14 reviews
Excellent documentary of a man and his vision of the future
Ray Kurzweil has known he wanted to be an inventor from the age of 5, and has now been at it for all those years. Along the way he realized that the timing of inventions was critical to their success, otherwise most inventions fail. Think e-readers 10 years ago, tablet PC's 7 years ago, and the Apple Newton – all bombs then, but now the timing is right. So he started analyzing technology trends and discovered the "law of accelerating returns"; in summary that technology grows in a predictable and exponential patterns and that amazing things our in our future. Ray has had amazing success with his publicly made predictions. For instance, in the book "The Age of Spirtual Machines", he made 147 predictions for the year 2009, of which 86% are correct or essentially correct. (Reference: "How My Predictions are Faring, Ray Kurzweil, Oct. 2010; http://c0068172.cdn2.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/predictions.pdf ) In other words when Ray Kurzweil speaks, people listen and you should too. I will admit, when I first heard is ideas of how man will evolve with technology, I was quite skeptical. But as I dug deeper into why he was saying this would happen, I began to see the trends are in his favor. Think about it; have you noticed that technology has been moving at a quickening pace lately?
The film follows Ray over several years, catching him on his lecture circuit, at his company, his home, and traveling about. Throughout the film Ray explains the "law of accelerating returns" and where it will lead to. Also Ray's critics and supporters give their opinions throughout. Ray himself seems to be an incredibly calm individual who rarely strays from his relaxed tone of speaking. Ray's trends predict that technology trends are crossing over into health-care and that if you can live for another 15 years you have the chance of living a very long time. Ray's predictions give us hope in a time when so much around us seems gloomy. The documentary is a fascinating look at Ray and his ideas, and I highly recommend it.
The film follows Ray over several years, catching him on his lecture circuit, at his company, his home, and traveling about. Throughout the film Ray explains the "law of accelerating returns" and where it will lead to. Also Ray's critics and supporters give their opinions throughout. Ray himself seems to be an incredibly calm individual who rarely strays from his relaxed tone of speaking. Ray's trends predict that technology trends are crossing over into health-care and that if you can live for another 15 years you have the chance of living a very long time. Ray's predictions give us hope in a time when so much around us seems gloomy. The documentary is a fascinating look at Ray and his ideas, and I highly recommend it.
Personal portrait of a famous futurist
- robotbling
- Dec 3, 2011
- Permalink
A film biography of futurist Ray Kurzweil
I'm somewhat familiar with the work of futurist Ray Kurzweil having read and reviewed his book The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence (1999). He has since written several other books. He's won a lot of prizes and several honorary doctorates. He's a brilliant and original man.
As this documentary film makes clear, he is also a man afraid of dying and a man who very much misses his father and dreams of somehow bringing his father back to "life." Yes, quotation marks around "life." Kurzweil thinks that it will someday be possible to down load our brains onto some kind of software and in such form we will live forever.
I probably should read some more Kurzweil because I am sure he has an answer to my main critique of this fantastic idea, which can be illustrated by this consideration: Suppose your brain is downloaded. Which of you is you? The one in the software whose experiences are virtual or the one in the flesh and blood whose experiences are very human-like with all the ups and downs? The lives that can be downloaded onto software will be interesting, incredible really, but only to other people.
Another thing to ask when thinking about this is "How do you program a computer to feel pain? Or joy for that matter. Human beings are evolved beings that are subject to pleasure and pain. Software and AI machines not only don't feel any pain, they couldn't even if they wanted to. They can be programmed to act as though they feel pain but that is all. It is not even clear how animals came to develop the pleasure/pain reward/punishment system. What came first the mechanism to deliver pain or the ability to recognize the experience as pain? Nobody knows.
I wonder if Kurzweil realizes that death is part of life. Without death biological creatures such as us would experience an unbearable stasis and would of course die anyway eventually through accident, suicide, nearby supernova, etc. And as machines without biological urgings we would have no reason to go on living unless the urge is programmed into us by biological creatures. Machines don't care whether they are "alive" or dead. They are not afraid of the plug being pulled.
Naturally he has his critics other than me. And in this film director Robert Barry Ptolemy introduces a few and lets them have their say. The give and take is interesting. But what I think most people who are familiar with Kurzweil's work will find interesting is the portrait of the very human man himself.
