Kurzweil Interviews Minsky: Is Singularity Near?

January 27, 2016


Terasem Motion Infoculture/KurzweilAI | Kurzweil Interviews Minsky: Is Singularity Near? (2010)

  • Understanding how the brain works: “The brain is 400 different computers.”
  • Modeling and building a brain: “You can’t do it from the bottom up.”
  • Backing up the brain: “There’s no ‘you.’ … I’m not exactly like I was five minutes ago….”
  • Is the brain “just” a machine? “There’s no person in here … identity is an illusion.”
  • Emotional intelligence: “‘Emotions are different from thinking’: that’s nonsense.”
  • Human-level artificial intelligence: “We will need AIs because longevity is increasing. … There will be no one to do the work. … We’ll need to find something else to do.”
  • Unfriendly AI: “Machines may re-compile themselves. … People say, ‘Scientists should be more responsible for what they do.’ The fact is, the scientist is no better and possibly worse than the average person at deciding what’s good and what’s bad, and if you ask scientists to spend a lot of time deciding what to invent or not, all you can get from that is that they won’t invent some things that might be wonderful.”
  • Is the Singularity near? “Yes, depending on what you mean by ‘near’ … It may well be, within our lifetimes.”