Extract from the documentary “Singularity or Bust”.Pr. Hugo de Garis describes his view of a potential future warfare resulting from the conflict between pro…
In this episode, recorded during the 2024 Abundance360 Summit, Ray, Geoffrey, and Peter debate whether AI will become sentient, what consciousness constitutes, and if AI should have rights.
Ray Kurzweil, an American inventor and futurist, is a pioneer in artificial intelligence. He has contributed significantly to OCR, text-to-speech, and speech recognition technologies. He is the author of numerous books on AI and the future of technology and has received the National Medal of Technology and Innovation, among other honors. At Google, Kurzweil focuses on machine learning and language processing, driving advancements in technology and human potential.
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People like the veteran computer scientist Ray Kurzweil had anticipated that humanity would reach the technological singularity (where an AI agent is just as smart as a human) for yonks, outlining his thesis in ‘The Singularity is Near’ (2005) – with a projection for 2029.
Disciples like Ben Goertzel have claimed it can come as soon as 2027. Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang says it’s “five years away”, joining the likes of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and others in predicting an aggressive and exponential escalation. Should these predictions be true, they will also introduce a whole cluster bomb of ethical, moral, and existential anxieties that we will have to confront. So as The Matrix turns 25, maybe it wasn’t so far-fetched after all?
Unlike me, Kurzweil has been embracing AI for decades. In his 2005 book, The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology, Kurzweil made the bold prediction that AI would expand human intelligence exponentially, changing life as we know it. He wasn’t wrong. Now in his 70s, Kurzweil is upping the ante in his newest book, The Singularity Is Nearer: When We Merge with AI, revisiting his prediction of the melding of human and machine, with 20 additional years of data showing the exponential rate of technological advancement. It’s a fascinating look at the future and the hope for a better world.
Kurzweil has long been recognized as a great thinker. The son of a musician father and visual artist mother, he grew up in New York City and at a young age became enamored with computers, writing his first computer program at the age of 15.
While at MIT, earning a degree in computer science and literature, Kurzweil started a company that created a computer program to match high school students with colleges. In the ensuing years, he went on to found (and sell) multiple technology-fueled companies and inventions, including the first reading machine for the blind and the first music synthesizer capable of re-creating the grand piano and other orchestral instruments (inspired by meeting Stevie Wonder). He has authored 11 books.
As well as normal hardback and paperback editions, it was released as a free e-book under the CC BY-NC-ND license. Accelerando won the Locus Award in 2006, and was nominated for several other awards in 2005 and 2006, including the Hugo, Campbell, Clarke, and British Science Fiction Association Awards.
The book is a collection of nine short stories telling the tale of three generations of a family before, during, and after a technological singularity. It was originally written as a series of novelettes and novellas, all published in Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine in the period 2001 to 2004. According to Stross, the initial inspiration for the stories was his experience working as a programmer for a high-growth company during the dot-com boom of the 1990s.
One of the most influential figures in the field of AI, Ray Kurzweil, has famously predicted that the singularity will happen by 2045. Kurzweil’s prediction is based on his observation of exponential growth in technological advancements and the concept of “technological singularity” proposed by mathematician Vernor Vinge.
It is with sadness — and deep appreciation of my friend and colleague — that I must report the passing of Vernor Vinge.
The technological singularity —or simply the singularity[1] —is a hypothetical future point in time at which technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible, resulting in unforeseeable consequences for human civilization.[2][3] According to the most popular version of the singularity hypothesis, I. J. Good’s intelligence explosion model, an upgradable intelligent agent will eventually enter a “runaway reaction” of self-improvement cycles, each new and more intelligent generation appearing more and more rapidly, causing an “explosion” in intelligence and resulting in a powerful superintelligence that qualitatively far surpasses all human intelligence.[4]
