The Futurist | How to make a mind
February 15, 2013
Source: The Futurist — February 15, 2013 | Ray Kurzweil
Can nonbiological brains have real minds of their own? In this article, drawn from his latest book, futurist/inventor Ray Kurzweil describes the future of intelligence — artificial and otherwise.
“The mammalian brain has a distinct aptitude not found in any other class of animal. We are capable of hierarchical thinking, of understanding a structure composed of diverse elements arranged in a pattern, representing that arrangement with a symbol, and then using that symbol as an element in a yet more elaborate configuration.
“This capability takes place in a brain structure called the neocortex, which in humans has achieved a threshold of sophistication and capacity such that we are able to call these patterns ideas. We are capable of building ideas that are ever more complex. We call this vast array of recursively linked ideas knowledge. Only Homo sapiens have a knowledge base that itself evolves, grows exponentially, and is passed down from one generation to another.” [...]
Full article downloadable here: The Futurist – How to make a mind (courtesy of the World Future Society).
Comments (2)
by glen
“Spoken language was our first technology, with written language as the second.” ~RK
I thought maybe fire came before, perhaps RK meant first language technology, although could drawing language been a predecessor?
But the chronology might not be so static. I suppose emotion is not a language but something that produces/induces it.
by Dan
I found reading “How to make a mind” fascinating, but it did raise a few questions that I haven’t found complete answers to yet.
At first I thought , “Wow this sounds like parts of Samuel Ray Delany, Jr. Si-Fi writing from the late 60′s will come true 1000 years before he envisioned it would. e.g. If we have so much of our meta-neocortex in the cloud and it contains enough redundancy to cover our biological pattern recognisers, will death of the body just cause us to go completely virtual without a lost of continuity to our sense of self, and can we then take control of an android replica of our old body, or even an enhanced clone of our biological one?”
My second thought was “OMG, how am I going to raise my three young children so that they can make the most of this future while retaining their humanity?” My incomplete answer was, boost their creativity, compassion and fluid intelligence, some of the most most human of cognitive characteristics. As for the rest, well I just don’t know yet.
To all the detractors of Ray’s projections and theories I’d say “Well I guess we will just have to build it and see what happens.” :-)