In ‘The Singularity Is Nearer’ Ray Kurzweil Says We Will Merge With AI

The wordcell/sounding rotator dichotomy – the 21st-century replacement for the right-brain versus left-brain classification – may seem ridiculously reductive, although this is only partly irony. When tech billionaire, venture capitalist and Silicon Valley darling Marc Andreessen tweeted an insult about the second part – WordSales – he was expressing an idea that he felt like would be faithfully defended. Their group of virtual disruptors despises the entire realm of human enterprise, which may explain why its inhabitants are so desperate to give up their individuality and become machines.

Computer scientist and renowned transhumanist Ray Kurzweil is less openly contemptuous of the humanities than his peers, but he’s still a go-around guy—and by all accounts, an accomplished one. He is named “Principal Researcher and AI Visionary” at Google, and is the author of several non-fiction books beloved by Silicon Valley’s generation of fetishists. In “The Age of Spiritual Machines” (1999) and “The Singularity is Near” (2005), he presented reasoned predictions about some unusual near future, during which machines will enter the world, fix all international problems and Perhaps will also present excellent stories. With the best way.

His amazing grasp of computing is once again on display in his disjointed and sometimes delusional monologue, “The Singularity is Nearer: When We Merge with AI.” Kurzweil is a refreshingly candid interpreter of advanced technological ideas, although he suffers from a feature lacking from the surrounding rotators: an inability to acknowledge the limits of his own personal understanding.

Summarizing “the singularity is nigh” is formidable – even for a wordsailer like me – because it is so carefree and caring. Kurzweil has made clear claims about a wide range of domains, from non-public identity to the nature of consciousness to the fate of drugs. To the extent that such a disciplined treatise is what we might expect from an experienced programmer, it welcomes safe free associations and shameless simplifications.

That doesn’t mean every part of it is crooked or wrong. Kurzweil’s crude thesis – that “information technologies such as computing become increasingly affordable as each advance makes it easier to design the next stage of development on one’s own” – makes sense, even sensible. Too. As he says, “One dollar is now bought for around 600 trillion This is many times more than the computing power at the time GPS was developed.

Sadly, Kurzweil often limits himself to claims about the mechanics and history of AI. Rather, he ventures into foreign expansion, with ill effects. The historical past, he preaches in Secure’s First Bankruptcy, is nothing more than the development of knowledge processing, and can be depicted well and without problem in “six eras, or stages, from the beginning of our universe”. Could. At the sixth and final level, “Our intelligence expands throughout the universe, transforming ordinary matter into computronium, matter organized at the ultimate density of computation.” Kurzweil has been acquitted of the disgrace of attempting to explain its meaning, because the Sixth Age and its mysteries are isolated. Currently, we are approaching the 5th stage, when “we will merge with AI and multiply ourselves by millions of times the computational power that our biology has given us.”

An excerpt from “The Singularity Is Nearer” is devoted to the thesis that speed has been “getting exponentially better” for hundreds of years, although Kurzweil expects that to occur when the singularity will occur: when machines will surpass their human creators. Would support much more dramatically. In this bravely uncharted world of super-intelligent computers, 3-D printers will enable us to make tons of clothes and housing for everyone, and AI will lead the way in ways that will enable us to grow plants more effectively. . Meanwhile, microscopic machine-learning techniques will design cutting-edge novel drugs, and nanorobots will enter our bodies and shoot all the stray cells, effectively treating most cancers. “As AI unlocks unprecedented material abundance in countless fields,” Kurzweil writes, “the struggle for physical survival will fade into history.” There will also be a cure for loss of life: we will be able to visit our family members after their demise by talking to their robot analogs.

Kurzweil humbly admits that there are some growing pains during those final ages. Jobs may become computerized, and violence may flare up for a time before untouched methods of markets emerge. People who struggle to conform may suffer from feelings of worthlessness or inferiority. Sooner or later, still, we’ll be able to rein in the complaining and have a good time free from the burden of materiality: “Once our brains are backed up on a more advanced digital substrate, our self-modification The powers can operate fully.” Understanding.” And once we immediately integrate AI into our brains, it will become not a competitor but “an extension of us.”

Bill Gates said in a brief comment on the back cover of “The Singularity Is Nearer”, “Ray Kurzweil is the best person I know at predicting the future of artificial intelligence.” Despite this support, it’s fair to wonder whether the Oracle of Silicon Valley is really that important. At one level, he is going so far as to say, “As nanotechnology advances, we will be able to build an optimized body as we wish: we will be able to run, swim, and breathe much faster and for longer periods of time.” Will be.” The sea is like a fish, and if we want, we can give it wings that work for us.” At times, Kurzweil’s prophecies read like excerpts from messianic spiritual texts.

