By 2029, artificial intelligence will be so advanced, it will be virtually indistinguishable from human intelligence.
And in the years after that, artificial intelligence will become even more potent than human intelligence. Computing units as small as blood cells — called nano-bots — will augment the blood in our veins, helping to safeguard our health and strengthen our bodies. Meanwhile, communication technology will pave the way for a single world culture and help the world overcome poverty and suffering.
These are the expectations of author, inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil, who spoke Tuesday night in a nearly full Schwab Auditorium. Known as one of the world’s most influential entrepreneurs, the 62-year-old appeared for about 90 minutes as part of the Penn State Distinguished Speaker Series. His talk was dubbed ‘The Web Within Us: When Minds and Machines Become One.’
Evolving innovations ‘are not technologies to displace us,’ Kurzweil said. Rather, he explained, they will perpetuate the trends established by earlier technological advancements, expanding humans’ overall knowledge and understanding of themselves.
He underscored the exponential, explosive growth in the capacity of information technology going back centuries, as far as the printing press. Now that people are able to unlock the data inherent in their own biology and bodies, too, medicine and health care have become information technologies, as well, Kurzweil said.
And that means data about human health — including brain functionality — will emerge at exponential rates, he went on.
‘I have software running for my body, and it’s not a metaphor,’ Kurzweil said. Soon, he said, manipulating that bodily software will become commonplace. He cited some 1,000 drugs and other advancements in development to modify human genes and other biological processes.
In fact, Kurzweil forecast what he called a profound revolution in biotechnology, complete with minuscule computing units that will pervade all elements of life — including the human body itself.
The foundations of the revolution already surround us, he said. People may not call it artificial intelligence, but artificial intelligence is, in effect, what allows us to connect with our peers across the Earth at the push of a button; what allows us to detect credit-card fraud at a moment’s notice; and what allows us to create electrocardiograms, Kurzweil said.
He said current artificial-intelligence models fall short in their inability to replicate human emotional cues — such as humor and sex appeal. But even that advancement is within reach, Kurzweil projected, as a comprehensive understanding of the human brain is just a couple decades away.
Once that is compete, artificial intelligence will be able to replicate — and improve upon — the most complex ingrained processes that make us tick, he said.
‘The goal of this technology is not to replace us,’ Kurzweil reiterated at a press conference with local reporters. ‘It is to make us smarter.’
He said he was just five years old when he decided to become an inventor. Now an advisor to the U.S. Army on advanced technological matters such as biotechnology, Kurzweil has written more than a half-dozen books. His inventions include speech-recognition programs and a text-to-speech program that assists the blind.
The winner of numerous awards in science and entrepreneurship, he helped found Singularity University in California. It’s centered on the use of technology in confronting humanity’s biggest problems.
Earlier coverage
