The future will always be--to me--a mystery wrapped up inside an enigma. However, for some, the future is something to be unwrapped at all costs, leaving behind logic and childhood excitement in the process. Raymond Kurzweil is one of these men who believe that the future is something both predictable and foreseeable, and he's made a living out of telling other people about his vision for that future.
Born February 12, 1948, Kurzweil is known as an inventor and futurist. He has been a pioneer in the fields of optical character recognition (OCR), text-to-speech synthesis, speech recognition technology, and electronic keyboard instruments. He is also the author of several books on health, artificial intelligence, transhumanism, technological singularity, and futurism.
Bill Gates has had the man over for dinner twice to pick his brain about the future, and has called the man a "visionary thinker and futurist."
The man is also becoming something of a cultural phenomenon with people following him in a cult-like fashion. His somewhat eccentric views and lifestyle habits have made him very popular and similarly very unpopular in some circles.
Kurzweil is also a proponent of the nanorobotics field, believing that we will be able to live longer with nanorobots within our bloodstream fixing and repairing. He's also a man who believes that in our near future we'll be able to upload our consciousness in to a computer. For many, these thoughts get them branded as a little on the weird side, but for Kurzweil, it's all just part of his charm.
His basic theory--which in my humble opinion is fundamentally flawed--is that mankind is on the verge of stepping in to a technological reality that we can as yet hardly fathom; although, apparently he can. That in the next century, we will see computers surpass human intelligence (by 2027) and a moment when technology is advancing so rapidly that "strictly biological" humans will be unable to comprehend it (by 2045).
Now I am not going to say that the man is entirely wrong. I have no doubt that in time, computers will begin to develop a certain level of awareness, and that they will become smart. But this is stepping a bit too far in to the world of Asimov, and a metaphysical debate over the learning curve of machines. The simple fact is, that unless robots can find a way to beat their programming--something that even as humans we have not been able to do--then Kurzweil is already off to a bad start, prediction wise.
Take humans as your prime example, the animals on this earth that believe themselves to be above everything else. Some are still scared of the dark, of loud noises, of thunder, of lightning. Our primitive instincts are ever present, from birth when a baby will wake up if rocked backwards too quickly, through to their mothers who can rise to any challenge in defense of their children.
These are all good things I'll add, but they are intrinsically all instinctive decisions. So as to how smart your Roomba will become, it will only become as smart as we allow it to become through its programming. Just as we have only become as smart and as instinctual as our programming has allowed us to become.
Granted, my dislike for this man's theories and beliefs stemmed from his dismissal of global warming. "These slides that Gore puts up are ludicrous," said Kurzweil. "They don't account for anything like the technological progress we're going to experience."
This is an absurd statement from a man who is the scientific version of an Ostrich with its head in the sand. He blindly hopes that the world will go on long enough unchanged so that his technological revolution can arrive and fix it all. That we are on the brink of a global warming tipping point--created by man or nature, who cares--seems to be of no consequence.
Brian O'Keefe who spun out an article over at 'The Spirit Of', and was the instigator of my own article here, points to several successful "predictions" that Kurzweil made to back up his futuristic predictions.
"Back in the 1980s he predicted that a computer would beat the world chess champion in 1998 (it happened in 1997) and that some kind of worldwide computer network would arise and facilitate communication and entertainment (still happening)."
That Deep Blue beat Garry Kasparov in 1997 is definitely a topic that is up for debate, and one that I will not debate here. But the simple fact is Deep Blue was programmed to beat Kasparov, and would very well have lost the next match to me, someone who can hardly play. A computer chess machine is usually programmed to combat a certain player and his style. Kurzweil's belief that a computer has developed a level of intelligence enough to beat a human is simply false.
As for predicting the internet? The internet was already around back in the 80s, and anyone with any sense would have been able to predict that what was originally built for universities and scientific researchers would eventually become a mass media outlet. Just as books, radio and television had before it, so would the internet after.
I'll finish with this. "We are the species that goes beyond our potential," he says. "Merging with our technology is the next stage in our evolution."
When have we gone past our potential? Ie, what is our potential that we have gone past it?
Joshua Hill, a Geek’s-Geek from Melbourne, Australia, Josh is an aspiring author with dreams of publishing his epic fantasy, currently in the works, sometime in the next 5 years. A techie, nerd, sci-fi nut and bookworm.
