From the immediate future, to what we'll have
in the next few decades, and how the Earth
will never be the same, join me as we explore
the notions of Ray Kurzweil, The technological
singularity and the future of humanity!
If you were to look at the world at its current
state, with the epidemic going through every
country it seems, businesses shutting down
and various economies taking serious hits,
the last thing you'd be thinking about is
the future a few years from now. That's totally
understandable as we're not even sure where
we're going to be a few months from now. But
as with all great diseases and plagues, this
too shall pass, and the future will continue
on as scheduled.
The 2020's are aiming to be an important decade
for humanity as a whole whether we want to
admit it or not. NASA and SpaceX are aiming
to take us back to the moon and get us to
colonize Mars after decades of wondering if
it was honestly possible. There will no doubt
be major advancements in technology that will
help propel us forward, and various new leadership
could help steer the path of humanity for
many years and decades to come.
But in truth, let us ask ourselves, what is
the true future of humanity? And who can we
turn to in order to get a glimpse of what's
to come? That would be none other than Ray
Kurzweil, an inventor and futurist who not
only believes in the power of humanity, but
believes in a very beautiful and technologically
vibrant system that humanity is slowly building
itself toward.
But why should we trust this guy? Why is it
that Ray Kurzweil is an "expert" on something
that hasn't even happened yet. To put it simply...he's
gotten a lot right over the years.
Ray is renowned for his predictions on technological
and social advancement. He said he’s made
147 predictions in the age of machines, and
according to him, “86% were correct to the
year.” Heck, even if he was just 50% right,
that would be a staggering number, and it's
not just his bravado saying he was right,
we have facts that can prove it.
In 1990, he famously predicted that computers
would beat the best human chess players “by
the year 2000.” And in May of 1997, World
Champion Garry Kasparov was defeated by IBM’s
Deep Blue computer in a chess tournament.
Kurzweil also foresaw the explosive growth
in the Internet at a time when there were
only 2.6 million Internet users in the world.
Now, the internet is one of the most important
things in the history of the world, used by
many countries all over the world and is vital
for various people doing their jobs, as well
as helping make jobs easier. He also predicted
the role of computers in classrooms, speech-to-text
software and many other technological developments
that have come to pass.
In short, he's predicted a lot, and if he
has notions about the future, it's a pretty
good chance that at least SOME of these predictions
are going to come true, and as we get closer
to the year 2050, where a a lot of "technological
advances" are said to be in full effect, you
have to wonder how Ray will see things working
out. So let's look at some of these predictions
and break down the likelihood of them happening,
shall we?
He’s optimistic about renewable energy for
example. According to his studies, the rise
of renewable energy is seeing exponential
growth, doubling every 4 years which would
be quite a feat if true.
“In 2030 we will have [total] renewable
energy, and it will be inexpensive,” he
predicts.
This particular prediction is one that many
people would LOVE to see come true, and for
all the right reasons. Whether or not you
believe in Global Warming, you can't deny
that fossil fuels are harming the planet in
various ways. Many people have been trying
to get renewable energy as the many provider
of the worlds source of power for many years
now, but various leaders and industries have
been resistant because of the money they are
set to lose from the lesser amounts of oil
and fossil fuels that will be used over time.
The irony of it all though is that there are
ways right now that can make this prediction
come true, mainly, solar power. Solar panels
have been used for many years now, and with
each new version they become more efficient
to use and more reliable. Many have speculated
that if you were to line certain areas of
deserts all over the world with solar panels,
you'd be able to power the planet. Plus, there
are places that have houses that are indeed
powered by these panels and their bills for
said power cost much less than those who use
electricity via fossil fuels.
All it takes is one person to make this the
priority and this could indeed be our future
by 2030, and that would be a very good and
clean future to have.
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So what else does Ray believe our future will
be like?
Well, he is also positive about improved health
and well-being, with advancements in nanobots,
new therapies and diagnoses extending life
expectancy and lowering cost of treatments.
This one is also rather ironic given the current
situation we are in with the epidemic and
that we don't have a cure, a vaccine, or a
way to deter this virus outside of us being
careful, "social distancing", and more. Plus,
even before this, many people have been rightly
complaining about the cost of health care,
even for nations that have health care as
part of their natural system, not everything
is easily obtained or priced. Insulin is a
great example of this, as there are only a
few companies that make it and they hike up
the price so that they can continue to make
profits against their competitors.
Not exactly a system that benefits the people
actually using the insulin, am I right? But,
in the future, it's possible it will get better.
New technologies are indeed being used to
make sicknesses better, and dealing with them
quicker. Many are hoping that a cure for various
kinds of cancer may not be far away with certain
advances in computer technology. Furthermore,
as history has shown us, all it takes is one
accident to happen for the next big medicine
to arrive that can truly and literally change
the world.
Plus, as Ray also noted, the world itself
is actually rising to a higher level of quality
care whether we realize it or not. Extreme
poverty for example has dropped a lot in recent
decades, and even though many nations aren't
up to the level of "high-level nations", they
are getting better.
By 2050, who knows where we'll be? We could
have robots and A.I. diagnosing patients and
offering suggestions for cures and such. Nanobots
might be injected into every human as another
kind of immune system in order to fight sicknesses.
The possibilities are out there, we're just
waiting for someone to step up and make them.
What's that? What about A.I? Why...I thought
you'd never ask...
