Ray-Kurzweil-Reader-2001-2003

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Acknowledgements

The essays in this collection were published on KurzweilAI.net during 2001-2003, and have

benefited from the devoted efforts of the KurzweilAI.net editorial team. Our team includes

Amara D. Angelica, editor; Nanda Barker-Hook, editorial projects manager; Sarah Black,

associate editor; Emily Brown, editorial assistant; and Celia Black-Brooks, graphics design

manager and vice president of business development. Also providing technical and

administrative support to KurzweilAI.net are Ken Linde, systems manager; Matt Bridges, lead

software developer; Aaron Kleiner, chief operating and financial officer; Zoux, sound engineer

and music consultant; Toshi Hoo, video engineering and videography consultant; Denise

Scutellaro, accounting manager; Joan Walsh, accounting supervisor; Maria Ellis, accounting

assistant; and Don Gonson, strategic advisor.

—Ray Kurzweil, Editor-in-Chief

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIVING FOREVER 1

Is immortality coming in your lifetime? Medical Advances,

genetic engineering, cell and tissue engineering, rational drug

design and other advances offer tantalizing promises. This section

will look at the possibilities.

Human Body Version 2.0 3

In the coming decades, a radical upgrading of our body's physical and mental systems, already

underway, will use nanobots to augment and ultimately replace our organs. We already know how to

prevent most degenerative disease through nutrition and supplementation; this will be a bridge to the

emerging biotechnology revolution, which in turn will be a bridge to the nanotechnology revolution.

By 2030, reverse-engineering of the human brain will have been completed and nonbiological

intelligence will merge with our biological brains.

Human Cloning is the Least Interesting Application of Cloning Technology 14

Cloning is an extremely important technology—not for cloning humans but for life extension:

therapeutic cloning of one's own organs, creating new tissues to replace defective tissues or organs,

or replacing one's organs and tissues with their "young" telomere-extended replacements without

surgery. Cloning even offers a possible solution for world hunger: creating meat without animals.

Dialogue Between Ray Kurzweil, Eric Drexler, and Robert Bradbury 18

What would it take to achieve successful cryonics reanimation of a fully functioning human brain,

with memories intact? A conversation at the recent Alcor Conference on Extreme Life Extension

between Ray Kurzweil and Eric Drexler sparked an email discussion of this question. They agreed

that despite the challenges, the brain's functions and memories can be represented surprisingly

compactly, suggesting that successful reanimation of the brain may be achievable.

The Alcor Conference on Extreme Life Extension 29

On November 15-17, 2002, leaders in life extension and cryonics came together to explore how the

emerging technologies of biotechnology, nanotechnology, and cryonics will enable humans to halt

and ultimately reverse aging and disease and live indefinitely.

Arguments for a Green and Gray Future 35

Ray Kurzweil and Gregory Stock, Director, UCLA Program on Medicine, Technology and Society,

debated "BioFuture vs. MachineFuture" at the Foresight Senior Associate Gathering, April 27, 2002.

This is Ray Kurzweil's presentation.

Foreword to ‘Dark Ages II’ 39

Our civilization’s knowledge legacy is at great risk, growing exponentially with the exploding size of

our knowledge bases. And that doesn’t count the trillions of bytes of information stored in our brains,

which eventually will be captured in the future. How long do we want our lives and thought to last?

HOW TO BUILD A BRAIN 43

A machine is likely to achieve the ability of a human brain in the

coming years. Ray Kurzweil has predicted that a $1,000 personal

computer will match the computing speed and capacity of the

human brain by around the year 2020. With human brain reverse

engineering, we should have the software insights before 2030.

This section explores the possibilities of machine intelligence and

exotic new technologies for faster and more powerful

computational machines, from cellular automata and DNA

molecules to quantum computing. It also examines the

controversial area of uploading your mind into a computer.

The Intelligent Universe 45

Within 25 years, we'll reverse-engineer the brain and go on to develop superintelligence.

Extrapolating the exponential growth of computational capacity (a factor of at least 1000 per

decade), we'll expand inward to the fine forces, such as strings and quarks, and outward. Assuming

we could overcome the speed of light limitation, within 300 years we would saturate the whole

universe with our intelligence.

Deep Fritz Draws: Are Humans Getting Smarter, or Are Computers

Getting Stupider? 55

The Deep Fritz computer chess software only achieved a draw in its recent chess tournament with

Vladimir Kramnik because it has available only about 1.3% as much brute force computation as the

earlier Deep Blue's specialized hardware. Despite that, it plays chess at about the same level

because of its superior pattern recognition-based pruning algorithm. In six years, a program like

Deep Fritz will again achieve Deep Blue's ability to analyze 200 million board positions per second.

