Digital Immortality - It's Almost Here - 7/12/24

Are We Near an Inflection Point?

“It is not going to be us versus AI: AI is going inside ourselves. It will allow us to create new things that weren’t feasible before. It’ll be a pretty fantastic future.”

—Ray Kurzweil

In 2005, a computer scientist and tech-visionary named Ray Kurzweil wrote a book called, The Singularity is Near where he predicted artificial general intelligence (above-human level intelligence) would be achieved by 2029. The book has become a classic and one of the few of its kind that documented an accurate timeline for the advances toward AGI we’re seeing today.  

In order to appreciate how prescient his views were, you’d need to understand that most of Kurzweil’s peers at the time believed that a game-changing event would take at least 100 years, if ever. Back then most people didn’t even know what the term AI meant.

Kurzweil also envisioned that humans would merge with machines and become super-human by 2045, an event he referred to as the Singularity. Obviously today since AI is dominating the conversation, his predictions are now seen in a much different context by a larger group and taken far more seriously by the general public. 

Kurzweil is now 76 and has written a new book, The Singularity is Nearer, in which he explores new insights in light of all the technological advances that have occurred in the nineteen years since he documented those ground-breaking concepts. Today he’s employed as an AI visionary and tech advisor at Google. 

Regarding the Singularity, he says; 

“Today, we have one brain size which we can’t go beyond to get smarter. But the cloud is getting smarter and it is growing really without bounds. The Singularity, which is a metaphor borrowed from physics, will occur when we merge our brains with the cloud. We’re going to be a combination of our natural intelligence and our cybernetic intelligence and it’s all going to be rolled into one. Making it possible will be brain-computer interfaces which ultimately will be nanobots – robots the size of molecules – that will go non-invasively into our brains through the capillaries. We are going to expand intelligence a millionfold by 2045 and it is going to deepen our awareness and consciousness.”

The book goes on to describe some of the potential perils of AGI and the Singularity. However, one thing that separates Kurzweil’s view from his peers is his overwhelming optimism. He envisions a utopian existence where humans eventually can live forever. 

He anticipates medical nanobots arriving in the 2030s that will be able to enter our bodies and carry out repairs so we can remain alive indefinitely as well as coming advances in the 2040s that will allow us to upload our minds so they can be restored – even put into convincing androids – if we experience biological death.

“Everything is progressing exponentially: not only computing power but our understanding of biology and our ability to engineer at far smaller scales. In the early 2030s, we can expect to reach longevity escape velocity where every year of life we lose through aging we get back from scientific progress. And as we move past that we’ll actually get back more years. It isn’t a solid guarantee of living forever – there are still accidents – but your probability of dying won’t increase year to year. The capability to bring back departed humans digitally will bring up some interesting societal and legal questions.”

Questions indeed—moral, ethical, philosophical, religious—the very definition of what it means to be human would undergo a complete reevaluation.

And what about concepts such as a human soul, or the afterlife? Given the choice, there is no doubt some (many?) would opt out of becoming an immortal cyborg. And what would a society of whole-humans living with half-machines look like?  

Stay tuned—Things are moving fast now. Humans have never experienced an inflection point like the one that’s unfolding.

Your Personal AI?

Open AI and Apple announced a partnership to utilize versions of ChatGPT’s large learning models (ie Chatbots) for iPhones. Although on its surface that sounds appealing, it opens some prickly issues around personal data that will undoubtedly present problems. Apple says it is committed to ensuring all data will be protected, although many knowledgeable people in the tech industry remain skeptical. 

In order for your personal chatbot to interact effectively it will need access to at least part of your personal data, something that seems a bit like handing over the keys to your house to a stranger. 

As I’m writing this I just received an email alert from AT&T about a massive data breach…  

Stormy Weather

 Some of you may have heard we were visited by a storm called Beryl Monday morning. Anyone who’s read my book Into the Storm knows I’ve gone through quite a few hurricanes on different continents and oceans. But one thing that always strikes me is how each seems to have a different personality.

Beryl formed very early in the season and roared across the Atlantic as a Category 5 level storm at one point. By the time it arrived here in the Houston area, it had luckily been downgraded to a Cat 1. But due to its trajectory, we caught the storm’s dirty side (right side) which always causes more destruction, even though wind speeds were under 100 mph. As a result, numerous trees blew down multiple power lines, resulting in a loss of electricity for 2.7M households, a new record.

Basically, hurricanes are shaped like giant circular saw blades that rotate counter-clockwise. On the dirty side (the right side) the speed with whcih they travel is added to the velociy of the winds rotating. Assuming the storm is moving at 30 mph, the 100 mph winds within become 130.

Luckily, we did not experience the level of flooding seen by Hurricane Ike back in 2008. I was living downtown at the time and we were completely surrounded by flooded streets and highways for several days. Ike also resulted in multiple fatalities, particularly in the Galveston area. 

As I write this, there are still hundreds of thousands still without power here, baking in the sweltering July heat, something that seems strange in a world where we’re talking about things like impending artificial general intelligence. 

Just another reminder of the power of nature—and our inability to control it. 

As always, it’s fun to hear from you. Let me know what's on your mind.

Best…..VB