Kurzweil's Latest...

[Bruce A. Richardson]

Ray Kurzweil (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6959575/)

[SWL]

Very interesting!

Thanks for sharing the link!!

[kbaccki]

Kurzweil has been talking about that for a while. If you haven't read Bill Joy's words of warning (http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy.html) from a few years back, it's worth a read also.

[dcoscina]

Interesting. But what would the psychological ramifications be for someone who lived forever?

[Alan Lastufka]

Even if this were possible - no one would live forever - there is disease, war, car accidents and homicide to take people out - even if age doesnt.

Might help to prolong things - but then you also have to look at our resources - how well could the planet sustain having people with life spans of 300 or 400 years. Might use up too much space and resources to be feesible. Then you run into the tough questions of who gets to benefit from the technology and who doesn't (rich vs. poor). Etc.

Fun stuff though. ;)

[SteveHanlon]

Now longer life with the cultivation of wisdom through the cleansing of the mind (i.e. de-conditioning). Now we're talking something really meaningful!

Maybe something like

Buddha's vipassana + healthy technological advances

[jazzbozo]

This thread really belongs in the Off-topic forum, but I'll respond here:

Kurzweil is chasing the fountain of youth. Not the first to, not the last to, but smarter men than him have died holding onto the belief that the advance that would prolong the lifespan of humans is "just around the corner". Nano-this and AI-that is bandied about by so-called visionaries with no grounding in actual science. It drives those of us in the basic and clinical sciences nuts. You don't have to be a physician or scientist to comment on these things, but when your argument is based on a flawed concept of biology, the errors in logic accumulate exponentially.

Nano is a dead-end concept in biology. You wouldn't know this unless you've studied cell biology, after which you would laugh out loud at the claims made by those advocating the uses of nanomachines to "clean out arteries" and the like. How exactly would they accomplish this? How would they be able to recognize a cholesterol plaque and chip away at it (which has its own set of problems - emboli from the plaque can lead to strokes, heart attacks, infarction of internal organs, skin necrosis) and not, say, take a whack at the normal wall of the aorta? How large would a nanomachine have to be to 1) detect a particular structure, 2) accomplish a mechanical task that, as I've witnessed in surgery, takes skill, a delicate touch, clinical judgement, as well as strength beyond that which a nanomachine could ever hope to demonstrate at the microscopic level (plaques aren't just going to melt away...), while at the same time 3) evading the body's immune system, which is tuned to detect foreign particles like a nanomachine and engulf them. Presumably these machines would be pretty hardy, meaning they would stay stuck in lysosomes, perhaps even killing the immune cells that engulfed them, depressing the immune system. Greeeat...

I'm optimistic about the future of biology, but the real advances in longevity are going to come beyond our lifetimes and will be in the field of genetics, not engineering. Ray will be 6 feet under or his head will be orbiting in cryosuspension by then, and I'm afraid that only the last man to raise the dead could bring him back at that point.

Jazzbozo

[Evan Gamble]

I wouldn't want to live forever. I'de like to live like 85 strong healthy years...and then die real quickly. What a morbid thought. :confused:

[josejherring]

Well, as brilliant as the guy is in some areas. In other areas he seems to be guided more by his own wishes than by science.

In order for this "nano" 7of9 stuff to work, first scientist would have to figure out how the different organs of the body work fully and how to repair them when they go wrong.

As far as I know the only cure for a bad heart is transplant. Bad liver, transplant, bad kidneys, transplant, ect.

How does he expect in 20 years were going to be able to teach our little "nanites" how to repair bones and organs when we don't even know ourselves?

The modern day medical field has been around for about 750 yrs. Yes we've come a long way since the blood letting days but something tells me we have a long way to go before we learn how to repair man's brain. Other than the current practice of "if in doubt, cut it out", I don't see a lot of progress being made in repairing organs once they've failed.

Nice thought though. If it keeps him healthy and going strong then more power to him.

Cheers,


Jose

[thesoundsmith]

Warning!engthy post, my apologies...

kbaccki's link posed an interesting (and to me, a bit scary) counterthread - John Searle, continuing to divert funds from genuine AI research, because his classic example uses a simplistic viewpoint which is easy for the layman (or lazy pol) to understand. But Searle, perhaps deliberately (the funding wars are not pretty,) misses the point - research into AI encompasses expertise from many disciplines, and omitting or minimizing one key element can lead to incomplete (or incorrect) conclusions.

I studied the philosophy of AI ten years ago or more, and the instructor/fellow participant in the class was a student of Searle's, who did not necessarily buy Searle's argument, although he did not have a real refutation. The class was more of a seminar, really - the instructor was a computer programming instructor who was trying to convince the college to hire him as a philosophy teacher instead. Also in the class were the head of the philosophy department, the founder of a font design company, a retired professor of English, a mathematics and logic instructor at the Naval Postgrad school, myself as computer programmer/musicial /artist, and two actual students! ;)

We didn't discuss nanotech then, but we did discuss Turing machines, which are perhaps useful in the programming of nanobots like Kurzweil is anticipating. Viruality has its advantages, and what we can do now will be commonplace in ten years - new storage, new algorithms for information retrieval, new processor technologies, two generations down the road (that's machine generations) the capabilities of molecular-level devices can be addressed, and perhaps harnessed.



My first computer had a massive 1K or RAM, and a 1K ROM OS, with hexadecimal input and 7-segment displays for output. With a power supply and second 1K RAM on a separate board, it was $600.
Thirty years later, I bought a 2.6G computer with 512M RAM, XP, CDR/W-DVD, 17" color monitor for $600. Thirty years from now, what will $600 get?

