Newsmaker: Ray Kurzweil deciphers a brave new world

Ray Kurzweil was one of the most remarkable and prolific inventors of the late 20th century.

Now Kurzweil, who can claim credit for developing the first text-to-speech synthesizer and the first CCD flat-bed scanner, is busy inventing a future in which humans merge with machines and the pace of technological development accelerates beyond recognition.

The concept is known by its proponents as the Singularity, and until recently it's been the province of science fiction authors such as Vernor Vinge and Ken MacLeod.

Now Kurzweil, in a new book called "The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology" (Viking, $29.95), claims that the inexorable pace of technological development and its exponential growth will usher in the Singularity by 2045.

To appreciate the dizzying scope of Kurzweil's predictions, read the book. But the condensed version goes like this: Thanks to Moore's Law and other exponential growth rates, by 2030 a $1 computer will be as powerful as the human brain. Information technology's exponential curve will fuel advances in biology, robotics, nanotechnology and artificial intelligence--with world-shattering results including radical life extension and practically omniscient and omnipotent abilities for humans who elect self-augmentation.

Adding some heft to this prediction are Kurzweil's earlier books, including "The Age of Intelligent Machines" and "The Age of Spiritual Machines," which show that he has a better-than-average record of predicting the future. In 2002, he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame and he has received the $500,000 Lemelson-MIT Prize and the National Medal of Technology.

CNET News.com spoke with Kurzweil on Wednesday about his book tour, his views of the melding of man and machine and the political ramifications of having hyper-intelligence initially available to the very wealthy.

You've been busy promoting your new book. How's the tour going?
Kurzweil: It's going great. Seven presentations last week including a keynote at the Accelerating Change Conference, spoke at Google, the Software Development Forum. I gave a keynote at George Gilder's Telecosm, which he named after the book. I'm going to speak at MIT tomorrow.

You said at a speech last week in San Francisco that you were working on a project with former Microsoft CFO Michael W. Brown that'll result in a hedge fund. Can you tell me about that?
Kurzweil: It's been a major project for about six years. It's applying my field, detecting subtle patterns, and using technology forecasting. Six years ago the project wasn't fully feasible because we didn't have rapid access to all ticker data for stocks. You really couldn't place trades very effectively online. The technology wasn't there--it can't take two weeks for the computer to make a decision that needs to be made in five seconds.

News.com reporter
Declan McCullagh
chats with Ray Kurzweil.

(My system) doesn't make perfect predictions. But what we can do is predict them substantially better than chance. That puts us in the position of being the house in a casino. It places lots of bets, some win and some lose, but it consistently makes money. We haven't had a down month yet. It makes 80 to 100 percent returns a year.

When will this be open to people qualified to invest in a hedge fund?
Kurzweil: We've been investing our own funds just to demonstrate it works. We're launching a hedge fund starting in January. But this will be principally open to our own investors.

You talk a lot about exponential growth, including the stock market. But the Dow Jones Industrial Average was around 1,300 points higher in 2000 than it is now. Adjust for the cost of trades and real inflation and you might have lost 6 to 7 percent a year, no?
Kurzweil: It's the power and adoption of information technologies that moves exponentially. The stock market includes many businesses with old business models...You do have long-term exponential growth of the stock market. The measures we find are highly predictable, surprisingly so. But there are business cycles.

How about the Nasdaq index, which features newer business models, and has fallen by over 50 percent from its top.
Kurzweil: Not every technology company succeeds. You have as much creation as destruction. Companies need to reinvent their business models quite regularly. It was only three years ago that people were saying you couldn't make any money in Internet advertising. The psychology of the stock market has its own dynamic. The boom-bust dynamic is a harbinger of (technological) revolutions...Now e-commerce is growing at a point where it's significant.

It's not a theory of the overall dynamics of the stock market, which have a lot of psychological aspects, some overly pessimistic and some overly optimistic.

Your concept of the future relies heavily on "strong AI," the idea that artificial intelligence will become self-aware and eventually surpass human intelligence. But it seems like AI researchers have abandoned that idea for focused real-world applications like face recognition. I was at a speech this week where computer science professor Rudy Rucker said that strong AI was dead.
Kurzweil: There are hundreds of applications where AI is performing projects that would have required a human level of intelligence a few years ago. Those include diagnosing heart disease, routing e-mail messages, cell phone routing, landing planes.

We are now in an era of narrow AI, meaning it's not strong AI. It's not the full range of human intelligence. But it's performing functions that used to require human intelligence. Looking for credit card fraud is one example of that. These were research projects 15 years ago.