The film begins with Kurzweil's appearance on TV's "I've Got a Secret" when he was 17-years-old and ends with his latest invention, a device that reads text aloud for the blind, and his ideas for new inventions using nanobots. In between we learn of his open heart surgery and his overriding idea that the singularity is near and that we will be able to comprehend the world of the singularity only if we are augmented with artificial intelligence. In other words we will become cyborgs, part biological creatures and part machine.
In this last prediction I think Kurzweil is right. We will meld with our machines—that is, if we don't send ourselves back to the Stone Age first.
Kurzweil gets the last say. He asks "Does God exist?" His very clever answer: "I would say not yet." —Dennis Littrell, author of "The World Is Not as We Think It Is"
As this documentary film makes clear, he is also a man afraid of dying and a man who very much misses his father and dreams of somehow bringing his father back to "life." Yes, quotation marks around "life." Kurzweil thinks that it will someday be possible to down load our brains onto some kind of software and in such form we will live forever.
I probably should read some more Kurzweil because I am sure he has an answer to my main critique of this fantastic idea, which can be illustrated by this consideration: Suppose your brain is downloaded. Which of you is you? The one in the software whose experiences are virtual or the one in the flesh and blood whose experiences are very human-like with all the ups and downs? The lives that can be downloaded onto software will be interesting, incredible really, but only to other people.
Another thing to ask when thinking about this is "How do you program a computer to feel pain? Or joy for that matter. Human beings are evolved beings that are subject to pleasure and pain. Software and AI machines not only don't feel any pain, they couldn't even if they wanted to. They can be programmed to act as though they feel pain but that is all. It is not even clear how animals came to develop the pleasure/pain reward/punishment system. What came first the mechanism to deliver pain or the ability to recognize the experience as pain? Nobody knows.
I wonder if Kurzweil realizes that death is part of life. Without death biological creatures such as us would experience an unbearable stasis and would of course die anyway eventually through accident, suicide, nearby supernova, etc. And as machines without biological urgings we would have no reason to go on living unless the urge is programmed into us by biological creatures. Machines don't care whether they are "alive" or dead. They are not afraid of the plug being pulled.
Naturally he has his critics other than me. And in this film director Robert Barry Ptolemy introduces a few and lets them have their say. The give and take is interesting. But what I think most people who are familiar with Kurzweil's work will find interesting is the portrait of the very human man himself.
The film begins with Kurzweil's appearance on TV's "I've Got a Secret" when he was 17-years-old and ends with his latest invention, a device that reads text aloud for the blind, and his ideas for new inventions using nanobots. In between we learn of his open heart surgery and his overriding idea that the singularity is near and that we will be able to comprehend the world of the singularity only if we are augmented with artificial intelligence. In other words we will become cyborgs, part biological creatures and part machine.
In this last prediction I think Kurzweil is right. We will meld with our machines—that is, if we don't send ourselves back to the Stone Age first.
Kurzweil gets the last say. He asks "Does God exist?" His very clever answer: "I would say not yet." —Dennis Littrell, author of "The World Is Not as We Think It Is"
- DennisLittrell
- Jul 18, 2013
- Permalink
Great documentary about our love/hate relationship with technology
The documentary is, to an extent, a film version of Ray Kurzweil's nonfiction text, *The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology* (2006).
If you're not familiar with Ray Kurzweil's ideas, then I recommend familiarizing yourself with them. I want to go so far as to say he comes closest to articulating the general "mythology" of our time in regards to our relationship with technology.
This was a wonderful documentary to watch before reading his book. It's also interesting because the ambivalent nature of our relationship to technology comes through in an intense way. Indeed, the extremes of "technology-as-savior" and "technology-as-doom" are evident in this documentary. For example, Ray Kurzweil believes that, eventually, machine intelligence and human intelligence will merge together, and that the next stage of human evolution involves our connection to technology: this connection will result in immortality. And yet, other scientists believe that machine intelligence will stay separate from us and, surpassing us in capabilities, intelligence, vision, will come to see us as a mere "insects." Thus, they'll destroy us with as much prejudice as we destroy a nest of wasps or some irritating rabbits.
We have here the vision of either technology as Utopia or technology as Dsytopia: the U.S.S. Enterprise or Skynet.
