TECHNOLOGY ISSUE - INSIDE THE SINGULARITY ON VBS (UPDATED)

In a couple days you're going to be able to find our Technology Issue, which has a lot of smart stories in there about sciencey and computery things that'll get your mind's rainbow wheel of death spinning for a while. We wanted to show you just how seriously we're not fucking around by featuring our interview with Ray Kurzweil first thing this morning, but how fantastic, we're having technical difficulties. (PS: all fixed. Enjoy.) Why don't you go over to VBS, where today Kurzweil's telling us more about his vision of the Singuarlity—a point around 2045 when computers will acquire full-blown artificial intelligence and technology will infuse itself with biology. His theories have all sorts of supporters, detractors, and critics, but do you even remember what life was like before three-year-olds had cell phones and you actually had to remember facts instead of relying on the internet? That was only ten years ago. If Kurzweil is right, we'll have supercomputers more powerful than every human brain on the planet combined within a few decades.

Despite being perceived as an extreme optimist, Kurzweil is the first to admit that this technology could very quickly bring an end to the world as we know it. Stuff like gray goo is a concern, but a biological terrorist attack could happen tomorrow that is based on the very same type of technology he touts as the harbingers of the unimaginable future. He believes we'll exist in a permanent virtual/"real"-reality hybrid. It makes us think about future people spending all day auto-mastubrating to polygons with the genital equivalent of the Power Glove. But we're sick like that, and if Ray is right, unenlightened pigs like us won't be around in 40 years. Everyone will be hyper-intelligent, shapeshifting nonbiological humans who can live forever. It's a bummer, a blessing, and a mind-fuck all at the same time. That's about as much as we can explain on our own. Unless you're really religious or dumb, watch on to have your brain melted. And if you're still jonesing for more Kurzweil, be sure to catch the new documentary Transcendent Man, premiering in late April.

Comments

[nance]

i'm getting more parts bummer and mind-fuck at the moment but perhaps there is some blessing in the mix somewhere. it sounds like the beginnings of a dystopian novel.

[zero]

so what i wanna know is at which point in the future will mankind be able to live forever? i feel like it won't be far from singularity.

[cultforteefive]

i still dont really get what that means "artificial intelligence and technology will infuse itself with biology"... what exactly does that entail?

[ed]

@cultforteefive

i'm guessing it has to do with microchips being placed inside ones brain and weak organs being replaced by computerized ones. all that good stuff

[Patrick]

Kurzweil´s vision is very biotech-oriented and is of a "slow take-off" where the transition happens over a decade or so. More likely, if something happens, it will be a "hard take-off" where a computer AI goes from sitting on a mainframe to turning the moon into a big nanocomputer within a week. The feedback loops are just so steep, there´s no way to design a system that can modify itself and also be predictable. Global government couldn´t stop it, they´d ban everything and then try to develop it in secret and you have the same risks, maybe worse in that case.

Of course odds are good we´ll just fuck ourselves back to the middle ages before anyone stumbles on a self-modifying AI or nanotechnology system or something similar. It´ll be interesting any way you cut it.