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Max More and Ray Kurzweil on the Singularity

February 26, 2002 by Max More, Ray Kurzweil

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.… read more

Topics: Innovation/Entrepreneurship | Social Networking/Web

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The Future of Libraries, Part 1: The Technology of the Book

August 6, 2001 by Ray Kurzweil

The future of book technology, written for “The Futurecast,” a monthly column in the Library Journal… read more

Topics: Innovation/Entrepreneurship | Social Networking/Web

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Review: Vernor Vinge’s ‘Fast Times’

September 5, 2002 by Hal Finney

Vernor Vinge’s Hugo-award-winning short science fiction story “Fast Times at Fairmont High” takes place in a near future in which everyone lives in a ubiquitous, wireless, networked world using wearable computers and contacts or glasses on which computer graphics are projected to create an augmented reality.… read more

Topics: VR/Augmented Reality/Computer Graphics

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book review | The Intelligent Universe: Foreword by Ray Kurzweil

February 2, 2007

The universe might end in intelligent life, not a Big Crunch or oblivion in an infinite expansion, says James Gardner in The Intelligent Universe: AI, ET, and the Emerging Mind of the Cosmos (February 2007).

Gardner envisions a final state of the cosmos in which a highly evolved form of group intelligence  — a cosmic community — marshals the assets of matter and… read more

Topics: Physics/Cosmology | Quantum

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Ray Kurzweil Q&A with Darwin Magazine

December 3, 2001 by Ray Kurzweil

Machine consciousness is the subject of this dialog with Darwin Magazine.… read more

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The Intelligent Universe

December 12, 2002 by Ray Kurzweil

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.… read more

Topics: Quantum | Social Networking/Web

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Human Cloning is the Least Interesting Application of Cloning Technology

January 4, 2003 by Ray Kurzweil

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.… read more

Topics: Biomed/Longevity

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Biocyberethics: should we stop a company from unplugging an intelligent computer?

September 28, 2003 by Martine Rothblatt, Amara D. Angelica

Attorney Dr. Martine Rothblatt filed a motion for a preliminary injunction to prevent a corporation from disconnecting an intelligent computer in a mock trial at the International Bar Association conference in San Francisco, Sept. 16, 2003. The issue could arise in a real court within the next few decades, as computers achieve or exceed the information processing capability of the human mind and the boundary between human and machine becomes… read more

Topics: AI/Robotics | Cognitive Science/Neuroscience | Human Enhancement | Social/Ethical/Legal

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What is the Singularity?

March 30, 1993 by Vernor Vinge

Vernor Vinge

Originally published 1993 as an academic paper: Department of Mathematical Sciences, San Diego State University. The version that appears on Vernor Vinge’s website can be read here.

Vernor Vinge is a retired San Diego State University math professor, computer scientist, and science fiction author. He is best known for his Hugo Award-winning novels A Fire Upon the Deep, A Deepness in the Sky, Rainbows End, Fast Times at Fairmont High, and The Cookie Monster, as well as for… read more

Topics: Singularity/Futures

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Tangible Nanomoney

July 9, 2002 by Robert A. Freitas Jr.

Robert Freitas, author of the recently-published groundbreaking technical book Nanomedicine, reflects on how we might pay for very advanced medicine — or indeed, pay for anything at all — in a world where artificial molecular machine systems are commonplace. Hint: Perhaps we’ll be using coins made of tantalum or ununquadium!… read more

Topics: Nanotech/Materials Science | Quantum

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Richard A. Clark’s Breakpoint: the future of terrorism?

May 18, 2007 by Richard A. Clarke

breakpoint

Former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke’s BREAKPOINT novel, set in the year 2012, is based on emerging technologies. “Globegrid,” a high-speed global network, links supercomputers worldwide. Combined with advanced AI software, it promises to reverse-engineer the brain, revolutionize genomics, enable medical breakthroughs, develop advanced human-machine interfaces, and allow for genetic alterations and even uploading consciousness. But it spurs a terrorist-fundamentalist Luddite backlash against transhumanists, as hackers take down the power grid, and destroy vital international data and telecom links, communications satellites, and biotech firms.… read more

Topics: Survival/Defense

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2050 Global Normative Scenarios

March 15, 2002 by Jerome C. Glenn, Theodore J. Gordon

Experts were asked to describe normative (preferred) scenarios for technology, human development, and politics/economics in the year 2050. Their ideas were compiled into three scenarios by two leading futurists for the Millennium Project of the American Council for the United Nations University. “The authors provide some insightful scenarios,” says Ray Kurzweil. “However, I feel that their time frames do not adequately reflect the accelerating pace of progress inherent in what I call the law of accelerating returns. The types of changes they describe for 2050 will arrive much earlier in my view.”… read more

Topics: Innovation/Entrepreneurship | Quantum | Singularity/Futures | Social Networking/Web | Telepresence/Telemedicine/Online Education

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Kinds of Minds

May 30, 2007 by J. Storrs Hall
Figure 15.1

In Beyond AI, published today, J. Storrs Hall offers “a must-read for anyone interested in the future of the human-machine civilization,” says Ray Kurzweil. In this first of three book excerpts, Hall suggests a classification of the different stages an AI might go through, from “hypohuman” (most existing AIs) to “hyperhuman” (similar to “superintelligence”).… read more

Topics: AI/Robotics | Innovation/Entrepreneurship

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The Human Machine Merger: Why We Will Spend Most of Our Time in Virtual Reality in the Twenty-first Century

August 29, 2001 by Ray Kurzweil

Raymond Kurzweil’s keynote address delivered at the 2000 ACM SIGGRAPH conference in New Orleans.… read more

Topics: Innovation/Entrepreneurship | Quantum | Singularity/Futures | Social Networking/Web

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The Age of Virtuous Machines

June 1, 2007 by J. Storrs Hall

In the “hard takeoff” scenario, a psychopathic AI suddenly emerges at a superhuman level, achieving universal dominance. Hall suggests an alternative: we’ve gotten better because we’ve become smarter, so AIs will evolve “unselfish genes” and hyperhuman morality. More honest, capable of deeper understanding, and free of our animal heritage and blindnesses, the children of our minds will grow better and wiser than us, and we will have a new friend and guide–if we work hard to earn the privilege of associating with them.… read more

Topics: AI/Robotics | Social Networking/Web

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