Singularity

What would you say to me if I told you that 2045 will be the year in which humans gain immortality? Some of you would ask me to elaborate on my statement, but I’m willing to bet that most of you would think that I’ve finally gone mad.

Now, what would you say if I added that such a prediction has actually been made by Ray Kurzweil, a famed American inventor and futurist responsible for most speech recognition technologies, as well as the creation of the first reading machine for the blind? Oh, and let me just add that Mr. Kurzweil has publicly (but most importantly, accurately) made similar predictions in the past, with the most important one probably being his prediction of the internet boom. You might say that regardless of who made the prediction, it’s still a pretty far-fetched one, which I would completely agree with. That said, I’d still like to further elaborate on his prophecy and see what implications it would have.

As an inventor, Kurzweil is interested in predicting when the timing for certain inventions would be right. He argues that many times inventions fail because the world is simply not ready for them, or because the groundwork for them is simply not there. For this reason, he took it upon himself to track the pace of technological progress and found that it has a predictable trajectory. Despite the fact that we as humans tend to predict things in a linear fashion, Kurzweil found that information technology experiences exponential growth. If you think about it, his findings make complete sense. Each technology builds on previous technologies to create something many times more efficient.

Just take a look at the history of the computer. The first computer was built in the 50s-60s, cost millions of dollars, weighed several tons, and took up an entire room. What about computers now? A Mac Book Air, for instance, only costs about a thousand dollars, weighs about 3 pounds, can fit in our laps, and is a thousand times more efficient and useful than its earliest predecessor. So, in a matter of just 50 years, the development of computers has greatly intensified and accelerated in such a way that its growth can be characterized as being undoubtedly exponential.

Taking this into account, along with the fact that DNA is essentially information (and therefore can be expected to follow an exponential growth curve), Kurzweil has identified 2029 as the year in which we will have finished the reverse engineering of the human brain. In other words, by 2029 we will have understood how every region of the human brain operates, allowing us to successfully simulate all of the human brain’s capabilities. Furthermore, he predicts that the computers of this time will be even more powerful than the human brain, and that therefore, we will be able to create machines that can replicate human intelligence.

The truth is that we’ve been hearing about artificial intelligence for a while now. The term was actually coined in 1956 by John McCarthy who defined it as “the science and engineering of making intelligent machines.” Anyone remember the 2001 movie “A.I.?” My family has always been very technologically-oriented, so I recall that we all went to the cinema to see “A.I.” and came out thinking that such a thing as artificial intelligence (as presented in the movie) was possible, but not something that we should expect to see in our lifetime. Now, only 10 years later, the idea of a highly advanced robot that has human capabilities doesn’t seem so far-fetched, at least not to me.

Carrying on, Kurzweil identified 2045 as the year in which man becomes immortal, or the year in which the human body, as we know it, becomes irrelevant. He called this point in time Singularity, a point by which technological changes will have accelerated so much that an entirely new set of problems and questions for mankind will have arisen. Kurzweil maintains that by the time we reach Singularity, we won’t be able to tell the difference between human and artificial consciousness.

And that is pretty much the gist of his predictions. If you’d like to know more about them, I encourage you to watch the documentary “Transcendent Man,” or to read Kurzweil’s book “The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology.”

Now, I’m not even going to attempt to tackle this from a religious standpoint, for the truth is, I’m not well versed in theological dogma. Whatever I say, I know someone will bring up the argument that attempting to essentially fuse man and machine in a way that makes them indiscernible from each other for the sake of achieving immortality would be like playing God. And these people would probably be right. In fact, Kurzweil argues that by the time we reach Singularity, both machines and humans will be godlike.

Either way, putting that aside, Kurzweil’s predictions have huge implications for the advancement of the human race. Imagine being able to sync your brain to the Internet and suddenly gaining access to all of the world’s vast wealth of knowledge. You all know that I’d personally love that. Concerning the issue of mortality, whatever your thoughts regarding death may be, you have to admit that death is a tragedy of both personal and universal proportions. I wonder what further contributions Einstein might’ve made to the world if he’d still be alive today and had access to our current levels of technology.

The fact remains that this is a highly controversial issue. If machines are expected to surpass human intelligence, there is no knowing what they would. Even if we tried our best to program computers to have our values and our needs in mind, there’s no denying that theoretically they could reprogram themselves in a way that will have adverse effects for humans. What if one day these machines were to realize just how inferior humans are, decided that we weren’t necessary anymore, and starting killing us off, similarly to how we squash cockroaches? For this reason, some people are completely against Kurzweil’s beliefs. And it really is a totally valid opinion.

Taking into account today’s social, economic, and political structure, I’m certain that even if these technologies were to become available, only the wealthy and powerful would have access to them, which would further deepen inequality. In which case, we wouldn’t be dealing with an advancement of the human race as a whole, but only of that of a select few.

Lastly, you’d have to question whether machines can really simulate ALL of human capabilities. It’s true that we still don’t have a complete understanding of how the human brain works, but surely there must be something else, something special that makes us US. What about the human soul? Is there such a thing as the human soul and if so, can it be replicated by machines? Again, I don’t want to get too much into the religious or philosophical implications of it all. (If I did, this post would end up being hundreds of pages long.) I’m just posing all of these questions as things to keep and mind, and if some of you are interested, as points to discuss over coffee.

Technology will keep on growing exponentially - this is something that I am certain of. Furthermore, I think that our understanding of the human body and of biological processes will also continue to grow. I do believe that there will come a point where humans will be greatly divided on the issue of whether to allow further technological advances (for the reasons I already mentioned) or not. What’ll really happen? I guess it’s anyone’s guess at this point. I used to be quite proud of the fact that at my mere 25 years of age, I’d already accepted the inevitability of death, and to a certain degree, that still holds. But what if we truly are all able to achieve immortality? I know I’d like to be around when that happens. Until next time…