Ray Kurzweil: The Transcendent Man

[Hellbent]

My sister's hubby did the cinematography on the documentary Transcendent Man about inventor Ray Kurzweil's life. I watched the premier of the film last night. Pretty fascinating stuff. What you all think of the Technological Singularity principle?

Film Trailer:

Charlie Rose interviewing the filmmaker and Ray Kurzweil:
http://www.kurzweilai.net/charlie-rose-interview-with-ray-kurzweil-and-director-barry-ptolemy-now-online

http://www.kurzweilai.net/

I think the philosophical implications are extremely fascinating.

BTW, this film won't be going to a wide release. Only a limited run in the 5 big cities: Boston, New York, Philly, Chicago and L.A.

[Quasar]

If present trends in technology were to continue long enough, I feel the singularity would be inevitable. The problem is, in my view, that it expects too much out of humanity. We are presently heading fullsteam toward a global oligarchy which will stand in the direct way of a true technological singularity which would change the human condition as a whole. Instead, it's more likely that technology will increasingly be bent toward negative uses and developed solely for the benefit of the top 10% of the population while the rest are left to relative slavery and squalor.

Should strong AI suddenly and unexpectedly appear and accelerate us toward a balanced singularity anyway, these people with the most to "lose" will likely oppose it violently.

[Jimmy]

I'd have to read his book to fully comprehend his theories, because I can't see myself fully agreeing with them at the moment. :S

Having looked at this page, a lot of his predictions seem... a tad overzealous.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Singularity_Is_Near#2010

[gggmork]

Quasar said:

global oligarchy.. top 10%

:(

I forget if I wrote this before but an essence of being an animal like a human is that we are all separate individuals with our own subjectivity/disagreements/thoughts/etc locked away in separate skulls. This is obvious in something like going on strike at a job, or a large herd of buffalo with only a handful of lion predators. Even though there would be power in numbers for the prey/strikers, it doesn't organize that way easily because everyone is a separate individual fighting for themselves.
But future intelligence might have the property where all the 'individuals' can see the thoughts/brain of other 'individuals' (like how computers can swap data, or maybe wireless or something) so it'd be more like a single brain rather than isolated pockets of intelligence. So there might essentially only be a single intelligent being in the future, even if the body is spread out over lots of different machines. If that's the case, this being could have a single thought, and boom, all the machines could cooperate with no disagreement/bickering/wars.
On second thought, there will probably be a vast ecology of machines. Some might be incompatible with others, different scales and sophistication levels, some more nano scale and not intelligent enough at an abstract/brain level to even be much of a part of the 'global brain' or whatever the hell it'd be called, bleh I don't know what I'm talking about.
In reality, the future will probably be just as shitty or shittier than the present, just more complicated and changing faster. Probably the 'top' 10% will be Tom Cruise, the CEO of geico, wallstreet skimmers, politicians and Oprah, all super AIs glued to machines that give them artificial super orgasms all day. But they'll forget how the immortality technology works because they killed off all the scientists and engineers along with the rest of humanity, so will eventually go extinct when it starts needing repairs. Then finally the rest of the earth can breath a sigh of relief with humanity gone, and koalas will evolve to take the niche left by humans, only they'll create a universe-wide utopia with their chance. The end.

[The Lag]

you should expand that and write it into a short story or even a novel...or you can try to sell what you have on ebay for $10mil

[gggmork]

You seem like a nice chap so I'll tell ya what I'm gonna do, I'll sell it to you RIGHT NOW for 1 TENTH of that price.

[Sharessa]

You know, not too long ago I was thinking that between the fact that neural interfaces are becoming a reality and Wi-Fi being widespread, we could easily have implement a global consciousness in the next decade or two. Creepy.

[Remilia Scarlet]

Danarchy said:

You know, not too long ago I was thinking that between the fact that neural interfaces are becoming a reality and Wi-Fi being widespread, we could easily have implement a global consciousness in the next decade or two. Creepy.

Or to look at that another way, we've become cyborgs. All these wifi/3g/wimax enabled devices and cloud storage are basically extensions of our minds, where we've used them to augment our memory and communication capabilities.

I also remember seeing an article recently (can't find it at the moment, sadly) that the combined global computational power has finally reached that of one human brain.

[Sharessa]

Hmm, that is a bit frightening to think about. I don't like parts of myself being supplanted by technology. It also reminds me of this article.

[Aliotroph?]

Danarchy said:

Hmm, that is a bit frightening to think about. I don't like parts of myself being supplanted by technology. It also reminds me of this article.

Silliness! Bits of me are already held together with bits of clever technology. I like it just fine! When I can have my useless eye replaced with a camera and my brain augmented with a math co-processor I'm not going to be scared of it.

AI is like nuclear fusion, though. I have no faith the technology is anywhere near where its proponents say it is. Time until it matters: somewhere between 10 years and the end of the universe. Meh.

[Remilia Scarlet]

Aliotroph? said:

Silliness! Bits of me are already held together with bits of clever technology. I like it just fine! When I can have my useless eye replaced with a camera and my brain augmented with a math co-processor I'm not going to be scared of it.

Heh, I started writing a song recently about a guy who gets cybernetic eye implants, but they malfunction due to a bug, causing information overload and him to go insane.

[Aliotroph?]

That sounds less like a song and more like a script from The Outer Limits. :D

[deathbringer]

Cyborgs have been around since pacemakers, or if you expand "technology" to include mechanical contrivances, since the earliest artificial limbs that were more than just lumps of limb-shaped wood. And that's a bloody long time.

Also human-like "thinking" machines have been "just around the corner" for about 50-60 years. Simple computing power alone isn't enough to create a machine that can tell you if somebody across the street has an umbrella or not.

[Hellbent]

human exoskeletons are interesting.

http://www.ted.com/talks/eythor_bender_demos_human_exoskeletons.html

http://www.ted.com/talks/rodney_brooks_on_robots.html

[Craigs]

Hellbent said:

human exoskeletons are interesting.

http://www.ted.com/talks/eythor_bender_demos_human_exoskeletons.html

looks a lot like S.T.A.L.K.E.R.'s exoskeleton.