Ray Kurzweil thinks humans will become a million times smarter by 2045 & it is going to deepen our awareness and consciousness. He can see the future and If he is Right (Again), We’ll meet his Immortal Soul in the cloud. He is renowned for predicting things accurately.
Kurzweil, an American computer scientist and entrepreneur, is considered one of the best inventors of our time, with over 60 years of experience in AI. Many of his predictions about the internet, AI, and bioengineering have come true.
In 2005, he wrote a book called “The Singularity is Near,” sharing insights from his work in technology. In the book, he used the term “Singularity,” borrowed from math, to describe a future where AI reaches human-level intelligence by 2029 and eventually merges with humans by 2045, becoming one.
In 1999, Kurzweil predicted that we would create artificial general intelligence (AGI) when we developed technology capable of doing a trillion calculations per second. He thought this would happen by 2029. At the time, experts laughed, saying it would take at least a hundred years or more. But now, with 2029 getting closer and more talk about AGI, his old prediction is starting to feel more possible.
In his new book, The Singularity is Nearer, Kurzweil doubles down on those predictions and details how humanity’s intelligence will increase a millionfold via nanobots (among other things).
Not only is he “sticking with [his] five years” prediction, as he recently said in a TED Talk, Kurzweil also believes that humans will achieve a millionfold intelligence by 2045, aided by brain interfaces formed with nanobots non-invasively inserted into our capillaries.
Kurzweil points out that humans are unique because we create tools to enhance our intelligence. For example, smartphones connect us to the internet (the “cloud”) and get smarter over time. He predicts that in the future, through the “singularity,” technology will merge directly with our minds, making us even smarter.
Ray Kurzweil is saying that humans are unique because we have both brains and highly functional thumbs. Our brains aren’t the largest (elephants and whales have bigger ones), but our thumbs let us create tools. For example, we can imagine something, like making a tool from a tree, and then actually making it. While monkeys have thumbs, they’re not as effective. They can make simple tools, but they can’t use those tools to make better ones.
Humans, however, create tools that improve our intelligence, from the first primitive tools to today’s advanced technologies like AI (e.g., Gemini or GPT-4). These tools make us smarter over time. Kurzweil has studied how computing power has grown exponentially for 45 years and notes that this progress wasn’t planned—it just kept happening. Initially, people didn’t even realize it was going on.
In 1999, Kurzweil predicted we’d see Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) by 2029 because he expected computing power to keep growing. He estimated we’d need computers capable of a trillion calculations per second for AGI. At the time, people doubted him, and Stanford even held a conference to discuss his prediction.
“We’re going to be a combination of our natural intelligence and our cybernetic intelligence,” Kurzweil said.
While this idea subscribes to a merger more akin to physical intervention to bridge the gap between man and machine, other philosophers and AI experts agree that some form of merger is likely inevitable, and in some ways, is already beginning. In July, Oxford’s Marcus du Sautoy and Nick Bostrom both expounded on the hopeful and harrowing possibilities of our AI future, and for both of them, a kind of synthesis appeared inevitable. (Source)
In December 2012, Google hired Kurzweil in a full-time position to “work on new projects involving machine learning and language processing”. Larry Page personally hired him.
In 2009, Kurzweil, Google, and the NASA Ames Research Center created Singularity University, a training center for business leaders and government officials. The university’s goal is to “bring together, teach, and inspire leaders who want to understand and help develop rapidly advancing technologies, and use these tools to solve big problems for humanity.”
Kurzweil believes humanity will achieve “longevity escape velocity” in just five years.
Kurzweil, like many futurists, is quite hopeful about the future. In an interview with The Guardian, he said that Universal Basic Income is not just a radical idea but a necessary one. He also believes AI will bring huge progress in medicine, making the idea of living forever not completely impossible.
“Past 2029, you’ll get back more than a year. Go backwards in time,” Kurzweil said in an interview with the venture capital and private equity firm Bessemer Venture Partners. “Once you can get back at least a year, you’ve reached longevity escape velocity.”
Ray Kurzweil rejects death
When Steven Levy of WIRED asked Kurzweil, “You’re 76. Do you think you’re going to live to see escape velocity?” Kurzweil replied: “Yeah. I’m in good shape. I actually measure where I am. If something is down, I take various prescriptions or medications to get back to being on the positive side of longevity. I’m up to about 80 pills a day. [That’s actually down from around 200, circa 2008.]”
Read also:
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- This Man Experienced a ‘Time Slip’ That Doctors Say Is Not Possible: He Saw a Mysterious Figure Standing Near Him
It’s better not to die. We’re not using up any resources that can’t be replaced. The amount of sunlight that falls on Earth is 10,000 times what we need to create all of our energy. We’ll use AI to create food and so on. So it’s not like we’re running out of resources. (Source)
Dr. Hinton is among the A.I. researchers who believe that the technologies driving chatbots like ChatGPT could become dangerous — perhaps even destroy humanity. But Kurzweil is more optimistic.
He has long predicted that advances in A.I. and nanotechnology, which could alter the microscopic mechanisms that control the way our bodies behave and the diseases that afflict them, will push back against the inevitability of death. Soon, he said, these technologies will extend lives at a faster rate than people age, eventually reaching an “escape velocity” that allows people to extend their lives indefinitely.
“By the early 2030s, we won’t die because of aging,” he said. If he can reach this moment, Kurzweil explained, he can probably reach the Singularity.
Though Dr. Hinton is impressed with Kurzweil’s prediction that machines will become smarter than humans by the end of the decade, he is less taken with the idea that the inventor and futurist will live forever. “I think a world run by 200-year-old white men would be an appalling place,” Dr. Hinton said. (Source)
Now seems like a good time to review a few more of Kurzweil’s predictions:
- In 1990, Kurzweil predicted that computers would beat chess players by 2000. Deep Blue defeated Garry Kasparov in 1997.
- He predicted in 1999 that personal computers would be embedded in jewelry, watches, and all sorts of other shapes and sizes. Uh, yeah.
- In 1999, Kurzweil also said that by 2009 we’d mostly be using speech recognition programs for the text we write. This hasn’t really happened, as it turns out that perfecting speech recognition software is much harder than expected.
- By 2029, Kurzweil predicts that advanced artificial intelligence will lead to a political and social movement for robots, lobbying for recognition and certain civil rights.
- By the 2030s, most of our communication will not be between humans, but instead human to machine.
- By 2099, the entire brain will be fully understood. Period. Done.