Deep Fritz-like chess programs running on ordinary personal computers will routinely defeat all

humans later in this decade.

A Wager on the Turing Test: The Rules 59

An explanation of rules behind the Turing Test, used to determine the winner of a long bet between

Ray Kurzweil and Mitch Kapor over whether artificial intelligence will be achieved by 2029.

A Wager on the Turing Test: Why I Think I Will Win 63

Will Ray Kurzweil's predictions come true? He's putting his money where his mouth is. Here's why

he thinks he will win a bet on the future of artificial intelligence. The wager: an AI that passes the

Turing Test by 2029.

Response to Mitchell Kapor’s “Why I Think I Will Win” 69

Ray Kurzweil responds to Mitch Kapor's arguments against the possibility that an AI that will pass a

Turing Test in 2029 in this final counterpoint on the bet: an AI will pass the Turing Test by 2029.

WILL MACHINES BECOME CONSCIOUS 73

“Suppose we scan someone’s brain and reinstate the resulting

‘mind file’ into suitable computing medium,” asks Ray Kurzweil.

“Will the entity that emerges from such an operation be

conscious?”

How Can We Possibly Tell if it’s Conscious? 75

At the Tucson 2002: Toward a Science of Consciousness conference, Ray Kurzweil addressed the

question of how to tell if something is conscious. He proposed two thought experiments.

My Question for the Edge: Who am I? What am I? 78

Since we constantly changing, are we just patterns? What if someone copies that pattern? Am I the

original and/or the copy? Ray Kurzweil responds to Edge publisher/editor John Brockman's request

to futurists to pose "hard-edge" questions that "render visible the deeper meanings of our lives,

redefine who and what we are."

Live Forever—Uploading the Human Brain… Closer Than You Think 81

Ray Kurzweil ponders the issues of identity and consciousness in an age when we can make digital

copies of ourselves.

The Coming Merging of Mind and Machine 87

Ray Kurzweil predicts a future with direct brain-to-computer access and conscious machines.

VISIONS OF THE FUTURE 93

Science fiction becoming fact: instant information everywhere,

virtually infinite bandwidth, implanted computer, nanotechnology

breakthroughs. What’s next?

The Matrix Loses Its Way: Reflections on 'Matrix' and 'Matrix Reloaded' 95

The Matrix Reloaded is crippled by senseless fighting and chase scenes, weak plot and character

development, tepid acting, and sophomoric dialogues. It shares the dystopian, Luddite perspective of

the original movie, but loses the elegance, style, originality, and evocative philosophical musings of

the original.

Reflections on Stephen Wolfram’s ‘A New Kind of Science’ 101

In his remarkable new book, Stephen Wolfram asserts that cellular automata operations underlie

much of the real world. He even asserts that the entire Universe itself is a big cellular-automaton

computer. But Ray Kurzweil challenges the ability of these ideas to fully explain the complexities of

life, intelligence, and physical phenomena.

What Have We Learned a Year After NASDAQ Hit 5,000? 115

The current recession reflects failure to develop realistic models of the pace at which new

information-based technologies emerge and the overall acceleration of the flow of information. But in

the longer-range view, recessions and recoveries reflect a relatively minor variability compared to the

far more important trend of the underlying exponential growth of the economy.

Remarks on Accepting the American Composers Orchestra Award 117

The Second Annual American Composers Orchestra Award for the Advancement of New Music in

America was presented on November 13 to Ray Kurzweil by American Composers Orchestra.

Kurzweil reflects on creativity and the jump from the blackboard to changing peoples' lives.

Foreword to The Eternal E-Customer 119

How have advances in electronic communications changed power relationships? The toppling of a

government provides one not-so-subtle example. Ray Kurzweil talks about those advances in this

forward to The Eternal E-Customer, a book that looks at the principles companies must adopt to

meet the needs and desires of this new kind of customer.

Response to Fortune Editor’s Invitational 121

Ray Kurzweil was invited to participate in the 2001 Fortune Magazine conference in Aspen,

Colorado, which featured luminaries and leaders from the worlds of technology, entertainment and

commerce. Here are his responses to questions addressed at the conference.

THE SINGULARITY 125

“The Singularity” is a phrase borrowed from the astrophysics of

black holes. The phrase has varied meanings; as used by Vernor

Vinge and Ray Kurzweil, it refers to the idea that accelerating

technology will lead to superhuman machine intelligence that will

soon exceed human intelligence, probably by the year 2030.

KurzweilAI.net News of 2002 127

In its second year of operation, 2002, KurzweilAI.net continued to chronicle the most notable news

stories on accelerating intelligence. Ray Kurzweil offers here his overview of the dramatic progress

that the past year has brought.

