In light of recent technological developments, noted futurist and AI expert Ray Kurzweil has revised his timeline for reaching “the singularity” — a term coined by science fiction writer Verner Vinge but popularized by Kurzweil’s 2005 book, “The Singularity Is Near.”
What is the singularity, exactly? It’s when we are able to merge our consciousness with artificial general intelligence capabilities, and “we will then become super human,” Kurzweil explained to Wired’s Steven Levy.
“Our minds are going to expand, he said. “We’ll be able to basically download knowledge and appreciate it.”
Kurzweil also predicts that this will expand human life spans: “There is no upper bound. Once we get past the singularity, we’ll be able to put some AI connections inside our own brain…. it’s going to connect to the cloud. The advantage of a cloud is it’s completely backed up.”
Understandably, that idea freaks some people out. But Kurzweil isn’t one of them.
“There are people working on this now, actually being able to put things inside the brain for people who can’t communicate with their own bodies. It needs to be faster than it is today. And I believe that will happen by the 2030s.”
Elon Musk’s Neuralink, for example, has announced its first successful human trial.
READ MORE: If Ray Kurzweil Is Right (Again), You’ll Meet His Immortal Soul in the Cloud (Wired)
In 1999, Kurzweil based his AGI timeline on the idea that “we’d need about a trillion calculations per second to do AGI. So I estimated 2029,” he explained in a recent TED Talk.
However, “We’ve seen the tremendous progress that’s happened in the last two years,” noting the “Google computer, which does 130 billion calculations per second. And recently, Nvidia just came out with a chip, which is half a trillion calculations per second.”
Kurzweil told Levy, “Just recently, the predictions have come down. I say it’s only five years away. Some people say it’ll happen next year.”
But experts seem to have coalesced around the next decade as to when the shift will happen. “When we get to the 2030s, nanobots will connect our brains to the cloud. Just the way your phone does, it expands intelligence, a million fold by 2045,” Kurzweil said on the TED stage.
These advances are reflected in Kurzweil’s newest tome, “The Singularity Is Nearer: When We Merge With AI,” released this spring.
After the singularity, Kurzweil claimed, “We will be funnier, sexier, smarter and more creative, free from biological limitations. We’ll be able to choose our appearance, will be able to do things we can’t do today, like visualize objects and 11 dimensions. We can speak all languages, will be able to expand consciousness in ways we can barely imagine. We will experience richer culture.”
WATCH THIS: The Last 6 Decades of AI — and What Comes Next | Ray Kurzweil | TED (YouTube)
The brain-cloud connection, in conjunction with longevity escape velocity — which postulates that, eventually, scientific progress will be able to mitigate or even reverse the effects of aging — mankind may reach a kind of immortality. (Like Black Mirror’s San Junipero, perhaps?)
“This is AI’s most transformative promise: longer, healthier lives unbounded by the scarcity and frailty that have limited humanity since its beginnings,” Kurzweil writes in an essay for The Economist.
How far are we from this future?
“Today, scientific progress gives the average American or Briton an extra six to seven weeks of life expectancy each year,” he writes. “When AGI gives us full mastery over cellular biology, these gains will sharply accelerate. Once annual increases in life expectancy reach 12 months, we’ll achieve ‘longevity escape velocity.’
“For people diligent about healthy habits and using new therapies, I believe this will happen between 2029 and 2035—at which point aging will not increase their annual chance of dying.”
However, some now consider Kurzweil’s timeline (written in 1999) to be conservative. He notes, “[S]ince the spectacular breakthroughs of the past few years, many experts think we will have AGI even sooner—so I’ve technically gone from being an optimist to a pessimist, without changing my prediction at all.”
Nonetheless, we have not yet achieved AGI. What will be required to reach this milestone?
Ironically, we may need AI-enabled technology to reach AGI.
“AI is about to make the leap from revolutionizing just the digital world to transforming the physical world as well,” Kurzweil writes.
For example, energy consumption is a current concern and/or limitation related to LLMs, but these models will eventually help to solve the very resource problems they currently exacerbate, Kurzweil expects.
He explains, “AI can rapidly sift through billions of chemistries in simulation, and is already driving innovations in both photovoltaics and batteries.”
READ MORE: Ray Kurzweil on how AI will transform the physical world (The Economist)
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