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By Eli Segall (contact) 
Saturday, Jan. 26, 2013 | 2 a.m.
If you worry that the Internet, computers and other electronics play an outsized role in daily life, futurist Ray Kurzweil has one message for you: This is only the beginning. Kurzweil, who will speak Sunday night at the Smith Center for the Performing Arts as part of the Audi Speaker Series, predicts a high-tech society that makes today's lifestyle look straight out of the Stone Age. As he sees it, people will have tiny computing devices in their bodies, more powerful brains and longer lives. Simply put, the world will be dominated by artificial intelligence. The 64-year-old entrepreneur is the ...
Smith Center for the Performing Arts The Smith Center for the Performing Arts offers a blend of performances by resident companies and touring attractions. The 5-acre cultural campus features three performance spaces, which includes a main performance area with more than 2,000 seats. This downtown cultural center of Las Vegas looks to educate, entertain and excite community members.
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This is crap. The biological brain is too complex for our primitive machines to reproduce. We are not even close. Egotistical junk food! The job of God will need to go to someone who has a better clue.
we need machines to pick up dead bodies
A far bigger worry for future generations will be the tens of billions of humans wandering around that by then will have made the planet a difficult place to just survive.
As human beings travel through the sands of time here on planet Earth (a tiny speck in the great universe), many, not all, evolve with what is in THEIR present reality and dimension. Not everyone will understand what futurist Ray Kurzweil is saying. No problem and no harm done. We all live and experience what is within our personal realms or scopes of the universe to experience. This is a neutral zone, neither right nor wrong exists. Whatever your personal destiny is, it is. All are entitled to their opinions: it is where they are at in the now/present and may or may not change.
I view this article as informational, putting it out there. Over two decades ago, I had questions, and sometime later just happened to stumble on Ray Kurzweil being on a television show explaining "The Singularity of the Machine". This caught my attention and resonated with me, with the test of time verifying things that at that time were being said and suggested. What did not exist then, now does....the test of time. The writer of this article, titled his writing in such a way to introduce controversy and catch your attention so that you would be drawn to read it. Nothing here implies that humanity will be "fixed" and that everyone will live a perfect life.
Throughout the Earth's history, there have been prophets, seers, visionaries, and remote viewers co-existing with science, religion, and philosophy. People pick and choose what fits into their individual/personal, and collective belief system(s). That is a part of your "hard wiring" folks. Forever, there are believers, skeptics, and naysayers. WE are all of those sometime in our lives. It is what it is, so, as the song goes, "Let it be..."!
Blessings and Peace,
Star
Should be a interesting show, with a audience of crack pots
So some guy rehashes some Sci Fi plot lines, and he's supposed to be some sort of guru or expert that people are going to pay money to see?
Why?
I don't think Kurzweil's ideas are especially far flung, but I tend to agree with the Penrose camp ("The Emperor's New Mind") that says we will not achieve true AI until we understand quantum gravity. With that in mind, I think Kurzweil's timeline is a bit optimistic.
That said, all bets are off if we develop quantum computers that operate on a scale that is as superior to what we have today as that is to the first Univac.
The last truly revolutionary advance we have had was when it was realized that ALL forms of information are digital in nature to one extent or another (dual slit experiments not withstanding.) A fully functional quantum computer, with trillions of elements, will be a similar breakthrough. (Sorry folks, the iPhone and the Internet are nothing more than logical extensions of the fact that 1 + 1 = 0 with a half-carry.)
However, until such technology is mature, I do expect to see tremendous strides being made in human augmentation, just not at the pace Kurzweil predicts. Cochlear implants not withstanding, we will not be able to say we have achieved a reasonable understanding of a man-machine interface until we can produce Gordie La Forge's visor. I would put that at about 50 - 65 years from now.
For Boftx: Don't you think that we are taking " baby steps" though, even with "cloud" computing? It is moving forward, there is a profoundly slow integration of Artificial Intelligence with current advances as human augmentation through brain interfaces and in the ever-growing prosthesis industry for those who have varying needs.
Even the 2014 Corvette Stingray has "intuitive" components integrated within its systems (I can't wait to play with one!). It's been a while since I picked up a copy of Popular Mechanics or Popular Science, but we are seeing tiny moves in the direction of AI, and it is my humble opinion, that currently much of that technology is under wraps, in safe keeping, with the US Department of Defense.
Years ago, many innovations were present at COMDEX, then it went to a mere pedestrian trinkle at CES. The thrill is gone, with little prospect of mingling with the latest and greatest tech sleepers, now will remain nonpublic and quietly developing. So, Commenters are right about the timeline being ambitious, since there exists barriers to protect intellectual property, claims, and patents. It is miles before we'll ever see AI innovations in our hands, homes, and bodies, or anytime soon. The potential exists, and hope we must!
Blessings and Peace,
Star
Star,
No, I would not say that yet. The closest approach that has been made has been with Watson, and even that machine is nothing more than a search engine at its core. Watson is not capable of changing its programming as needed.
There are two distinct areas in the discussion: 1) self-aware, cognitive computers, and 2) the man-machine interface. The latter will be far easier to achieve (we are making strong progress already) than the former. Watson is a member of the second category, not the first, as is "the Cloud."
I will grant that the Cloud model might be able to mimic to some extent the holographic model of data storage that some people think our brain uses. But again, that is not cognitive thought.
The best hope for achieving that, in my opinion, is tied to quantum computing and the role that gravity (quantum or not) plays in quantum uncertainty. Quantum computers inherently operate on a scale similar to, and even smaller than, that which our brain does in terms of connections which makes them responsive to quantum effects.
So while I think what we call science fiction today is quite achievable, I still think that the AI side of it is still quite some time away.
By the way, I attended and exhibited at COMDEX for several years. It was always an amazing experience.
Computers should be regulated, no person should be allowed to have a computing device with more than 2G of RAM and hard drive storage should be limited to no more than 5G.
Violators should be prosecuted and the fines should be extreme.
We have to stop the production and distribution of these high capacity computing devices before they get out of control.
LMFAO, then I am going to watch a movie
Eli...how do you get this "and a potential war with machines"
from this:
"I think human and computer intelligence will be mixed together just as it is now. We have conflicts today between groups of humans that are both enhanced by intelligent technology. A war between a group that used the latest technology and a group of humans who eschewed modern technology would be a very short war."
I know you want people to read your article, but... really?