Machines will achieve human-level artificial intelligence by 2029, a leading US inventor has predicted.
Humanity is on the brink of advances that will see tiny robots implanted in people's brains to make them more intelligent, said Ray Kurzweil.
The engineer believes machines and humans will eventually merge through devices implanted in the body to boost intelligence and health.
"It's really part of our civilisation," Mr Kurzweil explained.
"But that's not going to be an alien invasion of intelligent machines to displace us."
Machines were already doing hundreds of things humans used to do, at human levels of intelligence or better, in many different areas, he said.
Man versus machine
"I've made the case that we will have both the hardware and the software to achieve human level artificial intelligence with the broad suppleness of human intelligence including our emotional intelligence by 2029," he said.
"We're already a human machine civilisation; we use our technology to expand our physical and mental horizons and this will be a further extension of that."
Humans and machines would eventually merge, by means of devices embedded in people's bodies to keep them healthy and improve their intelligence, predicted Mr Kurzweil.
"We'll have intelligent nanobots go into our brains through the capillaries and interact directly with our biological neurons," he told BBC News.
The nanobots, he said, would "make us smarter, remember things better and automatically go into full emergent virtual reality environments through the nervous system".
Mr Kurzweil is one of 18 influential thinkers chosen to identify the great technological challenges facing humanity in the 21st century by the US National Academy of Engineering.
The experts include Google founder Larry Page and genome pioneer Dr Craig Venter.
The 14 challenges were announced at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston, which concludes on Monday.
Without your islam and slavery thread i wouldnt of tackled wilberhum and the other agnostics about the americans being the worst terrorists in the world with all their history of enslavment and stuff so thanks sis
Jazaak'Allah khair
Without your islam and slavery thread i wouldnt of tackled wilberhum and the other agnostics about the americans being the worst terrorists in the world with all their history of enslavment and stuff so thanks sisJazaak'Allah khair
No problem. You are welcome! You should thank to Allah Ta'ala first then to me!
Um... What's to stop people somehow hacking into these nanobots that will apparently be in our brains?
What happens if the nanos malfunction?
What happens if the nanos become self-aware and think 'hey, this guy doesn't know what he's doing. Let's run this joint' and take over a person's cognitive functions?
Sounds like some scientists have some serious thinking-through to do...
Agreed.. we have heard this stuff so often before and it never happened in anything like the time-span suggested, if indeed it has happened at all.
It's a humbling thought at times, though. I don't know about nano-bots making us smarter but the idea of them swimming around inside our bodies doing continuous repair work is simply breath-taking. Immortality will remain an impossible dream (or nightmare, depending on your point of view), but imagine the effect that could have on something like cancer. Rather than waiting for illness, or maybe the results of a regular scan, the very first cancerous cells get zapped by a roaming nanobot as they appear. No more radio therapy, chemo or hormone therapy and maybe no more 'cancer' as a disease at all. We (certainly the younger posters) could maybe be the last generation for which cancer is a medical problem at all.
Agreed.. we have heard this stuff so often before and it never happened in anything like the time-span suggested, if indeed it has happened at all.
It's a humbling thought at times, though. I don't know about nano-bots making us smarter but the idea of them swimming around inside our bodies doing continuous repair work is simply breath-taking. Immortality will remain an impossible dream (or nightmare, depending on your point of view), but imagine the effect that could have on something like cancer. Rather than waiting for illness, or maybe the results of a regular scan, the very first cancerous cells get zapped by a roaming nanobot as they appear. No more radio therapy, chemo or hormone therapy and maybe no more 'cancer' as a disease at all. We (certainly the younger posters) could maybe be the last generation for which cancer is a medical problem at all.
That is the most exciting part about nanotechnology. The health benefits could be dramatic(to say the least)...but of course this all hinges on theory panning out in reality.
"Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not, and a sense of humor was provided to console him for what he is."
Scientists should really think about poor starving kids somewhere in the African deserts.
Oh well, since they're poor and starving why should we care about them. Let's build some more robots.
It doesn't take a scientist to figure out how to feed starving people...at least not yet. Perhaps the world should stop spending so much time killing one another and concentrate on feeding the starving people...what a thought.
"Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not, and a sense of humor was provided to console him for what he is."
The scary thing is you would have to trust the morality of the people making these things. They would possibly be a bit like Microsoft, and you would have to buy constant updates only from them.
I have this uneasy feeling the manufacturers could control the person, if they are clever enough to invent such a thing, they could also programme some kind of remote control device also.
I was in the library two weeks ago and I was looking for something interesting to read through the countless hours of studying for exams etc, and I picked up this book called ' the singularity is near', written by ray kurtzweil, kind of a weird mix although i havent read all of it. the guy is basically saying that after we 'reverse engineer' the brain we'll build/integrate circuitry or machinery that would enhance and eventually completely replace the biological part of the brain. He also mentions replacing biological bodies with swarms of nanobots & even the possibilty of having multiple bodies at the same time-in virtual and 'real' reality- as I said I have yet to finish reading but IMHO the date he has set seems quite realistic from the evidence he provides. This evidence mainly consists of several chapters and charts on the speed whith which technology, especially information technology is progressing, he also articulates on the Law of Accelerating Returns, http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/a...ml?printable=1
which basically says the speed technology is developed and applied goes up exponentially rather than linearily,,,,
lots of stuff really, but I hope this gives a picture of what the dude is saying.
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