Ray Kurzweil discusses birth, death, and the potential offered by non-biological thinking processes. Since the publication of his new book, Fantastic Voyage, I’ve been hearing more and more about prolonging the human life, reversing the aging process, and becoming one with our technology. He posits that if we are lucky enough to live for the next fifty years, the likelihood of living forever becomes increasingly probable. About his new book, Kurzweil states:
It’s an urgent message to my baby boomer peers, 99% of whom are oblivious to this perspective. People have a very conventional sense of the cycle of life. They just donít have a sense that they could master the biology thatís controlling their progression towards disease and aging. We’re well along in understanding and reverse engineering the dozen or so biological processes that describe aging. It’s not too late for baby boomers to reverse those processes. We have the tools right now to slow down aging sufficiently so that most of us can remain in good shape until we do have the tools. My view is that I’m reprogramming my biochemistry the way Iíd reprogram my computers. I’m measuring 60 different levels on a regular basis. Itís definitely working; I would have heart disease otherwise.
The common wisdom is that health is 80% genetics and 20% lifestyle. And that’s true if you take the conventional watered-down approach. If you’re aggressive, you can overcome, well, I wouldn’t say anything — but almost anything.
Interesting stuff, though Kurzweil doesn’t really address the economic implications of this ideas, and he’s still looking at the human as a machine. Perhaps it is — his Age of Spiritual Machines makes a convincing argument — but I wonder if consciousness can be transferred. Kurzweil seems to suggest that the human body is bound for the scrap heap:
If the biological portion is becoming fairly insignificant, some people wonít necessarily have one. And we’ll have AI operating at human levels. My position is that by 2029 computers will pass the Turing test, which is to say theyíll be indistinguishable from biological intelligence. But its not going to be a clear distinction, because thereís going to be biological people with non-biological processes running in their brain, there’s going to be non-biological computers that act human because they’re based on the reverse engineering of the human brain. Even that in my view is derivative of human intelligence. It’s the expression of the human civilization. These are not intelligent machines coming from outer space, invading the planet. It’s emerging from within our human civilization. Civilization is already a biological / non-biological hybrid. We do fantastic things that would be impossible without our technology. It’s the technological portion that’s exploding exponentially. We’ll have human-like intelligences that don’t have a biological substrate.
An interesting interview, but nothing much new here, if you’re familiar with Kurzweil’s fascinating work.
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