Ray Kurzweil, a writer, inventor, computer scientist and Google's chief futurologist, said in an interview with Playboy magazine that in the near future, technology will make us smarter and healthier, and it will bring great changes to human life.
- Technology Helps Humans Become Smarter
Kurzweil said that our brain capacity is limited, at least 1 million times slower than computing electronics. The part of the brain that controls thinking is called the cerebral cortex. By 2030 or so, we will be able to use nanobots to enter the brain in a harmless way through capillaries and connect our cerebral cortex with the cloud. At that time, we will create more profound communication methods, more profound music and more interesting jokes than we are familiar with today. We will become more interesting, sexier and better at expressing love.
Kurzweil likened this change to human evolution, just as our ancestors developed and used the frontal cortex 2 million years ago. He thinks the benefits will be very great.
- Technology Helps Humans Become Healthier
Kurzweil said that we are beginning to rebuild the outdated " life software", namely 23,000 " small programs" called genes in the human body. Through reprogramming, we will help mankind to stay away from diseases and aging. By 2020 or so, we will begin to use nanobots to take over the immune system. By 2030, nanobots in blood will be able to destroy pathogens, remove debris, thrombi and tumors, correct DNA errors and even reverse the aging process.
Kurzweil firmly believes that " The Singularity" absolutely exists, and with the help of technology, mankind will realize eternal life. Kurzweil believes that mankind will achieve eternal life in 2045. Because according to his conjecture, the creativity of non-biological intelligence will reach its peak that year, exceeding 1 billion times the total of all human intelligence today. But before 2045, Kurzweil thinks we can begin the " journey of immortality."
Kurzweil said: " I think we will reach a critical point around 2029. At that time, medical technology will extend the life expectancy by one year every year. At that time, life expectancy will no longer be calculated according to your date of birth, and our extended life expectancy will even exceed the time already spent. "
- Technology Helps Change Sex Future
Kurzweil said that in the future people can not only have long-distance sex in different places, but you can even change your identity with your partner. In the virtual reality space, you don't have to continue to use the same body as the real world. For example, couples can exchange their bodies and experience sex from each other's perspective. You can also show your partner a more idealized self, and he / she may also adapt to what you want. If you are tired of your partner, you can change it into someone else, and of course you can change yourself.
- Kurzweil's Two Theoretical Bases
Kurzweil pointed out that there are two major advances to support his future argument.
The first is the speed of technological progress. The Android phone he currently uses is getting smaller and more powerful, much cheaper than the $ 11 million computer he used at MIT in the 1960s. And with the passage of time, technological progress will make mobile phones smaller, stronger and cheaper.
Second, the Diabetes Center in jocelyn, Connecticut, USA is using biotechnology to shut down fat insulin receptor genes in animals, which allows animals to eat more food without developing diabetes or gaining weight. After biotechnology is applied to the human body, we can discard the old genes that have not been used for thousands of years and greatly extend our life span.
It is not yet possible to prove whether Kurzweil's prediction can be realized, but he does not want to die before the " singularity". For this reason Kurzweil followed a strict diet and hoped to live to 2045 so as to live forever.
The following are the details.
Google Engineering Director: Humans Will See the Possibility of Eternal Life in 2029
He invented the blind reader, music synthesizer and speech recognition system, and was called " Edison's orthodox successor".
He has received 9 honorary doctorates, 2 honorary presidential awards, and was also nominated by MIT as the " Outstanding Inventor of the Year". He is currently the president of Singularity University in the United States.
His ability to predict like a " prophet" is enough to make the world remember his name.
In the past 30 years, ray kurzweil's prediction accuracy for the future has exceeded 86%.
In 1990, he predicted that " in 1998, computers will beat chess champions". As a result, IBM's Deep Blue defeated Gary Kasparov in 1997.
In 1999, he predicted that in ten years, people would be able to give instructions to computers through language.
In 2005, he predicted that by the 2010' s, virtual solutions will be able to provide real-time language translation, and foreign languages will be translated into your mother tongue in real time and displayed on your glasses in the form of subtitles. Now, his remarks have been confirmed one by one.
Bill Gates once said, " Ray is the best person I know in predicting artificial intelligence."
One of Kurzweil's most famous personal achievements is called " Kurzweil's Law" ( also known as the Law of Accelerated Cycle ). The effect is that the power of technology is rapidly expanding outward at an exponential rate. Human beings are on the cusp of accelerating change, which exceeds any time in our history. He said that more and more extreme things beyond our imagination will appear.
Q: You said that in the near future, nanobots will live in our blood vessels, our brains will upload data to the clouds, and human beings will realize eternal life. This sounds scary.
When talking about the future of science and technology, especially about artificial intelligence, people often think of Hollywood's common dystopian movie model: human beings fighting machines. My view is that human beings will use these tools, just like all other tools, to expand our borders. Therefore, regarding future technology, we will expand the most important attribute we have, namely, human intelligence.
