CDR: Ray Kurzweil talk at Foresight nanotech conference
Declan McCullagh
declan at well.com
Fri Nov 3 18:46:09 PST 2000
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,39967,00.html
Kurzweil: Rooting for the Machine
by Declan McCullagh (declan at wired.com)
1:35 p.m. Nov. 3, 2000 PST
BETHESDA, Maryland -- Raymond Kurzweil doesn't merely predict that
machine intelligence will surpass human brains by the end of the
century. He's eagerly anticipating it.
In a Kurzweillian future, the world would become a very strange place,
where converging advances in nanotechnology, biotechnology and
computer science combine to propel humanity to its next stage of
evolution.
"By the end of this century, I don't think there will be a clear
distinction between human and machine," Kurzweil told the Foresight
Institute's Eighth Conference on Molecular Nanotechnology on Friday.
"We can expand the capacity of our brains by a factor of thousands or
millions, and, by the end of the century, by trillions," predicts the
inventor-turned-author of the Age of Intelligent Machines and the Age
of Spiritual Machines.
Technology, of course, has been part of human existence since our
Cro-Magnon ancestors picked up a stone and realized it could be more
than part of the landscape.
But Kurzweil is talking about something a bit more ambitious. If he's
right, exponential progress in science and engineering will allow us
to merge with machines. We will become resistant to diseases, think
faster, live better, and become transhuman in ways that would make
even Superman green with envy.
If he's wrong, well, then we'll continue to have buggy software,
faulty memories, and lifespans that fall far short of the lowly
leopard tortoise.
[...]
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