My point is simply that let's say it's 2050 and the "singularity" is nowhere in sight. Then what's he going to say (let's assume that he's still alive and active in the intellectual community)? I bet that he won't change his tune at all.

Ah, your point is that your unsupported prediction of Kurzweil's future behavior is unfavorable. Quite damning; I don't see how he can recover from it.

My prediction is falsifiable and if he makes a solid prediction and then is willing to abandon his hypothesis, then fine...but I'd bet my whole roll that if he set a firm date, and it came and went, he'd just set another one and not change anything.

I have a copy of Kurzweil's 1998 book The Age of Spiritual Machines laying around somewhere. It's old enough to have some predictions about the wonders of 2010. May type some out later if I want a laugh.

From the videos I've seen on the topic I concluded that Kurzweil is very much afraid of death (he uses some self-developed pills that supposedly slow down the aging process) and since he believes that this singularity can provide him with eternal life he keeps claiming that it's just around the corner.
That belief is what drives him to continue the work and it's what keeps him sleep more comfortably at night I guess.

Dude's a kook.

I agree with Ray Kurzweil - not entirely but pretty much - and I have no doubt that within 50 years (maybe considerably less) that machines will become conscious due to a massive expansion of artificial intelligence (AI) what we must keep in mind that even if this fails to happen and it takes 100 years to reach the stage where machines become aware the introduction of non biological intelligence into ourselves within the next couple of decades is pretty much inevitable, initially because of our limited technological capability this would most likely be achieve through simple neuro implants and later through a mix of gene manipulation and the use of artificial systems such as nanotechnology. Whether the actual Singularity arises or not we will achieve a rate of progress which is incomparable to anything we have ever seen before. To get this in perspective Ray often quotes that in the nineteenth century more technological breakthroughs were made than in all of the nine centuries preceding it. Then in the first twenty years of the twentieth century, we saw more advancement than in all of the nineteenth century combined. In this century we will probably achieve 1000 times more than we achieved in the whole 20th century which was itself a period of progress never before seen. The trend and its general direction is ever upward an ever accelerating. The merging of human and machine intelligence is an inevitable progression because you only need to look at how attached we are to our iPhones and Blackberry’s to realise that we will ultimately be unable to resist moving increased processing capability directly inside the body.

To see the evidence of where we are going check out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9q4qwLknKag
http://asimo.honda.com/InsideAsimo.aspx
http://mashable.com/2010/04/15/nasa-robonaut2/

Definately not the case! His record regarding past predictions of future trends shows a pretty staggering degree of accuracy. If we take as an example his book The Age of Spiritual Machines which he wrote between 1996 and 1997 he made 108 predictions relating to 2009, 89 were correct by the end of last year and there were 13 further items which were correct in the key points. There is an interesting posting at http://www.anthonyoliver.net/news/20...09-predictions

It must be considered that some predictions such as his forecast of the rise of the internet in his book The Age of Intelligent machines which was published in 1990 also proved extremely accurate. It must be kept in mind that the book was written in the late 1980s and that at the time of publication there were only around 2.5 milion internet users worldwide, to get this in perspective there are now almost 2 billion! He forecast in the book that the Internet would take off not only by vastly increasing the number of users but that the content would expand exponentialy and ultimately make vast amounts of data accessible to anyone worldwide. Kurzweil also correctly foresaw that wireless internet access would become the main mode of connecting to the internet by the early 21st century. These are just a couple of predictions, he is often very accurate although things do not always pan out exactly as expected although it is the general direction that maters not the fine detail. As a point of note his book The Age of Intelligent machines won an award as the Most Outstanding Computer Science Book of 1990 from the Association of American Publishers and this was before anything came to pass!

Welcome to 2p2 Ray.

I'm curious what you have in mind; according to Wiki, Kurzweil overestimated the market penetration of 3D chips and solid-state memory...but "laughable" seems a bit much.

Very odd you expect Kurzweil to become such a sloppy thinker, since he is demonstrably one of the most sophisticated alive.

