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In 2045, humans will become immortal. This forecast is made by American inventor and futurologist Raymond Kurzweil, a proponent of the theory of technological singularity. By merging with the machine, man will acquire a new form of existence that is not threatened by old age or even death. The same own American magazine Time writes about the theory of singularity and the quest for immortality.
Kurzweil, who has received 39 patents and been awarded honorary doctorates from 19 higher education institutions, is known as one of the pioneers in the field of optical character recognition (OCR) technologies and computer speech recognition. He is confident that a time will soon come when computers will be smarter than humans. When this happens, the human body, the human mind, and the very structure of civilization will be entirely and irrevocably transformed. And this moment is not only inevitable but quite near. According to Kurzweil's calculations, the end of human civilization as we know it today is expected in 35 years, writes Time.
According to one theory, humanity awaits a merger with intelligent machines and a transformation into super-cyborgs for whom computer technologies will become an extension of intellectual functions. Artificial intelligence may perhaps allow us to overcome aging and extend life expectancy indefinitely. It is not own excluded that we will be able to scan consciousness into computers and live inside them forever, virtually, as software. Or computers will rise against humanity and destroy it. Be that as it may, all these theories assume one common transformation called singularity. The concept of singularity describes a hypothetical explosive growth in the rate of scientific and technical progress, presumably resulting from the creation of artificial intelligence and self-replicating machines, the integration of humans with computing machines, or a significant increase in the capabilities of the human brain through biotechnology.
A whole community of supporters is forming around the idea of singularity; it is almost a subculture. For three years now, the Singularity University, created by NASA and Google, has existed in the USA. Singularity is also studied at the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence in San Francisco, which organizes annual conferences on the topic that resemble the Davos Forum and ufologist conventions in atmosphere, comments Time.
The idea itself is not new at all. Back in 1965, British mathematician Good described an "intelligence explosion," defining the concept of a super-intelligent machine that significantly surpasses the best minds of humanity in any form of intellectual activity. Since the development of machines is also one type of such activity, it means a super-intelligent machine is capable of creating an even more perfect system. Thus, an explosive growth of intellectual resources occurs, and humans are left far behind. The last necessary invention for them will be the first system of superhuman intelligence.
Arguments in favor of theories about the creation of a super-machine point to the fact that computer speed is growing rapidly, and it is doing so faster and faster. And there are no grounds to think that the development of computing power should ever stop. Thus, at a certain point, they will surpass human intelligence.
In the 1980s, for pragmatic purposes, Kurzweil tried to determine the pace of technical progress. While working on his developments, he wondered if even great inventions could fail if they appeared before their time. At that moment, Kurzweil knew about Moore's Law, according to which the number of transistors in an integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years. Gordon Moore concluded that if this trend continues, the power of computing devices could grow exponentially over a relatively short period. Kurzweil began to build another curve, comparing the power parameters of computing systems that can be purchased for 1 thousand dollars. He compared performance indicators in millions of instructions per second (MIPS).
The result was roughly the same as Moore's: performance relative to a price of 1 thousand dollars doubled every two years. The graphs produced exponential curves. This pattern held consistently, even when Kurzweil expanded the range of analysis to the pre-transistor period back to the 1900s.
He discovered the same dynamics in other fields of science. The number of internet hosts and patents in nanotechnology is growing exponentially; similarly, the cost of wireless access services is dropping sharply. Progress has an exponential rather than a linear nature, the scientist realized.
Based on the exponential theory of progress, Kurzweil predicts that by the mid-2020s, reverse engineering of the human brain will become possible—that is, analyzing its functioning mechanisms for the purpose of reproduction. By the end of the decade, computers will reach the intellectual potential of a human. Kurzweil dates the moment of singularity to 2045. Thanks to the significant growth and substantial cheapening of computing power, by that time the volume of created artificial intelligence will exceed the total intellectual resource of humanity existing today by billions of times.
At last year's summit on singularity, the second most popular topic after artificial intelligence was increasing life expectancy. The limitations of the human body's capabilities, which we consider final and immutable, are perceived by singularitarians as a solvable problem. The same applies to death. Aging is a kind of disease, and therefore—it must be treated.
It is known that one of the reasons for physical changes in the body resulting from aging is related to telomeres. These are the protective end sections of chromosomes. Every time a cell divides, telomeres shorten until they are completely exhausted; then the cell can no longer reproduce and dies. But there is an enzyme called telomerase that stops this process, which explains, in particular, the resilience of cancer cells. So why not treat healthy cells with telomerase? Researchers from Harvard University Medical School reported on such an experiment in November in the journal Nature. They conducted a telomerase experiment on mice showing age-related changes in the body. Signs of aging were eliminated. The result was not only an improvement in the condition of the mice but also the rejuvenation of the organism.
