Episode #751
June 24, 2023
Ray Kurzweil developed text to speech technology to help machines communicate with blind humans.
In later years Kurzweil helped develop speech to text to help humans communicate with machines.
Kurzweil has been an advocate of Moore’s law, which observes that the number of transistors in an integrated circuit doubles every two years.
Exponential growth in the amount of computing per dollar is also notable.
Kurzweil says:
We will achieve one Human Brain capability for $1000 around 2023.
We will achieve one Human Brain capability for one cent around 2037.
We will achieve one Human Race capability for $1000 around 2049.
We will achieve one Human Race capability for one cent around 2059.
Ray Kurzweil speaks of “Longevity Escape Velocity.”
Medical and environmental advancements have extended Human life expectancy. Every year a percentage of the year is added into each persons life expectancy because of medications, surgeries, safer transportation and housing. There will be a time that life will extend at the rate of one year per year or more. This will result in virtual immortality, with the exception of incurable illness, natural disaster or accident.
Knowledge is where computing and immortality intersect. Our cell phones have made us smarter, safer, more aware and, in some ways, prescient of our futures. For example, turn by turn GPS routinely guides us safely to our destinations.
The evolution of Human Beings will be to merge with Artificial Intelligence. When the brain gains direct access to the Internet we will become vastly more intelligent than we are today. This Intelligence will allow us to keep ourselves safer. It will help us to develop better and better technology which will, in turn, advance us as Human Beings.
Artificial Intelligence is a Human tool. It is less likely to replace Humans than to enhance Humans.
We hope that greater awareness will increase Human morality. Knowledge and critical thinking have always made us better, more empathetic people.
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The most frightening thing about Artificial Intelligence is that it may come to act, and people may come to think, that AI is somehow equivalent to human intelligence. But as “intelligent” as it seems, AI does not think for itself like a human does; it merely re-packages ideas, concepts and images that humans have already thought of and created, yet without a human’s integrity for facts. I have read articles written by AI that were incredibly convincing because of their proficient grammar and syntax, yet they contained statements and assertions that were simply not factual. The human brain is God’s greatest creation and it can never be matched by a computer, no matter how sophisticated. Never trust AI when it comes to the facts.
I once thought my intelligence MIGHT be artificial.
Now I pretty sue it’s REAl.
What an optimistic view! Kurzweil seeks to live long enough to achieve immortality, by “hacking” his metabolism. At one point, he claimed to take 250 nutritional supplements daily. Maybe it will work. Maybe such immortality will prove of great value, or maybe life is cheap. Like Yossarian in Catch-22, I want to live forever or die in the attempt.