Futurism — March 14, 2017 | Dom Galeon & Christianna Reedy

This is a summary. Read original article in full here.

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Predictions by Ray Kurzweil

Ray Kurzweil, a director of engineering at Google, is a well-known futurist with a track record for accurate predictions.

Kurzweil said, “The year 2029 is the consistent date I’ve predicted, when an artificial intelligence will pass a valid Turing test  — achieving human levels of intelligence.

“I have also set the date 2045 for singularity — which is when humans will multiply our effective intelligence a billion fold, by merging with the intelligence we have created.”

“By 2029, computers will have human-level intelligence,” Kurzweil said. Singularity is that point in time when all advances in technology, particularly in artificial intelligence, will lead to machines smarter than human beings.

“That leads to computers having human intelligence, humans putting them inside our brains, connecting them to the cloud, expanding who we are. Today, that’s not just a future scenario,” Kurzweil said. “It’s partly here, and it’s going to accelerate.”

Kurzweil predicts that during the 2030s some tech will be invented that can go inside your brain and help your memory. He says it will be a future of unparalleled human-machine synthesis.

“Ultimately, it will affect everything. We’re going to be able to meet the physical needs of all humans. We’re going to expand our minds and exemplify these artistic qualities that we value.”

To fear or not to fear?

Should humanity fear the singularity? Kurzweil doesn’t think so. In fact, he isn’t worried. What science fiction depicts as singularity — when AI enslaves humanity — is fiction, he says. “That’s not realistic,” Kurzweil said. He says singularity is an opportunity for humans to improve.

“What’s actually happening is machines are powering all of us,” Kurzweil said. “They’re making us smarter. They may not yet be inside our bodies — but by the 2030s we will connect our neo-cortex, the part of our brain where we do our thinking, to the cloud.

“We’re going to get more neo-cortex, we’re going to be funnier, we’re going to be better at music, we’re going to be sexier. We’re really going to exemplify all the things that we value in humans to a greater degree,” he said.

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on the web
Wikipedia | Alan Turing
Wikipedia | Turing test

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