Human V2.0

[Jess]

Meet the scientific prophets who claim we are on the verge of creating a new type of human - a human v2.0. It&#39;s predicted that by 2029 computer intelligence will equal the power of the human brain. Some believe this will revolutionise humanity - we will be able to download our minds to computers extending our lives indefinitely. Others fear this will lead to oblivion by giving rise to destructive ultra intelligent machines. One thing they all agree on is that the coming of this moment - and whatever it brings - is inevitable. Ray Kurzweil is an inventor and expert in emerging trends in technology. Originally posted by Ray Kurzweil+--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Ray Kurzweil)</div> Twenty five years from now we will have actually mastered human intelligence. We&#39;ll have both the hardware and the software to recreate human intelligence in a machine. And ultimately we&#39;ll merge with that technology. Computers are about a billion times as powerful than they were a quarter of a century ago and they will become a billion times more powerful than they are today in a quarter of a century. If you think about the impact that biological technologies, computation or communication, the Internet has already and how it&#39;s transforming business models and our relationships today, and imagine multiplying that capability by a billion in the next twenty five years. It&#39;s really a point in human history where human society will be profoundly transformed by creating non-biological intelligence machines that are ultimately billions of times more capable than human beings today. And we will integrate with this technology and it will enhance human potential. We really can&#39;t see, you know, easily passed that event horizon. So we make a metaphor with physics and the idea of a black hole: It&#39;s hard to see beyond the event boundary of a singularity in physics, it&#39;s hard to see beyond this event horizon in human history because it&#39;s so profoundly transformative. So we call it the singularity.[/b] Hugo de Garis designs and builds &#39;neural networks&#39; - computer programs simulating the brain. Originally posted by Hugo de Garis+--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Hugo de Garis)</div> So an artilect is this - this fabulous device that humanity could build if we choose to, this century. It&#39;s a shortened form for artificial intellect, in other words an artificial intelligence - an almost godlike massively intelligent machine. Terrans Versus Cosmists The first group are opposed to building these artilects, because they would argue it&#39;s too risky. I label them &#39;terrans&#39;, as in Terra, the Earth. These machines one day, in a highly advanced form, hugely superior to us, may look on humans as SO inferior they may do this (SLAPS IMAGINARY MOSQUITO ON ARM) - they may treat us as mosquitoes - as pests. Now another group, in favour of building these artilects - I label these &#39;cosmists&#39; - and that&#39;s based on the word cosmos, because that&#39;s their perspective. And they may argue that building these artilects is one of the most magnificent things that humanity could ever do, because in a sense, it&#39;d be a kind of god-building. And the terrans I believe will be ruthless - they will argue that the only way to ensure that the risk of these machines existing be zero is that they&#39;re just never built in the first place. But that - that idea that they should never be built - runs absolutely in opposition to what the cosmists want, because for them, it&#39;s a religion to build them&#33; If there is a major war over this species dominance issue towards the end of the 21st century - that&#39;s my prediction - then you are up into the range of not millions of people dying, but billions. So I&#39;ve coined this term &#39;giga-death&#39;.[/b] <!--QuoteBegin-De Garis on Kurzweil@ Kurzweil is profoundly optimistic - he sees all these technological changes as being a wonderful thing for humanity - whereas my view is that it&#39;s much more pessimistic: I see all sorts of horrible outcomes occurring. Personally, I feel that Kurzweil is dangerously naive - dangerous in the sense that if people believe what he says, then that will demotivate them from considering the negative sides of what may happen. Kurzweil should consider more the negative political side of these developments, but he doesn&#39;t. I think it&#39;s against his nature - he&#39;s just not built that way. <!--QuoteBegin-Kurzweil on De Garis In my mind it&#39;s not an alien invasion of intelligent machines that are going to come to compete with us - it&#39;s really part of our civilisation; we already routinely do intellectual feats that would be impossible without our machines. I think De Garis&#39; conception is naive - of a war between those who are enhancing themselves with technology - the cosmists - and the terrans who are not. So that&#39;s like a war today between people who are, say, using cell-phones and those who are not. People who are going to enhance themselves with these technologies, and vastly expand their physical and mental capabilities, are going to be much more capable then those who don&#39;t. A war between those two would be a non-starter. <div align="center">Watch the full 50 minute documentary here.</div>

[Neruo]

I think, like in 'back to the future', we all expect to much of the future. In 2040 we will still be driving (electro) cars, and not fly around in jetpacks and hover-skateboards.

[pj]

I think there is a third way of looking at it, at the very least - that technological progress will be controlled and dictated by governments and multi-national corporations and will move forward at a rate dictated by maximum profit for them... which means that it won't move ahead very fast at all. Dependence is essential to maximize profit. Technological advancement tends toward independence. That is an obvious conflict. The irony is that most multi-nationals are public owned... meaning that the very people who are the victims of this mentality are the owners of their own masters. Weird.

[TweaK]

I think, like in 'back to the future', we all expect to much of the future. In 2040 we will still be driving (electro) cars, and not fly around in jetpacks and hover-skateboards. [/b] I agree. While a lot of technology will have improved and new - amazing - technology will definitely exist, I doubt in 25 years we will have AI and robots that are as smart as humans.

[Jess]

I think we will. Watch the film, its amazing. This guy hooked up a monkey's brain to a computer and the computer fed the data to a robotic arm so that the arm moved in the same way the monkey's arm moved. The scientist kind of programmed the computer to decipher the 'code' of the brain. If they can fully understand this 'code', the way the brain functions, they can recreate it. The cool thing was the monkey was taught to play a basic computer game to make it move its arm. After a while it realised that it didn't actually have to physically move its arm to control the game. Because it's brain was hooked up to the computer it just used it's mind...woah.

[ilovefrootloopz]

Its just like how some people thought we'd have hover cars by 2000, but nope. We have the same old boring 4 wheels carbon dioxide spewing hunks of metal. Except this time, it's an "expert" oooh.