“I’ve predicted that in 2029, we will
pass the Turing test,” he said.
The Turing test is a measure of the power
of artificial intelligence. It was developed
by Alan Turing in 1950, as a test of a machine’s
ability to exhibit intelligent behavior equivalent
to, or indistinguishable from, that of a human.
Essentially, if we can interact with computer
intelligence and not realize that it’s a
computer, then it passes the test. “We’re
not at that stage yet,” he explained.
Once AI passes the Turing test, “it will
really master what all humans can do, and
it will go beyond what humans can do” throughout
the 2030s.
Now, I'm sure that this is setting off a WHOLE
LOT of warning bells for you. Because as sci-fi
movies like Terminator, 2001: A Space Odyssey,
Ex Machina, I Robot and more have shown...A.I.
being as smart, and then smarter, than humans
usually ends with humans being...well...dead.
Or at the very least a war between humans
and machines will rise up.
This is why many legendary minds and inventors,
including Elon Musk and the late Stephen Hawking,
have warned against the precipitous rise of
A.I. intelligence. Yes, we do have versions
of A.I. in our lives right now like Watson,
Siri and Alexa, but they're limited in what
they can do. This kind of A.I. can change
the world, and Kurzweil knows that, and he
also knows that people have a right to fear
this happening.
But, he also reminds us technology is always
a double-edged sword:
Technology has always been a double-edged
sword. Fire kept us warm, cooked our food
and burned down our houses,” Kurzweil said,
using the example: “World War II – 50
million people died, and that was certainly
exacerbated by the power of technology at
that time.”
And he's right, technology always brings pain
and destruction, but he also notes that humanity
can rise ABOVE it, and when we do, we can
make some really amazing things, and that's
what he's hoping for with A.I. Because once
A.I pass the Turing Test, we can start using
them to help us think of things that were
beyond our scope before because we couldn't
see past certain things.
While this does sound nice, it also leads
to a potential problem known as the Technological
Singularity. A point in time that many people
fear for various reasons.
To quote Wikipedia, the Technological Singularity,
"is a hypothetical future point in time at
which technological growth becomes uncontrollable
and irreversible, resulting in unfathomable
changes to human civilization."
For many, the rise of true AI (the ones that
pass the Turing Test) is that irreversible
point in time. Because once we let that genie
out of the bottle...who knows what's going
to happen next? In short, A.I. could indeed
rise up to overtake the world because they'll
have thought patterns and processes far beyond
humans. Or, humanity could work with them
in such a way to benefit our world and our
lives in ways we couldn't have thought about
even in our greatest sci-fi stories. That's
what Kurzweil believes anyway.
Instead, he predicts it to become more like
a co-existence, where machines reinforce human
abilities. Kurzweil predicts that a hybrid
AI would become available by the 2030s. This
hybrid AI, he explained, would allow human
beings to tap directly into the cloud with
just their brains, using what he called a
neocortex connection. Kurzweil previously
predicted that part of this reinforcement
would come from nanobots, which he said would
flow throughout our bodies by 2030.
“We are going to have a greatly expanded
brain. Right now we have a certain amount
of neural processing power, we have about
300 million neurons. But if we connect to
the cloud… we can expand our intelligence
in our own bodies,” predicts Ray.
So in essence, he believes that because of
the rise of A.I., we won't lose humanity as
a whole, we'll simply evolve it to the next
level of our being. Which again, is a nice
thought. I mean, who wouldn't want their own
A.I. companion that can help them in their
time of need or allow them to solve problems
by expanding their brain processes to the
cloud? It does sound enticing, doesn't it?
"But wouldn't that make us cyborgs and not
humans?" you might ask. Techncally...yes and
no. The definition of a cyborg is that of
a human that is mixed with machine parts.
So to that end, if we have an A.I. counterpart
in our body somewhere, we would on a loose
level be cyborgs via our brains, but not in
the vein of us having artificial limbs that
would be controlled by that A.I...at least
not yet.
I'm sure some of you are looking at these
predictions and think that this is either
very bold, or very ludicrous. I mean, how
could even one of these things honestly be
right, right? But you need to remember something,
for as advanced as humanity is, we're very
limited in how we see the future at times.
Yes, we make sci-fi epics that show the futures
that COULD happen, but we honestly do those
because we HOPE that they are that advanced,
and as Back to The Future, Terminator and
more have shown, we're not there yet.
Plus, as noted by Kurzweil himself, he's made
predictions that a lot of people found laughable
at the time, and yet when we try and imagine
our world without these things that he predicted
would happen...that in and of itself is laughable.
We can't even predict what is going to happen
in the next few months, let alone the next
few years, or the next decade, or where we
are going to be by 2050. If you asked people
form 1950 what they thought about the year
2000, computers likely wouldn't have been
on their minds. Flying cars would've been
everywhere, and a whole bunch of other weird
things may or may not have been right.
So if you ask us where we're going to be in
2050? We honestly don't know, but Kurzweil
seems to have a good indication of what the
future is going to hold based on past projections.
So maybe we should just follow his lead and
see where this all takes us.
Thanks for watching everyone! What did you
think of this look at the predictions of Ray
Kurzweil and what he thinks the future of
humanity will be? Do you believe in some of
his predictions, or do you think that they'll
fall flat over time? What do you personally
think the future will be like for us as we
get to the 2050's and beyond? Let me know
in the comments below, be sure to subscribe,
and I'll see you next time on the channel!