One of the world's leading specialists in life extension, geneticist Aubrey de Grey, views aging as an accumulation of wear and tear, which he divides into seven categories, for each of which regenerative medicine must one day find a solution.
The human body is a machine that has a set of functions and naturally wears out gradually. In principle, this wear can be periodically eliminated, de Grey believes.
Kurzweil also takes life extension seriously. Together with Dr. Terry Grossman, he published two books in which he revealed his approach, prescribing 200 different pills and active supplements a day. He says that he has practically cured himself of diabetes and at 62 feels 20 years younger. Kurzweil wants to live to see the era of singularity.
Why not escape the tedious imprisonment in which the soul is chained to the mortal body of an animal, and instead connect it with an immortal robot? Kurzweil says that the thought of extending life meets even more resistance from his audience than exponential growth curves heading toward infinity. It is difficult for us to predict and imagine because thinking naturally tends toward linear forecasting, which a human uses, for example, when escaping a predator and determining where the beast might be in 20 seconds.
"There are those who can accept the thought that computers will become smarter than people. But the idea of a sharp increase in life expectancy causes particular difficulties. People invest a lot into forming their philosophy of life and death," says Kurzweil.
Perhaps some brain functions cannot be reproduced by any resources, even those of the most powerful computing machines. The neurochemical structure that creates the ephemeral chaos we call consciousness is analog by nature and may be too complex to be repeated in a digital semiconductor circuit.
Biologist Dennis Bray is certain: despite the fact that biological structures function like electrical circuits, the difference between them is enormous due to the vast number of possible organic states.
As a result of numerous bioprocesses, multiple chemical modifications of protein molecules arise, which further differ based on their belonging to various structures in different cells of the organism. The combinatorial variety of possible living states provides an almost infinite resource for storing information about the past and present and a unique opportunity to prepare for future events. Against this backdrop, computer zeros and ones seem like too raw a material, Bray believes.
And even if singularity is recognized as a possible prospect, a number of insoluble questions arise. If I can scan my consciousness into a computer, will it still be me? What are the geopolitical and socioeconomic aspects of singularity? Who decides who gets to be immortal? If we achieve immortality, omniscience, and omnipotence, does life lose its meaning? By defeating death, do we lose our human essence?
Kurzweil admits that singularity carries fundamental risks simply because we do not know what a highly developed artificial intelligence will do once it is established on planet Earth. Therefore, scientists want to be sure that artificial intelligence will not only develop but will be friendly. You don't need to be a super-intelligent cyborg to understand that introducing a higher form of life into one's own biosphere is a fundamental error that violates Darwinian evolution.
At the same time, Kurzweil is confident that preventing singularity by banning technological development is not only impossible but unethical and perhaps dangerous. "Such a ban would mean a totalitarian system. It won't work. Technologies will simply go underground, and the scientists from whom we expect protective developments will not have access to the necessary tools," believes Kurzweil.
Kurzweil himself sees no fundamental difference between organic flesh and silicon material that would prevent the latter from becoming thinking. He is not ready to bow down before the power of the human brain and does not believe that it is impossible to model a neuro-mechanism or create software that would not be inferior to it in power and flexibility.
Since 2005, an ambitious project called the Blue Brain project has been underway at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, aiming to create a neuron-by-neuron simulation of a mammal's brain using an IBM Blue Gene supercomputer. To date, it has been possible to model one of the structures of a rat's brain consisting of 10 thousand neurons. Project head Professor Henry Markram claims that a fully functional artificial human brain could be created in the next 10 years.
By definition, the future after the onset of singularity is unknowable to our linear-chemical-animal brain, but Kurzweil has plenty of theories on this account as well. He forces himself to think broadly.
According to Kurzweil's concept, biotechnology and nanotechnology will allow humans to control their own bodies and the surrounding world at a molecular level. Progress hyper-accelerates. We discard Darwin's theory and take evolution into our own hands. The human genome becomes code that needs to be tested, optimized, and, if necessary, rewritten. The infinite continuation of life becomes a reality; people die only if they want to. We will be able to scan consciousness into computers and move to a virtual existence or change the physical shell—from a frail body to an immortal robot. This, in Kurzweil's opinion, will be the fate of humans as a species.
Or it won't. Be that as it may, the more we hear about singularity, the more we encounter evidence of it in the most unexpected directions, comments Time. Five years ago, there was no such thing as 600 million people communicating in a single computer network. Now there is Facebook. Five years ago, no one "remembered" routes and conversations using a portable device like an iPhone. Is it really impossible to imagine the next step, when the iPhone is not in a person's hand, but inside their skull?
Even today, neuro-implants have been installed in 30 thousand patients with Parkinson's disease. Google is conducting experiments with computer systems that can drive a car. 2 thousand robots have been sent to Afghanistan... Perhaps even the ideas of Kurzweil and de Grey will one day seem old-fashioned. Nothing becomes obsolete as quickly as the future, concludes Time.
