Source: The Huffington Post — April 2, 2012 | David H. Bailey
The future will be different. So where is all this heading? A recent Time article features an interview with futurist Ray Kurzweil, who predicts an era, roughly in 2045, when machine intelligence will meet, then transcend human intelligence. Such future intelligent systems will then design even more powerful technology, resulting in a dizzying advance that we can only dimly foresee at the present time. Kurzweil outlines… read more
Source: Motherboard — February 27, 2013 | Austin Considine
In an interview last year with Motherboard’s Derek Mead, professor Kevin Warwick described an experiment in which he and a team of scientists created a very simple, two-dimensional, living brain of about 100,000 neurons and connected it to robots (a human brain, by contrast, approaches 100 billion).
It’s just a matter of time, he suggests, before scientists can build one in 3-D that’s much bigger. He also thinks… read more
Source: SmartPlanet — November 19, 2012 | Reena Jana
What happens when non-biological implants in our bodies — along the lines of cochlear implants to improve hearing in the deaf — include brain-related devices that might enhance our memories? Will we still be “us”? Will we be more of a cyborg than we were if, say, we had another type of implant? And for those who believe we would not be, at what point do we… read more
Source: The New York Times — May 3, 2013 | Christine Kenneally
The New York Times Sunday Book Review | How to Create a Mind by Ray Kurzweil
Kurzweil, author of The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology, may be best known as a polymath inventor and futurist, but he’s really a cyborg sent back from the year 2029 to save humanity from the nature-nurture debate.
His mission is not to provide a final score… read more
Source: The Futurist
Ray Kurzweil sees a radical evolution of the human species in the next 40 years. The merger of man and machine, coupled with the sudden explosion in machine intelligence and rapid innovation in gene research and nanotechnology, will result in a world where there is no distinction between the biological and the mechanical, or between physical and virtual reality.… read more
Source: Forbes — May 4, 2013 | Greg Satell
In the Terminator series, John Connor and his mother fight to prevent Judgement Day, the moment when the computer system Skynet becomes self aware, decides humans are a threat and moves to wipe us out.
In the real world, we have our own version of Judgement Day called the Singularity and many can’t wait for it to come. Like in the Terminator, it is the moment when computers take over, but… read more
Source: Waterloo Cedar Falls Courier — May 12, 2013 | Scott Cawelti
More positively, breakthroughs in biology, chemistry, physics, and psychology that will create or clone humans who live virtually forever, if they can afford and endure it. Humans who are more machine than human, as Ray Kurzweil explores in his book The Singularity Is Near.
Machines that outthink, outlive, and outmaneuver us at every turn. Siri, anyone? And other events too bizarre to even imagine, but
Source: The Washington Post — November 15, 2012 | Vivek Wadwha & Ray Kurzweil
Singularity University, on the grounds of the NASA Research Center at Moffett Field in Silicon Valley, abounds in optimism, and, as Singularity’s Vice President of Innovation and Research, I have understandably caught the bug.
I have written about why I believe this will be the most innovative decade in human history, how we are headed for an era of abundant and affordable health care, and… read more
Source: BetaBeat — April 25, 2013 | Kelly Faircloth
Ray Kurzweil’s official title at Google is director of engineering, but we’re starting to suspect Larry keeps him around as a kind of science-fictional mascot for the programmers. Case in point: This Wired Q&A, in which he reminds everyone of his belief that one day soon, death will hold no dominion over technologists.
After chatting about Steve Jobs (fun fact, it’s actually impossible to get into the Wired offices without passing a brief… read more
Source: Slashdot — October 10, 2012 | Nick Kolakowski
Futurist and author Ray Kurzweil predicts the cloud will eventually do more than store our e-mails or feed us streaming movies on demand: it’s going to help expand our brain capacity beyond its current limits.
In a question-and-answer session following a speech to the DEMO technology conference in Santa Clara, California last week, Kurzweil described the human brain as impressive but limited in its capacity to… read more