A lot of the documentary foregrounds Kurzweil's views, but I wouldn't go as far as to say it's biased towards them. A lot of time is spent allowing his detractors to speak. Particularly, Hugo De Garis becomes the representative of the "dark side" of Kurzweil's technological vision. De Garis spends a lot of time talking about the "artilect war," a scenario he has imagined. The artiloect war, according to De Garis, will take place right before machines achieve consciousness. The war will be fought between people who think that intelligent machines should be built and people who believe intelligent machines are our doom and should not be built. We basically have, in De Garis's scenario, a fight between the two visions: those who recoil from technology as the death of humanity and those who embrace technology as the full manifestation of humanity (i.e. our destiny).
There are other vexed issues in terms of our relationship to technology that come through in this documentary, namely, how we are coming to interface with it. One question is, where do the boundaries of the human end? After we have replaced our eyes, our lungs, our brains, our limbs with technological apparatuses, when do we stop being human and start being machines? This is a metaphysical question regarding the fundamental ontological nature of human being as an discrete experience.
A lot of folks are reluctant to watch this documentary because they feel like Kurzweil is "just wrong." I think that's the wrong way of going about it. It doesn't really matter if he's right or wrong. What matters is that such visions are even being expostulated. That a man has written books claiming that technology will save us; that others have written books saying that technology will destroy us: these developments are culturally significant.
They point toward our vexed relationship with technology, the degree to which we both love it. And hate it.
If you're not familiar with Ray Kurzweil's ideas, then I recommend familiarizing yourself with them. I want to go so far as to say he comes closest to articulating the general "mythology" of our time in regards to our relationship with technology.
This was a wonderful documentary to watch before reading his book. It's also interesting because the ambivalent nature of our relationship to technology comes through in an intense way. Indeed, the extremes of "technology-as-savior" and "technology-as-doom" are evident in this documentary. For example, Ray Kurzweil believes that, eventually, machine intelligence and human intelligence will merge together, and that the next stage of human evolution involves our connection to technology: this connection will result in immortality. And yet, other scientists believe that machine intelligence will stay separate from us and, surpassing us in capabilities, intelligence, vision, will come to see us as a mere "insects." Thus, they'll destroy us with as much prejudice as we destroy a nest of wasps or some irritating rabbits.
We have here the vision of either technology as Utopia or technology as Dsytopia: the U.S.S. Enterprise or Skynet.
A lot of the documentary foregrounds Kurzweil's views, but I wouldn't go as far as to say it's biased towards them. A lot of time is spent allowing his detractors to speak. Particularly, Hugo De Garis becomes the representative of the "dark side" of Kurzweil's technological vision. De Garis spends a lot of time talking about the "artilect war," a scenario he has imagined. The artiloect war, according to De Garis, will take place right before machines achieve consciousness. The war will be fought between people who think that intelligent machines should be built and people who believe intelligent machines are our doom and should not be built. We basically have, in De Garis's scenario, a fight between the two visions: those who recoil from technology as the death of humanity and those who embrace technology as the full manifestation of humanity (i.e. our destiny).
There are other vexed issues in terms of our relationship to technology that come through in this documentary, namely, how we are coming to interface with it. One question is, where do the boundaries of the human end? After we have replaced our eyes, our lungs, our brains, our limbs with technological apparatuses, when do we stop being human and start being machines? This is a metaphysical question regarding the fundamental ontological nature of human being as an discrete experience.
A lot of folks are reluctant to watch this documentary because they feel like Kurzweil is "just wrong." I think that's the wrong way of going about it. It doesn't really matter if he's right or wrong. What matters is that such visions are even being expostulated. That a man has written books claiming that technology will save us; that others have written books saying that technology will destroy us: these developments are culturally significant.
They point toward our vexed relationship with technology, the degree to which we both love it. And hate it.
- jrcarney52
- Feb 1, 2012
- Permalink
Futuresque Picture
Seldom do technologists gain prominence for their prophesies. Our field, you see, values doing over thinking. You believe we'll be Tom Cruising over our Minority Report-esque holograms in 2020? Great. Now build it.
But Ray Kurzweil is an exception. He's a man whose words do indeed speak louder than his actions. He famously predicted the year a computer will finally beat the best human chess players, among many other things (89 of his 109 predictions from 1999 have so far been proved right.) His actions haven't been too unimpressive either — he built a computer at age 17 (in 1965 no less) and invented a reading machine for the blind.
So we've established he's an Important Man. Now let's see what makes him Transcendent.