Will people become immortal by 2045?
Kurzweil, who has received 39 patents and been awarded honorary doctorates from 19 higher education institutions, is known as one of the pioneers in the field of optical character recognition (OCR) technologies and computer speech recognition. He is confident that a time will soon come when computers will be smarter than humans. When this happens, the human body, the human mind, and the very structure of civilization will be entirely and irrevocably transformed. And this moment is not only inevitable but quite near. According to Kurzweil's calculations, the end of human civilization as we know it today is expected in 35 years, writes Time.
According to one theory, humanity awaits a merger with intelligent machines and a transformation into super-cyborgs for whom computer technologies will become an extension of intellectual functions. Artificial intelligence may perhaps allow us to overcome aging and extend life expectancy indefinitely. It is not own excluded that we will be able to scan consciousness into computers and live inside them forever, virtually, as software. Or computers will rise against humanity and destroy it. Be that as it may, all these theories assume one common transformation called singularity. The concept of singularity describes a hypothetical explosive growth in the rate of scientific and technical progress, presumably resulting from the creation of artificial intelligence and self-replicating machines, the integration of humans with computing machines, or a significant increase in the capabilities of the human brain through biotechnology.
A whole community of supporters is forming around the idea of singularity; it is almost a subculture. For three years now, the Singularity University, created by NASA and Google, has existed in the USA. Singularity is also studied at the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence in San Francisco, which organizes annual conferences on the topic that resemble the Davos Forum and ufologist conventions in atmosphere, comments Time.
The idea itself is not new at all. Back in 1965, British mathematician Good described an "intelligence explosion," defining the concept of a super-intelligent machine that significantly surpasses the best minds of humanity in any form of intellectual activity. Since the development of machines is also one type of such activity, it means a super-intelligent machine is capable of creating an even more perfect system. Thus, an explosive growth of intellectual resources occurs, and humans are left far behind. The last necessary invention for them will be the first system of superhuman intelligence.
Arguments in favor of theories about the creation of a super-machine point to the fact that computer speed is growing rapidly, and it is doing so faster and faster. And there are no grounds to think that the development of computing power should ever stop. Thus, at a certain point, they will surpass human intelligence.
In the 1980s, for pragmatic purposes, Kurzweil tried to determine the pace of technical progress. While working on his developments, he wondered if even great inventions could fail if they appeared before their time. At that moment, Kurzweil knew about Moore's Law, according to which the number of transistors in an integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years. Gordon Moore concluded that if this trend continues, the power of computing devices could grow exponentially over a relatively short period. Kurzweil began to build another curve, comparing the power parameters of computing systems that can be purchased for 1 thousand dollars. He compared performance indicators in millions of instructions per second (MIPS).
The result was roughly the same as Moore's: performance relative to a price of 1 thousand dollars doubled every two years. The graphs produced exponential curves. This pattern held consistently, even when Kurzweil expanded the range of analysis to the pre-transistor period back to the 1900s.
He discovered the same dynamics in other fields of science. The number of internet hosts and patents in nanotechnology is growing exponentially; similarly, the cost of wireless access services is dropping sharply. Progress has an exponential rather than a linear nature, the scientist realized.
Based on the exponential theory of progress, Kurzweil predicts that by the mid-2020s, reverse engineering of the human brain will become possible—that is, analyzing its functioning mechanisms for the purpose of reproduction. By the end of the decade, computers will reach the intellectual potential of a human. Kurzweil dates the moment of singularity to 2045. Thanks to the significant growth and substantial cheapening of computing power, by that time the volume of created artificial intelligence will exceed the total intellectual resource of humanity existing today by billions of times.
At last year's summit on singularity, the second most popular topic after artificial intelligence was increasing life expectancy. The limitations of the human body's capabilities, which we consider final and immutable, are perceived by singularitarians as a solvable problem. The same applies to death. Aging is a kind of disease, and therefore—it must be treated.
It is known that one of the reasons for physical changes in the body resulting from aging is related to telomeres. These are the protective end sections of chromosomes. Every time a cell divides, telomeres shorten until they are completely exhausted; then the cell can no longer reproduce and dies. But there is an enzyme called telomerase that stops this process, which explains, in particular, the resilience of cancer cells. So why not treat healthy cells with telomerase? Researchers from Harvard University Medical School reported on such an experiment in November in the journal Nature. They conducted a telomerase experiment on mice showing age-related changes in the body. Signs of aging were eliminated. The result was not only an improvement in the condition of the mice but also the rejuvenation of the organism.
One of the world's leading specialists in life extension, geneticist Aubrey de Grey, views aging as an accumulation of wear and tear, which he divides into seven categories, for each of which regenerative medicine must one day find a solution.