This isn't 2029. We'll make a billionfold increase in hardware capacity between now

More Newsmakers

[thomas_cantwell]

puhleez - it's already here...

anyone who's seen the morons walking around (with that chest-pushed-out-self-important-look-at-me attitude) with their Bluetooth headsets can see that the Borg have already arrived...as if they can't miss even a SECOND picking up their cell phone to talk. In my day, anyone caught talking to themselves (as the "Bluetooth Men" (yes, this is a play off the musical group) do) would have been paid a visit from the "nice men in white". If this is our future, woe to mankind...sigh

[Bob Brinkman]

some good comes out of it though

Pace makers, sight for the blind, parapalegics walking. Not just d--schbags walking around with hands free headsets.

[chuchucuhi]

Hmm...

I always like listening to these things. Well I'm 24 and just hope many of the age related chronic diseases with have a way to ease the pain when I'm old, hehe. There will be a huge leap in I guess you could call it tech, well if you look at everything and how we advance. Well I'll save that for my blog...

This is not bluetooth

Anyone that thinks the things discussed here are happening right now doesn't understand the scope of the change we are talking about. This is not an 'end of the world as we know it and I feel fine' thing, this is a 'end of me as I know it and we don't know what comes next'. This is the kind of change without understanding that has only ever occured before in death. By 2045 humans as we know them will no longer exist.(I suspect sooner)

change without understanding...

has always been happening. even within the span of a lifetime, thousands of years ago, hundreds of years ago, decades ago. while i don't intend to understate the changes headed our way over the next 50 years, the way this "change" is being presented by media and pundits alike, and presented to the general public, is the grossest form of sensationalism. also, this delusional vision of change comes packaged in a sexy "all-inclusive utopia" box, which is most assuredly *not* the way things will unfold as technological achievements progress and advance. i'm all for the future (can't wait actually), but please let's be practical and realistic.

questions

It might help to read a couple paragraphs from the author's books before asking him questions.

[Believe Brain]

The Singularity exists always.

With greed and fear nature, human has initiated a Tech Nature. Tech Nature must compatible (comply) with Mother Nature, otherwise, one of them must diminish. Human has Singular-ed with all the things, low tech or high tech, in our world since the first moment as a stand-walking ape, if humans are not really created by God. Well, you might say God created our world with Singularity. Whats new and brave?

Biologically, human is a machine of things, no different from all the things. As a spiritual machine, human assembled words such as Singularity, Intelligence, Strong AI and Love, Money etc, while no one really know the real definition of these words. Well, these words did get your attention  for the money in your wallet.

Inventor is nothing but an assembler. Prediction is nothing but another one-man opinion for you to read while you dont have anything else to do or think. Of course, reading grows knowledge by brainwashing your belief  what a tricky way to control you!

Therefore, Tech will merely oscillate us with greater diverging resonance. Singularity can not be accomplished by Tech. Conclusion, Kurzweils prediction will fail. Whats in your belief?

good points

no disrespect but when i first read your post it reminded me of (alan wu?), the guy who sells the immortality bracelets on the internet.

but really, you have some very good points about the fallacies of language, and your argument against the concept of the singularity is correct in my opinion.

Declan's Dystopic Spin

Declan has a history of writing in a very biased manner whenever he covers the Singularity or any other topics where he thinks it's trendy among his Fundamentalist Humanist pals to bash a future that sounds too rosy. What? The world isn't going to end in global warning or any of the other dozen fundamentalist environmentalist horror stories? You can see him pushing his spin even in his article title - attempting to portray this very optimistic book as a dystopic vision.

These Fundamentalists have forgotten the basis of the humanist agenda is to achieve greater well being for humanity through means such as advanced technology. Attacking it in a shallow pseudo-Marxist anti-corporate manner, and trying to always show things in the most negative manner possible in order to show off how much of a "realist" he is, just shows how far he and his pals have strayed from rational optimism.

It's too bad Ray didn't request to be interviewed by someone who could at least attempt to be objective.

Ask him what?

You bash him pretty good and bash the interviewer pretty good but don't offer any questions of your own, any ideas of you own, anything that shows why you think they are wrong.

What would you have asked him? Where do you see his ideas breaking down? What is your view of the future?

.

