, new technological capabilities must enable it. The increases in computational capacity during the last decades have been just that, slowly opening a door to a new world of computation-and-data-intensive research. We’re just getting started. Don’t worry; the next decades will be soo cool. :)
Kurzweil noted in a talk that after 7 or so years at the Human Genome Project, things were only 1% done. 1%! People scoffed that the Project would never finish in the estimated 15 years, when almost half of the time was up and nothing remarkable accomplished.
Interestingly, it finished early.
I’m not a Singularian, but it’s an interesting story. Equally interesting was how enthusiastic people became when victory was clear. I also remember how people lived in flood plains without insurance, because in their parents and their times, no flood had happened, but statistically, it was bound to happen every so many generations on average. People respond to what they remember, but such experiences are often very poor models of long-term and complicated trends.
You have to look at things in context. The iPhone is a great example of a disruptive technology that nobody really saw coming and was scoffed at when it arrived. Now, about 2 years later, it has changed everything about mobile and is driving the advance to LTE. Yet people take it for granted. If you plopped an iPhone into my hand in 2005, I would have thought it was complete science fiction. It’s a great example because as a piece of technology it works on two levels – it is just a device, but its ability to run a wide range of apps is where it has destablized everything. And there is a third level; it is driving the accelerating bandwidth buildout. You would not need 4G if you did not have workable smartphone technology.
My point is that you don’t need to discover cold fusion to advance technologically. Applying new paradigms to existing technologies is what drives progress (another example is HTML, btw).
Battery technology IS improving, btw. Have a look at the difference between an iPad and a laptop if you don’t believe it.
Arnie,
It’s funny to see you describe the iPhone as science fiction if you had seen it in the year 2005.
But I don’t understand why you and other people see it that way.
It’s easy to foresee faster & smaller computers, and also bigger & cheaper displays.
That’s basically what the iPhone is, right?
Why would you ever feel like you have science fiction in your hands with an iPhone?
Just recently the first cell built with a synthetic genome was unveiled. That’s a pretty big advance right there. Every couple of months I hear of multi-gene ever more complex modifications being made to single celled organisms to obtain a product and enhance its production.
A few years from now Peta-flop computers that allow rapid realistic simulations of protein folding should be common place. This should yield an acceleration of the design and construction of artificial proteins for novel uses.
So what is one of the most important fields , synthetic bio, seems poised to advance rapidly. And advanced synthetic bio will change the face of the planet. We’re talking the power of agelessness, self-repairing replicating machinery able to make technology itself become independent of human maintenance, and even to make the human body immortal.
Immortal! After 50 years and countless billions spent on cancer research, we’ve made very scant improvements in overall survival. Indeed, account for early detection bias and over diagnosis, and the picture is probably even less flattering. If you asked a panel of doctors 50 years ago if they thought cancer would still be an issue in 2010 I am sure nobody would have said yes. Ask a panel of doctor today the same question about 50 years hence, and I doubt many would be prepared to say that cancer will no longer be a huge cause of death. I personal believe cancer will remain a massive cause of death for many centuries to come.
“Immortal! After 50 years and countless billions spent on cancer research, we’ve made very scant improvements in overall survival.”
When people look in the wrong places, you can only hope they’re but ignorant and not truly retarded. There are organisms in this planet at the virtual top of the food chain, with orders of magnitude more cells.
These organisms being so high up the food chain and so massive, ingest massive amounts of matter. Thus along with their food, all sorts of natural carcinogens, such as some radioactive elements, heavy elements, etc naturally present in their medium is assimilated, not to mention toxins that tend to bio-accumulate.
Yet evidence suggest some of these organisms can last at least double the average human lifespan, some are said to maybe even exhibit negligible senescence, aka virtual biological immortality.
Despite this, I’ve not heard of an effort to have thorough comparison and analysis of their genomes.
When the cure of cancer seemingly lies in a silver plate right in front of you, and you decide to scavenge the trash instead. What can we say?
Jay,
I was trying to point out that you can foresee a technology, but not all the applications. The iPhone itself is just a miniature computer, not much different in size or function to a Palm or a Blackberry – but very few people could foresee the impact of applications.
Yeah, glass screens and a fast handheld processor are not SF (not even in 2001, much less 2005), but the reach of the applications on that device is what my 2005 self would have been amazed by.
Arnie,
Good points man.
Whenever new technology arrives, people quickly get used to it and it ceases to be sci-fi.
Exactly as Kurzweil predicts.
;)