Meet the scientific prophets who claim we are on the verge of creating a new type of human - a human v2.0.
It'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.
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Originally posted by Ray Kurzweil+--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Ray Kurzweil)</div>Hugo de Garis designs and builds 'neural networks' - computer programs simulating the brain.Quote:
Twenty five years from now we will have actually mastered human intelligence. We'll have both the hardware and the software to recreate human intelligence in a machine. And ultimately we'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's transforming business models and our relationships today, and imagine multiplying that capability by a billion in the next twenty five years.
It'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't see, you know, easily passed that event horizon. So we make a metaphor with physics and the idea of a black hole: It's hard to see beyond the event boundary of a singularity in physics, it's hard to see beyond this event horizon in human history because it's so profoundly transformative. So we call it the singularity.[/b]
<!--QuoteBegin-Kurzweil on De GarisQuote:
Originally posted by Hugo de Garis+--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Hugo de Garis)</div><!--QuoteBegin-De Garis on Kurzweil@Quote:
So an artilect is this - this fabulous device that humanity could build if we choose to, this century. It'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's too risky. I label them 'terrans', 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 'cosmists' - and that's based on the word cosmos, because that'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'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'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's a religion to build them!
If there is a major war over this species dominance issue towards the end of the 21st century - that's my prediction - then you are up into the range of not millions of people dying, but billions. So I've coined this term 'giga-death'.[/b]
Kurzweil is profoundly optimistic - he sees all these technological changes as being a wonderful thing for humanity - whereas my view is that it'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't. I think it's against his nature - he's just not built that way.
In my mind it's not an alien invasion of intelligent machines that are going to come to compete with us - it's really part of our civilisation; we already routinely do intellectual feats that would be impossible without our machines.
I think De Garis' conception is naive - of a war between those who are enhancing themselves with technology - the cosmists - and the terrans who are not. So that'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't. A war between those two would be a non-starter.