Singularity Math Trialogue 136

Hans Moravec, Vernor Vinge, and Ray Kurzweil discuss the mathematics of The Singularity, making

various assumptions about growth of knowledge vs. computational power.

After the Singularity: A Talk with Ray Kurzweil 141

John Brockman, editor of Edge.org, recently interviewed Ray Kurzweil on the Singularity and its

ramifications. According to Ray, "We are entering a new era. I call it 'the Singularity.' It's a merger

between human intelligence and machine intelligence that is going to create something bigger than

itself. It's the cutting edge of evolution on our planet. One can make a strong case that it's actually

the cutting edge of the evolution of intelligence in general, because there's no indication that it's

occurred anywhere else. To me that is what human civilization is all about. It is part of our destiny

and part of the destiny of evolution to continue to progress ever faster, and to grow the power of

intelligence exponentially. To contemplate stopping that—to think human beings are fine the way

they are—is a misplaced fond remembrance of what human beings used to be. What human beings

are is a species that has undergone a cultural and technological evolution, and it's the nature of

evolution that it accelerates, and that its powers grow exponentially, and that's what we're talking

about. The next stage of this will be to amplify our own intellectual powers with the results of our

technology."

Accelerating Intelligence: Where Will Technology Lead Us? 152

Ray Kurzweil gave a Special Address at BusinessWeek's The Digital Economy New Priorities:

Building A Collaborative Enterprise In Uncertain Times conference on December 6, 2001 in San

Francisco. He introduced business CEOs to the Singularity — the moment when distinctions

between human and machine intelligence disappear.

Max More and Ray Kurzweil on the Singularity 154

As technology accelerates over the next few decades and machines achieve superintelligence, we

will encounter a dramatic phase transition: the "Singularity." Will it be a "wall" (a barrier as

conceptually impenetrable as the event horizon of a black hole in space), an "AI-Singularity" ruled by

super-intelligent AIs, or a gentler "surge" into a posthuman era of agelessness and super-

intelligence? Will this meme be hijacked by religious "passive singularitarians" obsessed with a

future rapture? Ray Kurzweil and Extropy Institute president Max More debate.

DANGEROUS FUTURES 175

Will future technology – such as bioengineered pathogens, self-

replicating nanobots, and supersmart robots – run amuck and

accelerate out of control, perhaps threatening the human race?

That’s the concern of the pessimists, as stated by Bill Joy in an

April 2000 Wired article. The optimists, such as Ray Kurzweil,

believe technological progress is inevitable and can be controlled.

Are We Becoming an Endangered Species? Technology and Ethics

in the Twenty First Century, A Panel Discussion at Washington

National Cathedral 177

Ray Kurzweil addresses questions presented at Are We Becoming an Endangered Species?

Technology and Ethics in the 21st Century, a conference on technology and ethics sponsored by

Washington National Cathedral. Other panelists are Anne Foerst, Bill Joy and Bill McKibben.

A Dialogue with the New York Times on the Technological Implications

of the September 11 Disaster 183

In preparation for the New York Times article "In the Next Chapter, Is Technology an Ally?", Ray

Kurzweil engaged in a conversation with computer scientist Peter Neumann, science fiction author

Bruce Sterling, law professor Lawrence Lessig, retired engineer Severo Ornstein, and cryptographer

Whitfield Diffie, addressing questions of how technology and innovation will be shaped by the tragic

events of September 11, 2001.

One Half of An Argument 187

A counterpoint to Jaron Lanier's dystopian visions of runaway technological cataclysm in "One Half

of a Manifesto."

NANOTECHNOLOGY 197

Think small. The nanotechnology boom is beginning. Now how do

we keep it under control?

Testimony of Ray Kurzweil on the Societal Implications of

Nanotechnology 199

Despite calls to relinquish research in nanotechnology, we will have no choice but to confront the

challenge of guiding nanotechnology in a constructive direction. Advances in nanotechnology and

related advanced technologies are inevitable. Any broad attempt to relinquish nanotechnology will

only push it underground, which would interfere with the benefits while actually making the dangers

worse.

Human Body Version 2.0

Ray Kurzweil

http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0551.html

In the coming decades, a radical upgrading of our body's physical and mental systems, already

underway, will use nanobots to augment and ultimately replace our organs. We already know

how to prevent most degenerative disease through nutrition and supplementation; this will be a

bridge to the emerging biotechnology revolution, which in turn will be a bridge to the

nanotechnology revolution. By 2030, reverse-engineering of the human brain will have been

completed and nonbiological intelligence will merge with our biological brains.