Grain of Salt

Kurzweil's predictions should be taken with a grain of salt. Provocative, yes, accurate no. There are several reasons for this opinion. First, Kurzweil is not very careful in his numbers. For example he states that by 2029 there will be a billion fold increase in hardware capacity.
Now by “hardware capacity” he could mean almost anything, but most readers would assume computers --especially since he’s discussing machine intelligence. Moore’s law is an order of magnitude increase every 5 years so in 25 years “hardware capacity” will have increase by 10^5 not 10^9 – off by a factor of ten thousand -- assuming of course that Moore’s law (which is only empirical after all) holds that long.
Another problem is that Kurzweil shifts definitions in mid-sentence. In discussing machine intelligence he cites examples of tasks that formerly required a human but are now done by machine. Not the same thing at all – we don’t call tractors artificial horses. I’ve no doubt the future will have very capable machines – but intelligence is another matter. Kurzweil assumes such capable machines will start setting there own agendas, something that is difficult to define (why do humans do what they do?) much less implement.
Finally the choice of the singularity metaphor is interesting. Presumably this is a take on black holes. An interesting aspect of black holes is that someone falling into one never arrives – the singularity is always just ahead; yet to an outside observer the person falling in disappears rather quickly (except for the possibility of ghosts – which is another topic). So in this metaphor – the singularity will never occur (except for alien observers).

[Believe Brain]

Making perfect sense

Any number divided by zero is infinity or undefine. For high Tech or basic emotional feeling, we are having hard time to 'define' their boundary conditions.

Similar to your point, if our technology could not 'simply' use H (hydrogen) as a source of power - like tree and human body, what are we talking about the much 'complex and compound'singularity?

Maybe but...

I would agree that his predications need to be taken with a grain of salt but would also point out that one of his 'things' is the 'Law of Accelerating Returns'. This is basically talking about setting up a positive feedback loop so that each Moores Law type doubling takes less time than the last.

So, if your calculations show an order of magnitude increase in 5 years, to get his number for 25 years you don't just multiply your number by 5. You say that the next magnitude increase will take,(pulling numbers out of my thin air) , 4.5 years, then 4, 3.5, 3, 2.5, 2, 1.5, 1 and pretty quickly you reach his singularity when things are increasing at an infinite rate.

BTW, if you take my numbers, in 24.5 years you have an increase of 10^7 which is still off by a factor of 100, but to reach that would only take an additional 2.5 years (or 27 all up)

My problem is that Ray in his past books has started with 'todays doubling rate' at the overly optimistic end of the range of estimates.

I think he takes todays rate of doubling as a figure of 1 year whereas 1.5-2 years would have made his calculations more in line with the common peoples understanding of Moores Law doubling rates.

[Believe Brain]

Universal Energy Law is the only way to reach Singularity

Universal Energy Law is the only way to reach Singularity, scientifically.

First, Law(s) of Acceleration could go positive (+) or negative (-) direction.
Next, Strong AI machine(s) do exist. We (and God) call them Human.
Next, if humans need AI to achieve our perfection, then how could human design a perfect AI, while an AI like human will still be Human.
Next, who are going to write the code? Of course, The human alike AI = the human.

Speaking of the Code, in order to reach Singularity, therefore, we got to find out The One Line (Singularity) Code for the Universal Energy Law (UEL), then we can use it to understand how energy process in human brain structure, then AI is done.
By the way, e=mc2 is not a Universal Energy Law, it only good for calculating material thing, not for measuring emotional = intelligent energy.

Can anyone write an equation for UEL?

[Keith Morrelli]

Please explain UEL!

If you can, please explain what is Universal Energy Law!

Current predictions based on changing technologies

Kurzweil's predictions about the computational abilities in the future are based upon the assumption that an economy for information technology will exist in the future, and that because of this economy new developments will be made in the field (information tech) that will enable exponential growth. There are a plethora of research institutions and companies devoted to developing technology beyond what we have today. Examples are quatum computing (which allows for 3d computing), and other technologies that will go beyond silicon based transistors. It can therefore be stated that at current rates, exponential increase will continue, and computers that are as intelligent as humans (both quantitatively and qualitatively) will be created.

Autopilots

Because I am familiar with an example mr. Kurzweil used, i'd like to give a comment about robots landing a plane.

As an airline pilot and testpilot I am used to do my work in between robots: autopilots connected with navigation computers, assisted by failure management systems. Currently I fly the A330, one of the most advanced planes today. Although it can land fully by itself, all systems are still "stupid". There is no intelligence at all.

If something goes wrong, common sense is what saves the day. Every day again. I have NEVER seen anything that even looks like common sense in my career. I must admit that on the other hand computers have saved the day many times. But that is because they lack common sense.

I'm not saying that common sense will never be achieved by computers, but it's my opinion that common-sense is related to quantumphysics. So only when computers are able to use quantum-events in neural nets, I'll be happy to be passenger on a plane without pilot....

Regards, Peter

[Believe Brain]

Stock investing and UEL

To expound the entire detail of UEL here, we might need an approval from News.com. Briefly, lets use Mr. Kurzweils stock investing system as an example to layout a little about UEL.