A couple predictions for 2009:

lol wat?

Just because he's smart doesn't mean that he's not human (despite what he'd like to hope for). He's convinced about something but this leads to poor thinking. It's become more of 'faith' for him than an empirical hypothesis.

econophile -

He was wrong there, but not because of some fantastical over-optimism about technological progress. Both are essentially failed economic forecasts.

E.g. the VisLab Intercontinental Autonomous Challenge team at University of Parma is currently undertaking an 8,000-mile autonomous car trip (Rome to Shanghai).

I'm sure most people agree with your psychologizing. It doesn't jive with my exposure to Kurzweil, but w/e.

Kurzweil isn't crazy and neither are his predictions. The only thing he may be guilty of is extrapolating too far. Anyone with any sort of brain would know that if the exponential rate of progression continues for another 50 years we'll simply be able to brute force simulate a brain into a computer (and speed it up a lot) and singularty is there. It's funny, because if I asked "Do you think AI will rule the world in 50 years?" people would say "Hell naw! that be crazy!" but yet if I asked "Do you think computers will progress the rate they have been doing for the past 50 years for at least another 50 years?" they would say "probably!". They simply haven't thought about the consequences of such powerful computers.

Kurzweil fears death far too much. He's obsessed with keeping himself alive. I think that he fears it so much that some of his confidence in the singularity is due to his fear of dying. Without being afraid of death there would be no additional pressure to find a solution to death.

I don't think computers will progress at the same rate for the next 50 years. All through human history we have periods of great technological innovation then nope no singularity, they lose it all. Are we different cause we have the internet?

I mean in 1990 this idiot thought we'd have a singularity in 20 years right? Instead in 20 years we have Windows Freakin Vista. Wow what crazy progress from Win32 in the past 20 years, unbelievable. Can't imagine how awesome computers will be in another 20.

I wasn't sure if he extrapolated the rate of growth so much as he extrapolated the kinds of technologies that would likely exist in the future based on current technology. It would be a fallacy only in the former case, which, if he did, would be a dishonest mistake on his part.

Come to think of it that would make the entire concept of the technological singularity a faulty idea, if it were based solely on that fallacious reasoning. Or maybe I'm overlooking something...

Even though he is constantly wrong on every prediction he makes, the man is a freakin genius and the singularity is near, within 20 years people!

If you are supposed to be a futurist. That's your title, you predict the future. And you FAIL HORRIBLY at predicting TWELVE freakin years in the future. Why would anyone care what you think would happen in FIFTY!? He can't even come up with anything CLOSE to a reasonable prediction for a decade in advance. He has nothing to offer. He is a hack. He should be a sci-fi writer.

His singularity book is up there with dianetics.

There have been HUGE leaps in human kind. The neolithic argricultural revolution and the industrial revolution. The next will be the technological singularity.

What the hell are you talking about? He never said that. What's the deal with everyone claiming that people said we'd have a singularity by now? Nobody predicted a singularity by 2010.

Epic level...nihan sir.

PrinceOfPokerstars -

At present, the facts are: Kurzweil is one of the world's most successful---certainly the most influential----futurists, and a world-class inventor.

You may disagree with Kurzweil and be in enviable company, but I don't see how you can ridicule him with a straight face. Yet so many do. Why?

I've never read him, heard of him, or had a moment where I cared about him, but I'd hazard a guess that people ridicule him with a straight face because he blathers on about silly things like technology singularities as if they are something other than a good plot device.

Did you miss the first paragraph of my post? Only a handful of people are qualified to critique Kurzweil.

I think many people see the predictions that Kurzweil has and, without seeing the supporting evidence, throw his theories into the 'crazy nonsense' catagory along with scientology and never give the theory a fair consideration. People need to stop thinking with their emotions and start thinking with their logical brains. Sure, it doesn't 'feel' right that in 50 years time AIs will be running the world, but if you logically think about it you'll realize that it's not such an unreasonable prediction.