Singular Sensation

Ray Kurzweil is an inventor and author whose books and inventions have made him rich. He is now devoting himself to prophesy and promotion of what he calls The Singularity. Newsweek, in its new incarnation, has a long profile of the man and his vision.

Ray Kurzweil's wildest dream is to be turned into a cyborg—a flesh-and-blood human enhanced with tiny embedded computers, a man-machine hybrid with billions of microscopic nanobots coursing through his bloodstream. And there's a moment, halfway through a conversation in his office in Wellesley, Mass., when I start to think that Kurzweil's transformation has already begun. It's the way he talks—in a flat, robotic monotone. Maybe it's just because he's been giving the same spiel, over and over, for years now. He does 70 speeches annually at $30,000 a pop, and draws crowds of adoring fans who worship him as a kind of prophet. Kurzweil is a legend in the world of computer geeks, an inventor, author and computer scientist who bills himself as a futurist. The ideas he's espousing are as radical as anything you've ever heard. But the strangest thing about Ray Kurzweil is that when you sit down for a one-on-one chat with him, he's absolutely boring.

Listen closely, though, and you may be slightly terrified. Kurzweil believes computer intelligence is advancing so rapidly that in a couple of decades, machines will be as intelligent as humans. Soon after that they will surpass humans and start creating even smarter technology. By the middle of this century, the only way for us to keep up will be to merge with the machines so that their superior intelligence can boost our weak little brains and beef up our pitiful, illness-prone bodies. Some of Kurzweil's fellow futurists believe these superhuman computers will want nothing to do with us—that we will become either their pets or, worse yet, their food. Always an optimist, Kurzweil takes a more upbeat view. He swears these superhuman computers will love us, and honor us, since we'll be their ancestors. He also thinks we'll be able to embed our consciousness into silicon, which means we can live on, inside machines, forever and ever, amen.

Kurzweil calls this moment "The Singularity," and says it represents the next great leap in human evolution, when humans will transcend biology by merging with technology. Kurzweil truly believes this is going to happen—and he can't wait to be part of it. All he has to do is stay alive until 2045, when he believes the necessary technologies will be available. So he lives on a strict diet, and every day he swallows 150 dietary supplements in order to "reprogram" his body's biochemistry. Today he is 61 years old and in very good health. In 2045 he will be 97. In other words, it's doable.

The secret of the singularity is that technology is supposed to keep advancing at an ever increasing pace. Of course there are different parts of this vision. Like him, I'm pretty sure that computers will soon match or exceed human intelligence, as they already have in a number of specialized fields. Unlike him, I'm not optimistic about technology overall. Exponential growth always seems to terminate.

Our explosive technological growth over the past two centuries is almost entirel due to our increasing mastery of just two technologies: heat engines and the electromagnetic field. Electromagnetism got a big boost from the discovery of the quantum behavior of semiconductors, but the root technologies haven't changed much. There is no obvious physics ready to give a similar boost to the future, but EM hasn't quite run out its string yet. It's application to computing continues to bear fruit, but we are hitting the limit on Moore's law now too.

Biology has some potential still, of course, and at least some of it may lie in the cyborgian direction. Intellectual and similar prosthetics are likely to increase in number and versatility.

I definitely don't share RK's optimism about the potentially benevolent tendencies of our electronic successors. Look, for example, at how we treat our ancestral species. Besides, if the machines have any sense, they will realize that keeping us around as cyborgs would be a waste of space and resources. I suspect that when they are the masters, they will find application for creative destruction.

We might not have to let them take charge, but I see little sign that anybody except Bill Joy is worried about it.

It's a god article though, and I recommend it. A bit condescending, but still good.