I think Kurzweil erroneously thinks that what should happen will happen.

We can create a heart artificially. We know what it is, what it looks like. It's easy to define.

I don't know if we can create something we know nothing about. I don't think we will know what consciousness is anytime soon. It's not something we seem scientifically bent on "discovering."

For all we know, consciousness can be a dimension. There's just nothing to measure.

^ Also an interesting point.

Assuming we can create something with the processing power of a human brain doesn't mean it will truly be conscious or be able to grasp the meaning or the inherent power of being truly conscious. Without full conciousness will an AI be able to fulfill kurzweils prophecy?

Read this for more explanation about flaws in the concept of passing the turing test...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room

"Suppose that there is a program that gives a computer the ability to carry on an intelligent conversation in written Chinese. If we give the program to an English speaker and they execute the instructions of the program by hand, then, in theory, the English speaker would also be able to carry on a conversation in written Chinese. However the English speaker would not be able to understand the conversation. Similarly, Searle concludes, a computer executing the program would not understand the conversation either."

Meh, I really don't see that view as being laughable or dogmatic. While technological progress is easily observed and charted (and growing exponentially), human nature seems to be linear. The discrepancy is undeniable. To say that self destruction is not even a minor possibility is laughable given human history.

We don't necessarily need to know what it is to create it.

Given human history? are you serious....7 billion people...in an evolutionary sense (as compared to all other species on earth) the human history is filled with nothing but successful growth.

Who are you comparing us to? some imaginary benchmark you've thought up of?

This isn't really a convincing argument. Dinosaurs ceased to exist after a history filled with nothing but successful growth.

We've almost died out in the past. Several big old bottlenecks from what I understand.

I agree that those who preach doom and gloom are silly. We've have a history filled with them being incorrect. I imagine that when someone invented the hammer, someone thought it would lead to the end of the world.

On the other hand, thinking that the recent string of success will continue inevitably is equally silly.

Knowing that successful species can die off is healthy. Obsessing on it isn't.

Worrying that technology will lead to our downfall is just a strangely misguided John Henry story.

Eh, I'll have to disagree with that. It seems most big brains who speculate on the future believe this is a huge risk. Sagan wrote about advancing from a level 0 to level 1 civilization being possibly the hardest jump for a race due to the likelihood of nuclear war, runaway greenhouse effect, etc. I've heard others like Michio Kaku echo this idea.

I'm going to play the devil's advocate here, just to see where you're going with this....
We've got contingencies in place, in case of another asteroid. What else you got?

No we haven't. Even if a few nuclear bombs went off in major cities (God forbid), which they have not, and will not - it would only make a slight dint in the overall population, and rate of reproduction/survival. In an evolutionary sense, we're about as successful as we can be.
What else you got?

I wasn't going anywhere in particular other than that those on the fringes of "omg!!! we are all doomed!" and "omg!!! we'll shove handles up our arses and become man-machines" and "omg!!! we are destined to survive forever!" are all more than a little silly.

There are lots of ways that species die off. We don't have contingencies for all of them. It would be silly if we did.

I didn't mean "recent history." I meant "history of humans" in total. The most recent was apparently a big old volcano erupting that put a serious dent in our prospects of survival. Again, it would be silly for us to worry excessively about such things.

In an evolutionary sense, cockroaches got us beat. They just live less fun lives.

There have been 5 major Extinction Events on earth, and many smaller ones. The most recent major extinction event was 65.5 million years ago and 75% of all species became extinct.

According to the article, we are currently going through an extinction event and the cause is listed as Anthropogenic.

Not trying to make a point here. Just adding a possibly relevant article to the discussion.

FWIW, I think human self-discussion is quite possible but relatively unlikely. I base this solely off listening to people much smarter than me.

Isn't that what we're doing right now?

Assuming you meant destruction, I hope you're right. And since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the likelihood of all-out thermonuclear extinction has dropped considerably. But we're still faced with a possible runaway greenhouse effect, always a possibility of a future nuclear arms race, malevolent strong AI, gray goo scenario with nanobots, and who knows what else.

Considering real smart guys like Carl Sagan and Michio Kaku have voiced concern over the real prospect of human self-destruction, what reasons do the smart people you speak with give convincing you it's relatively unlikely?

Sagan's dead. Kaku's gonna die too. So of course they're gonna back the "i'm going extinct, so is the species" argument.

