Google’s Rob Kurzweil Says We’ll All Become Human-Robot Hybrids By 2030
Sounding like the plot of a bad sci-fi movie, Google's director of engineering, Ray Kurzweil, predicts that we're going to be artificially intelligent beings within the next 15 years or so. He made the prediction while speaking last week at the Exponential Finance conference in New York, and if you doubt him, consider that he's right about 86 percent of the time -- just ask him.
Kurzweil is himself an intelligent and accomplished inventor, and one of the smartest minds out there. He also likes to make predictions -- a lot of them. Back in the 1990s, he made 147 predictions for 2009, including that mobile computers would be a mainstream thing and that computer displays would be built into glasses (Google Glass, anyone?). When he reviewed his predictions in 2010, Kurzweil gave himself a B grade based on 86 percent of them being correct.
Will artificial intelligence in human beings be another one of them? We'll have to wait and see, but if so, we'll be able to connect our brains to the cloud using nanobots, or little robots made from DNA strands. By connecting our brains to a network of several thousand computers, we'll have access to a wealth of information and be able to think on a whole new level.
"Our thinking then will be a hybrid of biological and non-biological thinking," Kurzweil said.
By the end of the 2030s and into the early 2040s, Kurzweil predicts that the majority of our thinking will be non-biological.
For me, his predictions on artificial intelligence bring to mind the move Transcendence in which Johnny Depp plays a dying character who transfers his brain and consciousness into a quantum computer. Naturally, bad things follow.
As far as negatives are concerned, Kurzweil says it's our moral obligation to continue developing technology while preparing for potential negative side effects.
Kurzweil is himself an intelligent and accomplished inventor, and one of the smartest minds out there. He also likes to make predictions -- a lot of them. Back in the 1990s, he made 147 predictions for 2009, including that mobile computers would be a mainstream thing and that computer displays would be built into glasses (Google Glass, anyone?). When he reviewed his predictions in 2010, Kurzweil gave himself a B grade based on 86 percent of them being correct.
Will artificial intelligence in human beings be another one of them? We'll have to wait and see, but if so, we'll be able to connect our brains to the cloud using nanobots, or little robots made from DNA strands. By connecting our brains to a network of several thousand computers, we'll have access to a wealth of information and be able to think on a whole new level.
"Our thinking then will be a hybrid of biological and non-biological thinking," Kurzweil said.
By the end of the 2030s and into the early 2040s, Kurzweil predicts that the majority of our thinking will be non-biological.
For me, his predictions on artificial intelligence bring to mind the move Transcendence in which Johnny Depp plays a dying character who transfers his brain and consciousness into a quantum computer. Naturally, bad things follow.
As far as negatives are concerned, Kurzweil says it's our moral obligation to continue developing technology while preparing for potential negative side effects.
