Thursday, February 10, 2011

Singularity: Kurzweil on 2045, When Humans, Machines Merge - TIME

Singularity: Kurzweil on 2045, When Humans, Machines Merge - TIME

This article contains an explanation of the Singularity that should be easy for anyone to grasp.

Computers are getting faster. Everybody knows that. Also, computers are getting faster faster — that is, the rate at which they're getting faster is increasing.


True? True.


So if computers are getting so much faster, so incredibly fast, there might conceivably come a moment when they are capable of something comparable to human intelligence. Artificial intelligence. All that horsepower could be put in the service of emulating whatever it is our brains are doing when they create consciousness — not just doing arithmetic very quickly or composing piano music but also driving cars, writing books, making ethical decisions, appreciating fancy paintings, making witty observations at cocktail parties

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If you can swallow that idea, and Kurzweil and a lot of other very smart people can, then all bets are off. From that point on, there's no reason to think computers would stop getting more powerful. They would keep on developing until they were far more intelligent than we are.



Read more: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2048138,00.html#ixzz1Dc7XR2NW

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