Google is building Skynet (This is the REAL Dec. 21, 2012 Singularity event)

R
In addition, he said that within 10 years, your "PC" will be the size of a single red blood cell and be 1 BILLION times more powerful.

:terminator:

i dont see how he is "obviously" wrong.

start somewhere

1) Kurzweil is not a "nutjob". He has either personally participated in or predicted every major IT movement in the last 40 years.

2) He longs for the Singularity the way a passenger longs for his train to arrive. He sees it coming and is accurately predicting its values and threats.

3) That humanity will never merge with machines because software can only mimic vacuum tubes (paraphrased). This is simple ignorance of software architecture and what is possible in the arena of on-going algorithm development and man-machine interfacing.

4) Software machines are already mimicking intuition and other subtle non-linear human thought traits. Again, more ignorance regarding the current state of the art and a total inability to extrapolate.

5) "Cosmic beings". Deus Ex Machina has always failed to explain or predict human advancement.

You and I have a difference of opinion on this subject. I think you'd be making a mistake to so quickly discount mine.

1) I absolutely agree that Kurzweil is brilliant, and has, as you correctly state, predicted every major IT movement in the last 40 years. My reference to him as a "nutjob" has to do with his vehemently transhumanist agenda, which holds the merging of man and computer as the most-preferred archetype. In Kurzweil's view, the merging of man and machine can only improve humanity, rendering it superior to the humanity we have now. I disagree, strongly.

2) So the Singularity is a given? How are you so sure? No possibility the Singularity is Kurzweil's "bridge too far"? The man can never be wrong? Interesting. He'd be the first.

3) Whether your knowledge of software architecture outstrips my own might be an interesting conversation at some point, and your points about algorithm development and man-machine interfacing are well taken. But actually reaching the Singularity is, to me, a difference in kind, not degree. To believe the Singularity is inevitable, you have to be willing to discount the spiritual nature of humanity. I'm not willing to do that. Kurzweil is.

4) When a computer, any computer, passes the Turing test, call me.

5) If you're referring to Deus Ex Machina, I again think you're misunderstanding my argument. By using the phrase "human advancement", you clearly agree with Kurzweil that humanity needs computer assistance to reach its true potential and is flawed in its current form. Humanity's flaws stem from the heavy hand of our current overlords, not any inherent failing. That's my take, anyway.

Fair enough.

1) OK.
2) Yes. The Singularity is inevitable unless we become extinct first. When and how it happens are the only questions.
3) It's a difference of degree, like the temperature of a hydrogen atom before it fuses. 1 degree cooler, you have a balloon. 1 degree hotter, you have a fusion warhead.
4) Coming any time now.
5) Deus Ex, yes, typo I fixed. I don't say that computer assistance to reach its true potential. It is, however, the most likely route that is under our physical and intellectual control here in the second decade of the 21st century. It is the purely rational, mechanistic best approach. Whether or not pure rationality and mechanistic existence is philosophically ideal is a totally separate issue. Kurzweil, working under the assumption that is, is working toward accommodating it as the framework for human advancement.

Good response mate, keep it up.

Kurzweil is no doubt brilliant, but he's also a nutjob who longs for the "singularity", the point where human consciousness becomes one with computer tech. Guess what, Ray? AIN'T GONNA HAPPEN. Yes, you were right to predict decades ago that eventually a computer would be powerful enough to beat all human chess players, but chess can be boiled down to pure mathematics. There is simply no way for any machine to mimic the astonishing intricacy and beautiful nonlinearity of the human mind. We are eternal, cosmic beings, Ray. Please wake the fuck up and figure that out, before you start trying to eat microchips and shit silicon.

Machines don't have souls or consciousness. They also cannot be "psychic" and operate on hunches, nor have emotions that tell it what propler course to take when dealing witha another human being....ans also who in the hell would trust a machine w/ a computer brain...anyone that wanted you dead, could easily hack it and use it as a weapon against you, I wouldn't trust my life to a computer that is also suseptable to viruses either. This dude is a a nutjob...as he obviously hasn't thought thos idea through very well. Not very intelligent after-all is he? lol.