Published on KurzweilAI.net February 17, 2003. Ray Kurzweil presented a talk based on this

article on February 21, 2003 at Time magazine's Future of Life Summit.

Sex has already been largely separated from its biological function. For the most part, we engage

in sexual activity for intimate communication and sensual pleasure, not reproduction.

Conversely, we have multiple methodologies for creating babies without physical sex, albeit

most reproduction still does derive from the sex act. Although not condoned by all sectors of

society, this disentanglement of sex from its biological function has been readily, even eagerly,

adopted by the mainstream.

So why don’t we provide the same extrication of purpose from biology for another activity that

also provides both social intimacy and sensual pleasure, namely eating? We have crude ways of

doing this today. Starch blockers, such as Bayer’s Precose, partially prevent absorption of

complex carbohydrates; fat blockers, such as Chitosan, bind to fat molecules, causing them to

pass through the digestive tract; and sugar substitutes, such as Sucralose and Stevia, provide

sweetness without calories. There are limitations and problems with each of these contemporary

technologies, but a more effective generation of drugs is being developed that will block excess

caloric absorption on the cellular level.

Let us consider, however, a more fundamental reengineering of the digestive process to

disconnect the sensual aspects of eating from its original biological purpose: to provide nutrients

into the bloodstream that are then delivered to each of our trillions of cells. These nutrients

include caloric (energy-bearing) substances such as glucose (from carbohydrates), proteins, fats,

and a myriad of trace molecules, such as vitamins, minerals, and phytochemicals, that provide

building blocks and facilitating enzymes for diverse metabolic processes.

An Era of Abundance

Our knowledge of the complex pathways underlying digestive processes is rapidly expanding,

although there is still a great deal we do not fully understand. On the one hand, digestion, like

any other major human biological system, is astonishing in its intricacy and cleverness. Our

bodies manage to extract the complex resources needed to survive, despite sharply varying

conditions, while at the same time, filtering out a multiplicity of toxins.

On the other hand, our bodies evolved in a very different era. Our digestive processes in

particular are optimized for a situation that is dramatically dissimilar to the one we find ourselves

in. For most of our biological heritage, there was a high likelihood that the next foraging or

hunting season (and for a brief, relatively recent period, the next planting season) might be

catastrophically lean. So it made sense for our bodies to hold on to every possible calorie. Today,

this biological strategy is extremely counterproductive. Our outdated metabolic programming

underlies our contemporary epidemic of obesity and fuels pathological processes of degenerative

disease such as coronary artery disease, and type II diabetes.

Up until recently (on an evolutionary time scale), it was not in the interest of the species for old

people like myself (I was born in 1948) to use up the limited resources of the clan. Evolution

favored a short life span—life expectancy was 37 years only two centuries ago—so these

restricted reserves could be devoted to the young, those caring for them, and those strong enough

to perform intense physical work.

We now live in an era of great material abundance. Most work requires mental effort rather than

physical exertion. A century ago, 30 percent of the U.S. work force worked on farms, with

another 30 percent deployed in factories. Both of these figures are now under 3 percent. The

significant majority of today’s job categories, ranging from airline flight attendant to web

designer, simply didn’t exist a century ago. Circa 2003, we have the opportunity to continue to

contribute to our civilization’s exponentially growing knowledge base—incidentally, a unique

attribute of our species—well past our child-rearing days.

Our species has already augmented the "natural" order of our life cycle through our technology:

drugs, supplements, replacement parts for virtually all bodily systems, and many other

interventions. We already have devices to replace our hips, knees, shoulders, elbows, wrists,

jaws, teeth, skin, arteries, veins, heart valves, arms, legs, feet, fingers, and toes. Systems to

replace more complex organs (for example, our hearts) are beginning to work. As we’re learning

the principles of operation of the human body and the brain, we will soon be in a position to

design vastly superior systems that will be more enjoyable, last longer, and perform better,

without susceptibility to breakdown, disease, and aging.

Artist and cultural catalyst Natasha Vita-More pioneered a conceptual design for one such

system, called Primo Posthuman, designed for mobility, flexibility and superlongevity. It

features innovations such as a metabrain for global-net connection with prosthetic neo-neocortex

of AI interwoven with nanobots; smart skin that is solar protected with biosensors for tone and

texture changeability, and high-acuity senses.

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AcknowledgementsTheessaysinthiscollectionwerepublishedonKurzweilAI.netduring2001-2003,andhavebenefitedfromthedevotedeffortsoftheKurzweilAI.neteditorialteam.OurteamincludesAmaraD.Angelica,editor;NandaBarker-Hook,editorialprojectsmanager;SarahBlack,associateeditor;EmilyBrown,editorialassistant;andCeli...

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