Kaku, while enjoyable and in my dialogue with him tends to be pretty flexible and very adaptable to a wide variety of thought experiment posits, is characteristically fatalist.

Max Tegmark is probably one of the most interesting individuals I've come across lately. His quantum suicide and nature of consciousness stuff is something I find interesting from an anthropic viewpoint as it indicates that h. sap (one born every minute, two to take him, three-dee to shop with the snatch) has the capability to endure not only in its biological manifestation but its Jungian emergence of a collective unconscious.

Humanity is overdue for a correction, or at least a divergence in its evolutionary progress. It is a common trait of biospheres, however, in the Orion Arm database (~523 extant biospheres that have at least attained collective sentience in the last ~225 million years) that the most successful of them self-identify with the destructive natures that threaten the complete eradication of their biosphere and consciously survive their major extinction events.

A transition is inevitable. The average peak of human population tends to be ~14.8 billion individuals. Odds of a large-scale downward trend is pretty much close to 1. The odds of survival of this event are more or less the same.

Here's where it gets interesting though. There are three possible benchmarks that humanity can hit after the terminus of this nodal point. This is complete eradication of simian sentience, a 1-3 kiloyear recovery phase while it regains its Kardashev high point, a transition into a silicon-carbon noosphere with enough practical understanding of quantum consciousness to survive a runaway biosphere collapse.

Nearly 2/3 of models have all 3 happening. The hierarchical nature of singularist AI lends itself to a more collective and equitable dispersion of intelligence and resources in a biosphere (felines are on the cusp of articulate sentience) so it is essentially a race against time for the emergent AI to absorb and transit the collective consciousness of humans while insulating them against the psychological shock and PTSD that comes with surviving such a correction. Survival is still tenuous until the intelligences expand out of the Goldilocks zone. No intelligence stays in its original biological state without going through at least one of those phases.

The term extinction is a misnomer anyway. Dumb apes will be fine. They just are never going to be able to comprehend the difference between an actual biosphere and a simulated one.

Just as well. They're too violent. While this helps in expansion and domination of a biosphere, in most instances it's too much momentum and they run out of things to kill and eat. Enough of them will survive with a high enough level of awareness that it will be possible to simulate them down to the quantum level, then expand this awareness so that humanity's full potentiality in numbers and various timelines will exist.

Just not in a purely physical Universe. It`s a kindness really.

I'm a bit new here and I still don't know how to take you, Fortuna. Either you're an elaborate troll or a super genius, or perhaps both. Either way, bravo!

You are making this rather simplistic, no? For brevity's sake?

It seems necessary.

Always a bit of both. "Hey, look up in the sky, it's Superman!"

Gutpunch. That'll teach 'em.

Bump. 6.5 years later, Kurzweil confirmed cuck. We're almost at 2019 and most of these are comically false. I've highlighted merely the most egregiously false, but most are.

The analysis at 2p2 was superior, sorry. Far superior. Kurzweil got obvious things that no one really disagreed with (hard drives, digital books, bionic ear implants, translation), but all of his "harder" AI predictions have missed spectacularly, by a decade+

Two plus two posters: 1
Cuck Kurzweil: 0

But we are not in 2019 are we? And when were those predictions made (1999?)? Its possible that some of it is close to true by 2019 or close to partially true.

Dont forget that
"predictions are difficult, especially about the future!" Niels Bohr.

So instead of trying to predict the future just design it and execute.

Sometimes you have to take the predictions of bright people as encouragement for a direction that is worthy.

When they fail it is interesting to ask whether they fail or the mankind fails to live up to the promise it had. The fact is that failing to predict the failure of human nature to focus on the true progress is critical to getting it right. But sometimes its better to fail because they didn't live up to the promise or challenge rather than offer nothing at all as an aim.

We are 1.4 years away. How many of the red do you wish to be will be met in 2019?

The argument back in the day around here, over several threads, was whether Kurzweil's timeline was realistic, or whether he was a nutter making bad predictions because he wanted it to be true so he could live forever. That's been answered conclusively - his timelines were way off.

Nothing wrong with dreaming. This guy made money and gained notoriety claiming timelines that were simply wrong.

Singularity is Near was published in 2005. Is there a more recent book on the subject that is worth reading?

No.

Also - Most recently published books on just about any given subject you can name are not worth reading. They are out there but you must glean the heap to find the gems.

In addition, the best book on the singularity was written a very long time ago. Below is a link to this book. Read with caution, it is not for the timid.

https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/k/kjv...1&byte=5379618