Mr. Kurzweil talked about his system can predict and make a decision and consistently makes money  80 to 100 percent returns a year, according to Ray in the posted interview by Mr. McCullagh.

As we all know, stock investing involves Science (S) and Control (C) of emotion, where S should cover all the economic numbers of the investing stock (company), while C should include the emotional numbers such as how all the investors (include you and me) and analysts feel  control - about it.

S and C not only set the direction, distance, speed and acceleration for the path and pace, but also provide (reasons and results of) sudden impulses  discrete gaps of big drop and jump - of the stock. Discrete(s) often occur in the pre-market and after-hour market  especially at the earning report day or FOMC meeting day  are tough for average (all?) investors.

To consistently make money, Mr. Kurzweils system should be able to calculate both numbers of S and C  emotional factors.

Ray also mentioned that his system is not perfect yet. Well, emotional impulses (discrete nature) are particularly harder to predict. By the way, like the stock market, the occurrence of discrete might just well be the limitation, boundary (the end?), and the pull back of our exponential technology expansion. Whether it is a mathematical behavior or natural phenomenal, when a divergent function approaches near the infinity (undefined) boundary, discrete takes place. It happens and it definitely going to happen again  how?

Besides stock investing, basically our daily life can be measured (encode and decode) by the energy numbers of S and C. Therefore, a Universal Energy Law can be written as Energy = nS + mC + lR. For instance, the term nS could represent Einsteins mc2 in measuring material (with mass) of energy. Naturally, mC term is for emotional energy measurement  how?

Again, an approval from News.com is needed to further discuss UEL.

For all the guys and girls out there, good luck for all your S and C  including all your portfolios.

Machines And Man Will Meld

I've noticed that several of the posters, and many others in different arenas, have expressed great fear and dismay that we will be left far behind, as machine intelligence becomes increasingly powerful--that we'll be hopeless and helpless in the face of this great power, like animals in a zoo.

What will actually happen, as Mr. Kurzweil and many others point out, is that we will integrate ourselves with machine intelligence in a way that makes us as intelligent and competent as any artificially intelligent computer.

For example, through nanotech, we'll have millions of cellular-small mini-computers in our bloodstreams and brains, acting in concert with out neurons to make use of both our own massively parallel biological minds, as well as the lightning quick electronic speeds, and memory capacity, of computers.

The goal is to increase our intelligence as we increase the intelligence of machines: Darwinian symbiosis not cutthroat competition between man and metal.

It's easy to fear the future. But it is more empowering and more interesting to embrace it--and help to create it!

Technology is growing Smarter

Have you called an automated phone answering system recently? Instead of having to respond to the techno-woman voice using dial-tones, you can actually respond verbally- and it understands you!

This software isn't magical, impossible, a long way off (or even inevitable!). Businesses demand better, smarter technology because it makes them more money. How long until our cars, computers, etc. have voice recognition? Our phones have had it (although the software is somewhat frustrating) for quite a while.

What next after voice recognition? Facial recognition will be ushered in to usage. Software will be more intelligent. It happens, it makes a lot of money for businesses, and it gets better. How often do you use a spell checker?

Who is going to create the first Google-bot? You offer it a voice command about some topic you need information about, and it googles your topic, analyzes and organizes the information, and produces a report for you in seconds. This is an example of lo-fi human intelligence enhancement.

Will computer chips get smaller? Of course they will. Moore's Law (a debateble "law") is a driving *motivation* in the industry. People PAY MONEY for faster equipment. Multi-BILLION dollar corporations are pouring money into nanotechnological research and new chip making techniques.

People want to store gigabytes of songs in their cellphone/ipod/digitalcamera/camcorder, and major corporations will provide them with this capability or certainly die trying!!!

You can't deny that things are getting better- and getting better at a faster and faster rate.

Programmable nanotechnological molecular machines are on their way. Intelligent computers are on their way. Things are going to start getting massively, massively different and soon- and we are going to be caught completely, utterly unprepared because nobody expects it.

I urge you to visit the Singularity Institute at www.singinst.org

[philosophy-science]

This is all very interesting - a little disturbing too.

The universal energy law is the wave equation for an elastic medium (Space - waves propagate energy). Most people are currently unaware of the wave structure of matter, this knowledge will further accelerate the evolution of technology.
We are machines of the universe - no different than computers or cars in terms of physics, just more advanced.
For those interested - here is a page of truth statements about physical reality. See if you can find any errors.
http://www.spaceandmotion.com/truth-statements-physical-reality.htm

Cheers,
Geoff Haselhurst