Are We Spiritual Machines Ray Kurzweil vs the

Are We Spiritual Machines? Ray Kurzweil vs. the Critics of Strong A. I.

Bill Joy • Chief scientist, founder of Sun Microsystems. • April 2000, Wired, “Why the Future doesn’t need us” • Moore’s Law - will meet or exceed for next thirty years. • Computers will be a million times as fast, sufficient to produce the dreams of Ray Kurzweil.

• About Ray – http: //www. kurzweiltech. com/aboutray. html • Creativity: The Mind, Machines, and Mathematics – http: //mitworld. mit. edu/video/422/ • Kurzweil. AI. net – http: //www. kurzweilai. net/

Ray Kurzweil • Intelligence of machines will surpass humans in the early part of the next century. • 2019 - $1, 000 computer = power of human brain = 20 million billion calculations per second. • 2029 - Will take 10 years to organize the “software of intelligence” • Once computers reach human intelligence levels, they will necessarily surpass it.

Machine design • “Software of intelligence” - copy the human brain. • Bodies by nanotech • Will claim to be human • Have human feelings • Tell us that they are human, convincingly. • Are they real feelings? Or appearing to be real? • Let’s move on, to singularity.

Neural implants today • Help counteract Parkinson’s Disease, tremors from neurological disorders. • Deaf - cochlear implant • Blind - development on retinal implant. • Emory University - brain chip allowing communication and control of environment.

Neural implants in the future • Will not require surgery • Improve sensory experiences, perception, memory, logical thinking. • Web and virtual reality • 2030 - any relationship, anywhere

Flaws of futurist predictions • Only looking ahead one or two iterations. • Only looking at one technology. • Not understanding the exponential rate of technology. – “The Law of Accelerating Returns”

The Law of Accelerating Returns • Use more powerful tools, to make more powerful tools. • Can be quantified and predicted.

Moore’s Law • Will die no later than 2019 • Moore’s Law - S curve • Law of Accelerated Returns exponential. – Current rate faster than two years – Example - Human genome scan project

Software of intelligence • Massively neural nets and “other paradigms” • Reverse engineering the brain – Destructive scanning – Noninvasive scanning – Scanning from inside • Downloading the brain

Singularity • Computer as brain • Living forever

Critics of Strong A. I. • John Searle - philosopher • Michael Denton - biologist • Tom Ray - zoologist and evolutionary algorithm theorist. • William Dembski - philosopher and mathematician.

John Searle • Deep Blue and the Chinese Room • Simulation, a symbolic model of the process.

John Searle • Observer-independent and observerrelative • Observer-independent – Does not require thoughts of conscious agents for their existence • Observer-relative – Example - the dollar bill

John Searle • Confusion between observerindependent and observer-relative intelligance. • It’s not “Artificial Intelligence”, it’s “Simulated Cognition”

Bill Joy • Dangers – GNR (genetics, nanotechnology, robotics) - widely available – Self-replication – Nanotechnology - the “gray goo” • Solution – Relinquishment of research in certain technologies – Federal oversight