Dear Mr. Raymond Kurzweil,
How are you? My name is Noga, I’m a 16-year-old girl from Tel-Aviv, Israel.
First of all, I wanted to say that I’ve read one of your and it was fascinating. Secondly, I wanted to ask you a question. I’ll start from the beginning.
In my school, we have a course called “Human Rights.” It’s a course where we discuss many things that… read more
Dear Ray:
If the development of computer-based intelligence will become equivalent to that of human intelligence within the next twenty or thirty years, this computer-based intelligence will be able to build even better computers.
Such computer intelligence will, no doubt, find a way to enhance the thought process of the human mind.
No doubt it will supersede the capacity of the human mind. This leads me to… read more
Hi, my name is Luke.
I’m contacting you now and asking you to please consider the following scenario. AD 2060 or later:
Humans can simulate multiple universes. We do so, and eventually intelligent life evolves in one and achieves a civilization with roughly the same science and computation as Earth 2010. This life will be a completely alien species, on a (simulated) alien planet.
That species figures… read more
Dan Brown’s latest action thriller Inferno follows art historian Robert Langdon in a fast-paced roller-coaster hunt for the source of a genetic hack delivered to everyone on the planet via a highly contagious airborne virus.
As in previous novels, Langdon works against the clock to decipher hints hidden in the treasures of the world’s art and literature, fighting intrigue and deception.
I… read more
In Dan Brown’s Inferno [see book review | Dan Brown’s Inferno], an airborne virus permanently modifies the DNA in human cells in one third of the population of the world.
We asked synthetic biologist/genomic futurist Andrew Hessel to comment on this scenario (his co-authored “The Bio-Crime Prophecy” is the cover story in the current issue of Wired UK).
Q: How realistic is Brown’s… read more
Why can’t a robot be like a servant (to paraphrase My Fair Lady)? You know, one who would anticipate your every need — even before you asked?
The folks at the Personal Robotics Lab of Ashutosh Saxena, Cornell assistant professor of computer science have gone and done just that.
When we last (virtually) visited the lab, we learned that the roboticists taught “hallucinating” robots to arrange your room… read more
Dear readers,
A recent article in EE Times discusses the future of Moore’s law: “Broadcom: Time to prepare for the end of Moore’s Law.” This comes up innumerable times. People assume that Moore’s law is synonymous with my law of accelerating returns, which it is not.
Moore’s law was the fifth, not the first, paradigm to bring exponential growth to the price-performance of computing. The law of… read more
The International Space Development Conference (ISDC), produced by the National Space Society (NSS) — the happening place to learn about the future of space — kicks off Thursday May 23 and runs through Monday May 27 at the Hyatt Regency La Jolla in San Diego, California. ISDC speakers will discuss a wide range of breakthroughs in space development. Here are just two that I find especially interesting. (Full… read more
Zoltan Istvan’s The Transhumanist Wager is an epic story of radical libertarian ideas, their enemies, and the violent global conflict that ensues, painted in strong saturated colors with little room for intermediate shades and character development.
After reading cover to cover, and then reading it more carefully, I have mixed love/hate feelings about this novel.
It’s a page turner. Istvan — a former journalist… read more
This is a really interesting article about body and mind which I recently read. I wanted to share it with my readers:
The New York Times | “I am not this body”
Here is a compelling excerpt: “I do not identify with my body. I have a body but I am a mind.
“My body and I have an intimate but awkward relationship, like foreign roommates who share… read more
“Where’s my flying car?”
Skeptics have trashed predictions of flying cars with this annoying question ever since the Jetsons.
But now Terrafugia Inc. has announced feasibility studies of a four-seat, vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) [similar to a helicopter] plug-in hybrid-electric flying car, the TF-X.
Just tell it where to go. It flies (and lands) for you — no runway needed — and… read more
“Google’s self-driving car gathers 750 megabytes of sensor data per SECOND! That is just mind-boggling to me. Here is a picture of what the car ‘sees’ while it is driving and about to make a left turn. It is capturing every single thing that it sees moving — cars, trucks, birds, rolling balls, dropped cigarette butts, and fusing all that together to make its decisions while driving. If it sees… read more
Mr. Kurzweil,
I’m currently in the middle of How to Create a Mind. I’m struggling with this one a bit more than you’re other books, but it’s very enjoyable and elucidating.
You have for some time predicted human level machine intelligence arriving by 2029.
However, in Mind you estimate the speed of a computer necessary to simulate the brain at 100 trillion cps, and state that the… read more
Dr. Kurzweil,
My name is Stanley. I too was born and bred in Queens, New York. I am also an Alcor member since 1992. I was part of the New York stabilization team and was part many cryonic cases.
I I am currently experiencing an extreme case of death terror.
I am 45 years old and am desperate not to require cryopreservation, and live to be uploaded.… read more
This is part two of a two-part series on the limits of human economic growth on planet Earth. Part one details some of the environmental and natural resource challenges we’re up against. Part two, here, looks at the ultimate size of the resource pool and solutions to our problems. Both parts are based on Ramez Naam’s new book, The Infinite Resource: The Power of Ideas on a Finite… read more