14th April 2009, 1:30 PM
Morality issues aside, he explains in his book that we often limit ourselves when making predictions because we often assume that the future will not be much different from the present. He mentions S-curves in evolution, both biological and technological, how all processes of advancement level off for a time, and then some breakthrough occurs and the rate of change increases even more. Our ability to create more efficient processors is currently stuck in one of these S-curves. Sooner, rather than later, a method will be developed to overcome our current shortcomings. Replicating the human brain will not happen by stringing together a trillion current processors. It will happen using technology more advanced than what exists today. And the technology will come.
It may seem unlikely given our current technology, but that's our limitation of prediction at workd. If you were to tell a person living in the year 1850 that we invented little devices that utilize invisible waves, and with them we can talk to someone on the other side of the world as if they stood next to us, they would think the same thing. If you told a man living at the time of Christ that we can not only fly through the clouds but above them, that we invented vehicles to take ourselves to the very moon, he would think it impossible.
As for the morality, after reading "The Singularity is Near", Kurzweil favors technology augmenting our current state of being rather than replacing it entirely. Surely this is only one possible outcome, but hardly the least possible, and the reason I'm fascinated by the idea. Technology will be only what we allow it to be, and perhaps it's healthy that we've long been mistrustful of technology, feeding ourselves a steady diet of technological dystopiae in the vein of the Terminator and Blade Runner, because that fear will help us limit the mistakes we might make. This future won't be a utopia (Kurzweil himself never uses the term), but it will be a leap up the evolutionary ladder that hasn't been seen since a group of hairless apes figured out how to make fire. Morality itself will change, as morality so often has over the course of history.
It may seem unlikely given our current technology, but that's our limitation of prediction at workd. If you were to tell a person living in the year 1850 that we invented little devices that utilize invisible waves, and with them we can talk to someone on the other side of the world as if they stood next to us, they would think the same thing. If you told a man living at the time of Christ that we can not only fly through the clouds but above them, that we invented vehicles to take ourselves to the very moon, he would think it impossible.
As for the morality, after reading "The Singularity is Near", Kurzweil favors technology augmenting our current state of being rather than replacing it entirely. Surely this is only one possible outcome, but hardly the least possible, and the reason I'm fascinated by the idea. Technology will be only what we allow it to be, and perhaps it's healthy that we've long been mistrustful of technology, feeding ourselves a steady diet of technological dystopiae in the vein of the Terminator and Blade Runner, because that fear will help us limit the mistakes we might make. This future won't be a utopia (Kurzweil himself never uses the term), but it will be a leap up the evolutionary ladder that hasn't been seen since a group of hairless apes figured out how to make fire. Morality itself will change, as morality so often has over the course of history.
YOU CANNOT HIDE FOREVER
WE STAND AT THE DOOR
WE STAND AT THE DOOR