An interview with Ray Kurzweil - Spiritual machines, artificial intelligence, and some interesting banter!

I was first introduced to the work of the theorist, Ray Kurzweil, some years ago when my initial interests in strong Artificial Intelligence emerged (probably in 2001 or thereabout).  I have since read just about everything that he has published (mostly as part of my doctoral research).  You can find a number of posts I've made about Ray Kurzweil on this blog here.


If you're interested in reading some of my thoughts on Kurzweil you can download a copy of my Doctoral Thesis here (please see chapter 2). Some other books that are worth reading to understand Kurzweil's relationship between computers, the human mind, and the future of technology are:

The age of spiritual machines, and Are we spiritual machines. By Kurzweil.
Wiredlife - who are we in the digital age? By Jonscher.

What I found most interesting was Kurzweil's 'Law of accelerating returns' (again, see chapter 2 of my thesis above).  It is an amendment of Moore's Law - simply stated Kurzweil shows by mathematical proof that if the exponential development of compunational power continues to surpass Moore's law we should soon have sentient machines (his prediction was that this would happen by 2029).  At first glance this may seem quite unbelievable, yet consider that we already rely on machines for so many 'higher' functions in our lives.  A simple example is memory - I don't know my mother's telephone number!  It is saved as a contact on my cellphone.  I were to loose my phone I would not be able to phone her.  Then there are other examples such as the reliance on machines to complete complex tasks, such as landing in bad weather or poor visibility. In my research I name other examples of our relationship to machines at subtler levels (such as developing attachments to certain technologies such as emotional attachments to 'virtual pets' - like the Farmville craze).  There are many examples of how we relate to current relatively 'dumb' and limited technologies in complex and subtle ways.


Can you imagine how much more reliant we shall be on these technologies when they can perform ALL tasks more accurately and with greater speed and ease than humans can?


The one philosophical possibility that exists with Kurzweil is the fact that just because something doesn't currently exist, does not mean that it does not have the potential to exist at some point in the future.  So, in my thesis I deal with the counterarguments to strong Artificial Intelligence (i.e., those who say that it is not possible). Have a look at those arguments and counterarguments and let me know what you think!


Kurzweil not only writes about technology and the future, he has also made some significant technological and theoretical contributions towards our understanding of brain modeling (particularly as it relates to consciousness and the move from information to knowledge).


So, if you're still reading after all of the above, you may be interested to follow the links below to an interview with Ray Kurzweil.

Inventor Ray Kurzweil is interviewed by h+ magazine about consciousness, brain modeling, global warming, and the Singularity.

SO: James Lovelock, the ecologist behind the Gaia hypothesis, came out a couple of years ago with a prediction that more than 6 billion people are going to perish by the end of this century, mostly because of climate change. Do you see the GNR technologies coming on line to mitigate that kind of a catastrophe?

RK: Absolutely. Those projections are based on linear thinking, as if nothing's going to happen over the next 50 or 100 years. It's ridiculous. For example, we're applying nanotechnology to solar panels. The cost per watt of solar energy is coming down dramatically. As a result, the amount of solar energy is growing exponentially. It?s doubling every two years, reliably, for the last 20 years. People ask, "Is there really enough solar energy to meet all of our energy needs?" It's actually 10,000 times more than we need. And yes you lose some with cloud cover and so forth, but we only have to capture one part in 10,000. If you put efficient solar collection panels on a small percentage of the deserts in the world, you would meet 100% of our energy needs. And there?s also the same kind of progress being made on energy storage to deal with the intermittency of solar. There are only eight doublings to go before solar meets 100% of our energy needs. We're awash in sunlight and these new technologies will enable us to capture that in a clean and renewable fashion. And then, geothermal -- you have the potential for incredible amounts of energy.

Ray Kurzweil: The h+ Interview

This portion of the post is originally linked from BoingBoing.net.