The human body is a machine that has a set of functions and naturally wears out gradually. In principle, this wear can be periodically eliminated, de Grey believes.
Kurzweil also takes life extension seriously. Together with Dr. Terry Grossman, he published two books in which he revealed his approach, prescribing 200 different pills and active supplements a day. He says that he has practically cured himself of diabetes and at 62 feels 20 years younger. Kurzweil wants to live to see the era of singularity.
Why not escape the tedious imprisonment in which the soul is chained to the mortal body of an animal, and instead connect it with an immortal robot? Kurzweil says that the thought of extending life meets even more resistance from his audience than exponential growth curves heading toward infinity. It is difficult for us to predict and imagine because thinking naturally tends toward linear forecasting, which a human uses, for example, when escaping a predator and determining where the beast might be in 20 seconds.
"There are those who can accept the thought that computers will become smarter than people. But the idea of a sharp increase in life expectancy causes particular difficulties. People invest a lot into forming their philosophy of life and death," says Kurzweil.
Perhaps some brain functions cannot be reproduced by any resources, even those of the most powerful computing machines. The neurochemical structure that creates the ephemeral chaos we call consciousness is analog by nature and may be too complex to be repeated in a digital semiconductor circuit.
Biologist Dennis Bray is certain: despite the fact that biological structures function like electrical circuits, the difference between them is enormous due to the vast number of possible organic states.
As a result of numerous bioprocesses, multiple chemical modifications of protein molecules arise, which further differ based on their belonging to various structures in different cells of the organism. The combinatorial variety of possible living states provides an almost infinite resource for storing information about the past and present and a unique opportunity to prepare for future events. Against this backdrop, computer zeros and ones seem like too raw a material, Bray believes.
And even if singularity is recognized as a possible prospect, a number of insoluble questions arise. If I can scan my consciousness into a computer, will it still be me? What are the geopolitical and socioeconomic aspects of singularity? Who decides who gets to be immortal? If we achieve immortality, omniscience, and omnipotence, does life lose its meaning? By defeating death, do we lose our human essence?
Kurzweil admits that singularity carries fundamental risks simply because we do not know what a highly developed artificial intelligence will do once it is established on planet Earth. Therefore, scientists want to be sure that artificial intelligence will not only develop but will be friendly. You don't need to be a super-intelligent cyborg to understand that introducing a higher form of life into one's own biosphere is a fundamental error that violates Darwinian evolution.
At the same time, Kurzweil is confident that preventing singularity by banning technological development is not only impossible but unethical and perhaps dangerous. "Such a ban would mean a totalitarian system. It won't work. Technologies will simply go underground, and the scientists from whom we expect protective developments will not have access to the necessary tools," believes Kurzweil.
Kurzweil himself sees no fundamental difference between organic flesh and silicon material that would prevent the latter from becoming thinking. He is not ready to bow down before the power of the human brain and does not believe that it is impossible to model a neuro-mechanism or create software that would not be inferior to it in power and flexibility.
Since 2005, an ambitious project called the Blue Brain project has been underway at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, aiming to create a neuron-by-neuron simulation of a mammal's brain using an IBM Blue Gene supercomputer. To date, it has been possible to model one of the structures of a rat's brain consisting of 10 thousand neurons. Project head Professor Henry Markram claims that a fully functional artificial human brain could be created in the next 10 years.
By definition, the future after the onset of singularity is unknowable to our linear-chemical-animal brain, but Kurzweil has plenty of theories on this account as well. He forces himself to think broadly.
According to Kurzweil's concept, biotechnology and nanotechnology will allow humans to control their own bodies and the surrounding world at a molecular level. Progress hyper-accelerates. We discard Darwin's theory and take evolution into our own hands. The human genome becomes code that needs to be tested, optimized, and, if necessary, rewritten. The infinite continuation of life becomes a reality; people die only if they want to. We will be able to scan consciousness into computers and move to a virtual existence or change the physical shell—from a frail body to an immortal robot. This, in Kurzweil's opinion, will be the fate of humans as a species.
Or it won't. Be that as it may, the more we hear about singularity, the more we encounter evidence of it in the most unexpected directions, comments Time. Five years ago, there was no such thing as 600 million people communicating in a single computer network. Now there is Facebook. Five years ago, no one "remembered" routes and conversations using a portable device like an iPhone. Is it really impossible to imagine the next step, when the iPhone is not in a person's hand, but inside their skull?
Even today, neuro-implants have been installed in 30 thousand patients with Parkinson's disease. Google is conducting experiments with computer systems that can drive a car. 2 thousand robots have been sent to Afghanistan... Perhaps even the ideas of Kurzweil and de Grey will one day seem old-fashioned. Nothing becomes obsolete as quickly as the future, concludes Time.
Will people become immortal by 2045?
