Comments on: Lew Keilar | The Singularity in three minutes

By: WLGJR

WLGJR — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 08:44:04 +0000

I found the information on Kerala School of Astronomy and Mathematics on Wikipedia.
Too bad not many people know about this.
Talking about Eurocentricism/racism.

By: Brad

Brad — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 06:09:35 +0000

Government is quickly becoming obsolete if it hasn’t already.

By: Brad

Brad — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 06:08:11 +0000

Wasn’t Newton the first to develop calculus?

By: Cybernettr

Cybernettr — Sun, 03 Feb 2013 18:41:36 +0000

Wouldn’t it be interesting to see someone illustrate a whole talk by Kurzweil in this way?

By: Alexander

Alexander — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 23:53:26 +0000

The Singularity is just the latest instance in a phenomenon that has been going on since the beginning of time. Patterns have evolved, since the end of inflation a fraction of a second after the big bang, to become more complex. A similar “singularity” happened ~4 billion years ago when organic molecules became complex enough to self-replicate, heralding the birth of evolution by natural selection. Then another singularity at the cambrian explosion with the advent of body plans and brains. What event you choose is immaterial–what matters is that this is what the universe does. This exponential growth of information is just the next step.

In other words, this is bigger than us. Get on the train, indeed.

By: Mr.X

Mr.X — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 19:36:41 +0000

I was answering Gator’s comment about predictions having been far off.

“So what is our contingency plan?”
I guess there are no common plans;)

In a sense we too are doomed (as persons). No matter what.I know this sounds… cheesy.But it is the consequence of the premises that underly much of transhumanist (etc) thinking.

By: WLGJR

WLGJR — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 17:45:51 +0000

“Culture and science was once more advanced, …” Please explain.
IMO, we should work hard to create new species of sentient lifeforms with superior intelligence. Once one have high intelligence, it will be relatively easy to develop culture and science.

But we should also know the importance of culture: a culture that value intellectuals and formal and exact science in the long run become strong and dominant.
For example, the Kerala School of Astronomy and Mathematics of 13th century India where calculus was invented. Modern Indians on average have IQ about 80s, which is significantly lower than whites and northeast Asians. But it was the Indians with low IQ who first developed integral and differential calculus. The people of modern Middle East also score roughly the same on IQ tests. But it was they who made many important contribution to astronomy ,mathematics and other fields of science.

By: Joe Mann

Joe Mann — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 16:32:52 +0000

The real question is what will the world look like in 2045? Culture and science was once more advanced, but the dark ages set this all back. Will mankind militarily or ecological open a new dark ages in science and all this speculation be mute?

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 22:25:34 +0000

It will look like a mushroom.

By: Bri

Bri — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 22:42:19 +0000

The plans that I refer to are in relation to job lose and AI/robotics. I’m thinking g more in relation to a safety net. If conditions do turn out as many of us think, then some preparation will make it less distractive to the fabric of our society. I think capitalism is doomed. So what is our contingency plan?

By: Rian Shams

Rian Shams — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 21:14:21 +0000

Great video. Thank you for sharing.

By: JC

JC — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 19:19:08 +0000

You have mentioned something rarely discussed but possibly paramount to any tech/medical/economic aspects of the upcoming super capable AI. It will recognize the (obvious) poor self governing skills of essentially all humans. It will design and implement a solution, probably starting with testing for those it can rationally interact with and leading to a wide spread ‘education’ of the populace toward better self governing skills. What will this new training look like ?

By: Steve Waclo

Steve Waclo — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 19:12:01 +0000

The runaway train on an upward track may not be the best analogy, since such a train will require considerable energy as the slope increases. Not quite sure of my meaning, but it sounds thoughtful :-).

By: Bob Vasquez

Bob Vasquez — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 17:54:36 +0000

Darn. I waited for 1984 and that’s gone. Then, that preacher from the South, then, the Mayan 2012 thing. Okay, so now I have something else to wait for (2045) but, in the meantime I will be taking my meds, vitamins, exercising and the last frontier for me is a better diet.

By: Ralph Dratman

Ralph Dratman — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 17:39:54 +0000

My plan? I intend to watch closely and find out what happens, hoping not to lose my brain function entirely before the the really interesting stuff begins.

But to tell the truth, I am beginning to have trouble imagining what the technological world will be like even five years from now. Looking back five years, January 2008 seems quite different from today. The first iPhone had been on the market for about 7 months, but I had not seen one yet. The word iPad did not exist in the English language. The TV set in my bedroom was similar to a 19-inch cube, weighed about 30 pounds, and received a purely analog signal. Typical new computer systems ran at 1.7 GHz, had one core and 2 GB of RAM. “Watson” was not the name of any well-known computer system.

Now that change seems to be happening significantly more quickly, what will my world be like five years from now, in 2018? All I can say is that I hope to find out.

By: Mr.X

Mr.X — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 12:01:54 +0000

Maybe, just maybe, our methods to make predictions have improved?

For example, fifty years ago we didn’t know much about cognitive biases… etc.

By: Andy

Andy — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 10:49:15 +0000

Politicians and bureaucrats are deplorable artificial intelligence. Factually, government is men and women providing services at the barrel of a gun.

Man is self governing. It’s a contradiction of logic and oxymoron to say self-governing people can be externally governed by people. If man is incapable of self governing then surely he is incapable of governing others.

By: GatorALLin

GatorALLin — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 07:01:42 +0000

I like the idea of a plan…but still hard to predict exactly where it (the future) will actually take us… this article reminded me just how far off they were and how hard it can be to predict things… http://blog.modernmechanix.com/miracles-youll-see-in-the-next-fifty-years/

By: Bri

Bri — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 03:10:13 +0000

The video implies that we need a plan of action. So many of us are becoming aware of some of the implications. The problem is that few political leaders are even aware that there is this exponential change occurring. In a couple of decades almost everyprocess of society will be transformed. Particulary how we manufacture things. If we act proactively we can mitigate some of the more painful aspects of these changes. We need more substance in our actions. Less glitz and glib pronouncements, more nuts and bolts type understandings of the ramifications of this speeding train.

By: Whittaker

Whittaker — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 02:22:15 +0000

Ha ha. Always the whiteboard animation. Low budget and very effective.
Reminds of the Pimsleur’s Approach Introduction video. Am convinced but don’t want to try (for now) though.
By the way, we can already doodle on iPad and other tablets, which allows better and more instant aesthetic enhancements, but many presenters in technology industry use rather low-tech presentation methods.