But despite the fact that his most outrageous technological predictions come true – even if we cure cancer with nanobots and program ourselves to grow gills – heaven will remain elusive. Suppose that 3-D printers really did produce abundant food to sustain the region’s society, or that AI really did create solutions to the most incurable diseases. Why should we think that those life-saving goods should be distributed equally, when we already have ample supplies of food reaching so few people and so many without access to even the most modern state aid? Kurzweil’s tasteless solution – “We will need smart government policies to ease the transition and ensure that prosperity is shared widely” – is not pleasant or particularly sudden.

From the first page of “The Singularity Is Nearer”, it is clear that, for Kurzweil, technical issues are the theme. Questions of political will or even moral acceptability are afterthoughts. If there is to be a generation later, Kurzweil considers its adoption not only inevitable but almost certainly recommended. The Go is designed to be an unstoppable drive rather than one built on effort and ingenuity.

For example, he estimates that renewable-energy resources accounted for “about 1.4 percent of global electricity production” in 2000 and 12.85% in 2021 – later he optimistically proclaims, “This progress will continue rapidly.” In no way should one consider that reactionary regimes, many of which deny climate change, are poised to (or have already taken) power over much of the Western world. Or that scientists warn that we are already moving away from negative purpose. As long as the layout of the graph is mountain climbing, Kurzweil believes it will travel on mountain climbing.

“History gives us cause for profound optimism” regarding the growth of political suffrage, as demonstrated through a neat insignificant chart monitoring “the spread of democracy since 1800.” However, this crude quantitative measurement no longer captures the many qualitative causes for alarm, among them the erosion of LGBTQ rights and increasing restrictions on abortion. Self-governance is a subtle achievement, an ongoing task, not something that can be certified through a development model – and by no means something that generations automatically generate.

On the other hand, unlike most of the more demanding advances that Kurzweil welcomes with pointed fingers, this one is seen as absolutely perfect. What if Kurzweil and his Silicon Valley friends were left to find the prospect of merging with computer systems interesting? What if other people are horrified by the idea of ​​talking to AI replicas of our dead family members? Certainly, many people have already decided to eschew even the applied sciences of this safe herald that is impossible to resist, such as the Metaverse. Although Kurzweil is troubled by the most dramatic and fantastical ways in which AI could betray us – from enabling bioterrorists to engineer a terrifying pathogen, through self-replication, until the entry of nanobots. From – He never spares a thought for it Contemporary technological breakthroughs have already made speed unbearable in a million common ways. To them, it’s unfair that misinformation spreads like wildfire, or that neo-Nazis are radicalized on YouTube, or that young women are caught up in the flow of devilishly addictive images that are often Causes eating problems. We can do The importance of all those radical untouched applied sciences – and through their light, there is much that we have to do.

There’s no doubt that AI will soon surpass people in many identities, and Kurzweil is right to believe that when computers can do our laundry, diagnose our diseases and conduct behavioral tests of untested medicine, If we can, the public will bring about a lot of change. A serious overview of what computers can and cannot contribute to human endeavor is well overdue, but unfortunately “The Singularity Is Nearer” is no such factor. A better message for destiny must avoid the many aspects of personality that Kurzweil ignores or dismisses. He is honest that the pace has indeed moved forward in many ways, although what is overlooked in his relentlessly futuristic image are the many valuable things that cannot be said to “move forward.”

What about the artwork? Kurzweil’s solution is that he too will enjoy the improvement. “Actors can now only convey what their character is thinking through their words and external physical expressions,” although in digital fact we will be able to “get art that captures a character’s raw, disorganized, nonverbal thoughts – Presented in all their indescribable beauty and complexity.” -Straight into our brains. If he had been paying attention to the last century, he would probably have discovered that modernist novelists, including Marcel Proust and Virginia Woolf, had long ago resolved this transition using stream of consciousness.

What about physical pleasure? Within the “digital universe”, Kurzweil said, “many products will not need a physical form at all, as simulated versions will perform perfectly well in highly realistic detail.” Among them: “A sensory-rich virtual beach vacation for the whole family.” Only someone who does not care about sensory pleasures can simply believe that virtual simulations will ever be an adequate substitute for the luxuries we would love or touch.

The arrogant conclusion that “computers will be able to simulate the human brain in all the ways we could care to do” most simply serves to highlight what parts of the brain Kurzweil himself no longer supports. Presumably the rotators around are satisfied that computers can outwit us because their own brains are so weak. If they have ever encountered a painting or a poem, they blink at it with affectionate wonder, with indecision, and wonder how it might be adapted.

the singularity is close