Information technology capabilities are increasing exponentially every year. At the same time, the price of products with the same function is halved every year. These are all manifestations of what I call the " accelerated return rule". That's why we can buy an iPhone or Android phone twice as good as two years ago for half the money. In 1965, when I was studying at MIT, I used an IBM7094 computer with 11 million US dollars. Now, my smartphone is thousands of times stronger and hundreds of thousands of times cheaper than that computer.
This is not the most interesting place for this mobile phone. If I want 10,000 times the computing and communication capacity, that is, if I need to access 10,000 computers, I can easily achieve this in the cloud - it happens all the time. We didn't even realize it. When you sit quietly in a corner of the park and perform a complex language translation, a complex search, or many other types of tasks, you will access thousands of computers. In the coming decades, we will integrate with these tools to make ourselves smarter.
Q: Are humans evolving into iPhone?
We are integrating with these non-biological technologies. We have already embarked on this road. I mean, I wear this tiny Android phone on my belt. Although it is not yet in my physical body, the difference between inside and outside is only an artificial one. It has become a part of me - not only the phone itself, but also its connection to the cloud and all the resources I can access in the cloud.
Q: Isn't nature enough to give us?
The human brain has limited capacity, at least one million times slower than electronic computing devices. In our brains, the part used for thinking is called neocortex. It is a thin layer of structure around the brain, which appeared with mammals ( all rodents at that time ) about 200 million years ago. A major innovation came two million years ago when apes evolved and had a large forehead. If you look at other primates, their foreheads are inclined. They have no frontal cortex. This extra neocortex is used by us to add a higher level of abstraction, and it is this level that enables us to have the ability to invent. We invented language first, and at the same time we invented humor, music and other things. No other animal can beat. No other animal can tell jokes.
Q: So will connecting the brain to the machine increase our intelligence exponentially and make us more attractive?
It is. By the 1930s, nanobots will be able to enter our brains atraumatically through capillaries and connect with our neocortex, while basically connecting it with artificial neocortex operating in the same way on the cloud. In this way, we have an additional layer of neocortex, just as we evolved an additional neocortex 2 million years ago, and we will add more levels of abstraction, just as we used the frontal cortex. We will create more profound forms of communication, we will create more profound music and better jokes. We will become more interesting and sexy. We will also be able to express our love more freely.
Q: How can these technologies make us live longer?
Let's start with genetics, now called biotechnology. It has begun to bring a revolution to clinical medicine, and in the next decade or two, it will completely transform medicine. We are beginning to reprogram outdated life software, which is 23,000 small programs called genes in our bodies. We are now readjusting our genes to keep them away from diseases and aging.
Some people suffer from an incurable disease called pulmonary hypertension due to lack of a gene. A company we participate in can add the missing gene to such patients. The treatment scheme has been successfully applied in human experiments. We can delete genes. We can change stem cells to achieve the desired effect, such as rejuvenating the hearts of some patients with heart diseases after their hearts are damaged ( half of the patients with heart attacks are the same ).
I mean, nowadays, medical treatment has become an information technology, which, like other fields of science and technology, follows the same law of acceleration and progress. Soon, we will be able to reshape the activity of all tissues and organs in the body and develop drugs to directly lock in the metabolic process behind a disease without resorting to exploratory treatment. And nanotechnology is a real field beyond biology.
Q: So, as long as we stick to it for another 13 years, we will basically live forever?
I believe that by 2029, we will reach a critical point, and medical technology will increase our life expectancy by one year every year. The life expectancy here is not the life expectancy since birth, but the remaining life expectancy.
Q: As a result, don't we have to watch Friends many times again? Don't people get bored?
Tiredness is definitely one of the challenges. If we all do the same thing for thousands of years, life will become extremely boring. However, such a thing should not happen unless we greatly expand the length of life but fail to expand the width of life. So we need to become smarter, just as we are already doing, and as we integrate directly with this technology and expand our thinking to the cloud, we will add more levels of abstraction to our thinking.
By the 1930s, you and I might be on different sides of the world, but we could sit face to face like we are now - even with technology that allows us to touch each other. Today, the technology is not realistic enough, but by the mid - 2020s, when we have retinal equipment that can directly transmit images to the retina, similar eardrum equipment, and other sensors that can stimulate touch, we can be in different places, but it is completely like sitting face to face at a table in the Taj Mahal, or walking side by side on a virtual Mediterranean beach, and feeling the moist warm wind blowing across our faces.
Q: In your mind, what will sex be like in the future?
People can not only have long-distance sex, but also change themselves and their partners. In virtual reality, you don't need to be in a real body. For example, a couple can exchange their bodies to experience the relationship from each other's perspective. You can also transmit a more ideal version of yourself to your lover, or she can change your appearance according to her expectation.
We have to some extent distinguished the biological function of sex from its communicative, erotic and recreational functions. You can have sex without having children, and you can even have children without having sex. In virtual reality, we will have more exploration space.
