We've seen exponential growth in technology ever since the scientific revolution. In the 130,000 thousand years of Homo sapiens existence never have we been so powerful and amazing as we are now thanks to our determination in observing and manipulating the physical universe. The idea of exponential growth is that the knowledge we gain now, helps us excel even faster in the future. There is a lot of evidence (and speculation) that the next 100 years will completely alter the way humans live thanks to technology:
Read this essay. The beginning of it makes a lot of sense but then the author goes off on very speculative tangents. The author, btw, Ray Kurzheil has been honored by the Clinton administration with the National Medal of Technology, the most prestigious scientific award.
The Law of Accelerating Returns
Anyway, it pretty much outlines that there is a lot of a growth in several technologies that will give us (humanity) unprecedented power.
Read this:
Technological singularity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The most important concept (in my opinion) is the creation of a general artificial intelligence. Our ability as humans to alter our intelligence (to understand the universe in different and better ways) is fairly limited considering our fragile biology. This is completely different with computers. If a piece of software could be written that has the same sort of pattern recognition reflexes of a human being and could make the sort of intelligent connections a human being can, then it would be able to improve itself. It would improve itself indefinitely into things that we couldn’t even comprehend. Every scientific breakthrough of the last (relatively pathetic) 500 years would be insignificant to what this intelligence would be capable of. Imagine what our quality of life would be (based on the fact that quality of life is based on scientific breakthroughs in general) if this thing were created. Anyway, this is the most interesting part of the next 50 years in my opinion. Apart, form that all sorts of interesting shit is going to happen:
Monkey controls robotic arm using brain signals sent over Internet - MIT News Office
Technology Review: Do You Want to Live Forever?
TED | Talks | Aubrey de Grey: Why we age and how we can avoid it (video)
YouTube - Did you know?
And it will MORE THAN likely happen way faster than anybody can comprehend thanks to the increasing circulation of information.
And now to show that these people are not complete idiots:
At the singularity conference in San Francisco this year, they had the following people speak:
Directory Of Search Quality of Google (the most powerful company in the world right now, IMO)
Director Of the Artificial Intelligence of MIT
Founder of Paypal who recently donated 3.5 million dollars to the Methuselah foundation (a prize given to the scientist who effectively increases the lifespan of a mouse, the first and necessary step in effectively increasing the lifespan of a human)
If the singularity happens (true AI is created) it will either be completely magnificent for humans (a heaven on Earth thanks to the ridiculous scientific breakthroughs that it will lead to) or we will be dead (considering we will be completely insignificant in the face of this super intelligence). In either case, I think it is the most important pursuit in the history of mankind and I hope to contribute to it someday.
- V
Read this essay. The beginning of it makes a lot of sense but then the author goes off on very speculative tangents. The author, btw, Ray Kurzheil has been honored by the Clinton administration with the National Medal of Technology, the most prestigious scientific award.
The Law of Accelerating Returns
Anyway, it pretty much outlines that there is a lot of a growth in several technologies that will give us (humanity) unprecedented power.
Read this:
Technological singularity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The most important concept (in my opinion) is the creation of a general artificial intelligence. Our ability as humans to alter our intelligence (to understand the universe in different and better ways) is fairly limited considering our fragile biology. This is completely different with computers. If a piece of software could be written that has the same sort of pattern recognition reflexes of a human being and could make the sort of intelligent connections a human being can, then it would be able to improve itself. It would improve itself indefinitely into things that we couldn’t even comprehend. Every scientific breakthrough of the last (relatively pathetic) 500 years would be insignificant to what this intelligence would be capable of. Imagine what our quality of life would be (based on the fact that quality of life is based on scientific breakthroughs in general) if this thing were created. Anyway, this is the most interesting part of the next 50 years in my opinion. Apart, form that all sorts of interesting shit is going to happen:
Monkey controls robotic arm using brain signals sent over Internet - MIT News Office
Technology Review: Do You Want to Live Forever?
TED | Talks | Aubrey de Grey: Why we age and how we can avoid it (video)
YouTube - Did you know?
And it will MORE THAN likely happen way faster than anybody can comprehend thanks to the increasing circulation of information.
And now to show that these people are not complete idiots:
At the singularity conference in San Francisco this year, they had the following people speak:
Directory Of Search Quality of Google (the most powerful company in the world right now, IMO)
Director Of the Artificial Intelligence of MIT
Founder of Paypal who recently donated 3.5 million dollars to the Methuselah foundation (a prize given to the scientist who effectively increases the lifespan of a mouse, the first and necessary step in effectively increasing the lifespan of a human)
If the singularity happens (true AI is created) it will either be completely magnificent for humans (a heaven on Earth thanks to the ridiculous scientific breakthroughs that it will lead to) or we will be dead (considering we will be completely insignificant in the face of this super intelligence). In either case, I think it is the most important pursuit in the history of mankind and I hope to contribute to it someday.
- V