'True' AI is not possible (I believe) using the current technology and the paradigms that are required to operate the current machines. But thirty years from now, or perhaps much less, new ways of manipulating information will be made manifest, and nanotech machines could very well have plenty of room to carry the information needed to perform specialized tasks - after all, our cells do, they can rebuild an entire human being, how much information does that require? And once machines can carry that much information, whether or not they can actually be 'sentient' is irrelevant, except for philosophical argument, because they can (with some degree of difficulty) be programmed to emulate the traits required. And then if it looks like a robot, but can perform any task requiring analytical skills, like driving, babysitting and grocery shopping, it really doesn't matter that it can't pass the Turing test. Our new slaves will have arrived. And that scares the hell out of the economists... :D

Of course this is all conjecture, science fiction, and 'bright green hooey' to quote a well-known songwriter.

But I got it off my chest - what John Searle is doing is holding back research on really important programming issues, and makes me want to vent...

I feel better now. :cool:

[js33]

I think there is more hope in stem cell research and islet cell transplants than nanotech. I would just like a cure for the main diseases soon. Diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, parkinsons, etc...

Cheers,
JS

[fisheye]

'True' AI is not possible (I believe) using the current technology and the paradigms that are required to operate the current machines. But thirty years from now, or perhaps much less, new ways of manipulating information will be made manifest, and nanotech machines could very well have plenty of room to carry the information needed to perform specialized tasks - after all, our cells do, they can rebuild an entire human being, how much information does that require? And once machines can carry that much information, whether or not they can actually be 'sentient' is irrelevant, except for philosophical argument, because they can (with some degree of difficulty) be programmed to emulate the traits required. And then if it looks like a robot, but can perform any task requiring analytical skills, like driving, babysitting and grocery shopping, it really doesn't matter that it can't pass the Turing test. Our new slaves will have arrived. And that scares the hell out of the economists... :D
First of all, I studied AI at university, so I think I have at least some 'true' knowledge in this field.
Fifty years ago scientists thought AI would be nearby and now, while computers are much more powerful, computers aren't really more intelligent. There's still no medical program that can match a real medical doctor. More storage space doesn't mean more intelligence. Intelligence is much more vague and complex than the lay-people think and most people are very naive about it, since they have no clue of the real problems AI scientists encounter. Even a lot of scientist in one field of AI are very naive about the problems of other fields in AI. So what jazzbozo told us about biology holds in AI as well.

In the end, we will have to acknowledge that robots can only be intelligent, if they will also be as faulty as humans and thus no more perfect than we. At the university I studied, scientists haven't yet acknowledge that.

But dreaming is important too... :)

[Evan Gamble]

If we ever invent AI all they will do is produce bad movies...I, Robot(Beltrami did pretty good though), AI(Speilberg did fine, its kubricks fault that it sucked) :eek:

[PaulR]

Interesting. But what would the psychological ramifications be for someone who lived forever?

Hahahhahaha! Ahahahhhhaaaaaaaa! Oh Dave, I just read through this - and this is an absolute gem. Really cracked me up this one. You weren't being serious Dave were you? That's a beauty. Absolute outright laughter over here. Brilliant!

[mike harper]

Why bother!!!
The human experience is quite limiting!

Basically you’re stuck in a chemical blob- the body, which is prone to all sorts of problems. Mentally you’re limited by language, memory and the experience of perception. Perception is by nature always viewing the past and projecting experience it calls reality .then you have the ego which is obsessed with survival and control of its environment. The ego is so blind it can't account for its own existence!!

you also have the emotions which are basically higher levels of survival experience, but the biggest challenge you will experience is combating depression which as you watch humanity engage in folly and self destruction year after year.

Spiritually you can spend thousands of years of in theology which is fine but
is also limited by the ego and perception. You can study various philosophy but still unless you grow your level of consciousness your moving side ways and stuck at the level of perception.

you can however grow your imagination and perhaps spend several thousand years studying Bach and Mozart. of course no one will care because serious music has been in a retrograde decline since the about 1945.

So I say live out your small blot on this planet living the best you can. Exercise reason and self control follow the avatars (Krishna Buddha Christ)
Diminish the negative aspect of the ego and expand your consciousness and imagination.
Keep an open mind and treat everyone as your equal so surly we will all die
Some day and no one for sure knows what’s or who is on the other side.
mike

[thesoundsmith]

Fifty years ago scientists thought AI would be nearby and now, while computers are much more powerful, computers aren't really more intelligent.

Absolutely true. My point is that using the concepts of modern computer technology (linear programming, mathematical modeling, sequential storage and instructional processing, etc.) is not going to creat a machine that can 'think', as we refer to it.

But there are (at least) two approaches that could yield useful results - i.e., machines that SEEM to be able to think (which is what Searle is deliberately ignoring in his quest to rob funds from AI research) - first, as greater speed and storage are availalble, more expert-system-style programs can be developed, super-Eliza systems which work from a rules-based matrix of preprogrammed, canned solutions, and second, as new ways of defining computational processes evolve - like massive parallel processing, neural-net-style algorithms, biological computers, holographic storage, etc. - all the panoply of tech that we will see in the next 50 years, it is quite possible (not wishful thinking, just extrapolation from current trends) that ways will be found to create simulations that will act as though they were intelligent, even if, in the end, they were just another Chinese puzzle-box that can pass the Turing test.

I'm not about to speculate whether it is actually possible for computers to ever be 'conscious' as humans are (except to reiterate that current hardware would not be up to the task,) but when I look at the way our brains functions as neurochemical decision trees, I see no reason we could not eventually build a similar system which could act/react to external stimuli in an analagous manner. believe it would actually not be that difficult, it would just be a very slow learning process - just like us...