In Transcendent Man, Mr. Kurzweil gives us a lowdown of what we are to expect from the next couple decades. Namely: robots will take over us, we'll start planting chips made of nanotechnology into our bodies, genetic modification will make us immortal, and soon enough, singularity. Whatever that means.
The documentary follows Kurzweil in his daily life as he meets with smart people in lab courts, and William Shatner, to whom he successfully sells the idea of taking 150 pills a day (after all, we do want to see Captain Kirk witness the launch of the real Enterprise someday, no?)
We get a glimpse of the labs and institutions where the apparent future of mankind (or the beginning of the apocalypse to some) is being initiated. They all utter the same phrases, and even the naysers appear to be cheer leaders of human triumph. Did I mention? Robots. Genetics. Nanotech. Immortality. Singularity.
BOOM.
If you ask me, he's being optimistic. But then again, he knows something the rest of us don't — the true power of the exponential curve. All technology, you see, advances exponentially. Moore's Law told us the number of transistors on a chip doubles every two years. Thirty two years after the first personal computer, we had one that sits in our pocket and lets us FaceTime our grandparents. Mark Zuckerberg recently made the claim that we're individually sharing double of everything year after year. I don't want to think about what this means for the pornography industry in 2020.
And lest you forget? Four years ago, Twitter was a seven letter word in the dictionary. Three years before that, "Facebook" referred to a book with pictures you wouldn't want your kids to see. Today, these terms are something most of us live and die by everyday.
Keeping this in mind, I guess it's possible that Mr. Kurzweil's predictions may not end up too far from the truth. Who knows what we'll be verbing in 2020?
Ask Ray Kurzweil.
But Ray Kurzweil is an exception. He's a man whose words do indeed speak louder than his actions. He famously predicted the year a computer will finally beat the best human chess players, among many other things (89 of his 109 predictions from 1999 have so far been proved right.) His actions haven't been too unimpressive either — he built a computer at age 17 (in 1965 no less) and invented a reading machine for the blind.
So we've established he's an Important Man. Now let's see what makes him Transcendent.
In Transcendent Man, Mr. Kurzweil gives us a lowdown of what we are to expect from the next couple decades. Namely: robots will take over us, we'll start planting chips made of nanotechnology into our bodies, genetic modification will make us immortal, and soon enough, singularity. Whatever that means.
The documentary follows Kurzweil in his daily life as he meets with smart people in lab courts, and William Shatner, to whom he successfully sells the idea of taking 150 pills a day (after all, we do want to see Captain Kirk witness the launch of the real Enterprise someday, no?)
We get a glimpse of the labs and institutions where the apparent future of mankind (or the beginning of the apocalypse to some) is being initiated. They all utter the same phrases, and even the naysers appear to be cheer leaders of human triumph. Did I mention? Robots. Genetics. Nanotech. Immortality. Singularity.
BOOM.
If you ask me, he's being optimistic. But then again, he knows something the rest of us don't — the true power of the exponential curve. All technology, you see, advances exponentially. Moore's Law told us the number of transistors on a chip doubles every two years. Thirty two years after the first personal computer, we had one that sits in our pocket and lets us FaceTime our grandparents. Mark Zuckerberg recently made the claim that we're individually sharing double of everything year after year. I don't want to think about what this means for the pornography industry in 2020.
And lest you forget? Four years ago, Twitter was a seven letter word in the dictionary. Three years before that, "Facebook" referred to a book with pictures you wouldn't want your kids to see. Today, these terms are something most of us live and die by everyday.
Keeping this in mind, I guess it's possible that Mr. Kurzweil's predictions may not end up too far from the truth. Who knows what we'll be verbing in 2020?
Ask Ray Kurzweil.
Efficient Documentary Mostly Stays Out of the Way of the Mesmerizing, Thought-Provoking Material it Presents
One part biography, one part brain food; as an appetizer to the thought path of noted futurist Ray Kurzweil, it can be difficult at times to separate fact from fragment over the course of this documentary. Kurzweil's favorite subject is one of increasing relevance, perhaps even by the minute: he seeks to pinpoint the moment of so-called "singularity," when mankind's built-in body chemistry will finally cross the line into his rapidly-developing technological and biological know-how. In short - how soon will we be able to back up our thoughts and feelings to an external hard drive, what sort of moral and philosophical arguments will be made for and against the practice, and where will the ball of wax roll after that debate is behind us? Though its post-production effects can get a bit over-the-top at times, reminding viewers more than once of the over-ambitious "world of tomorrow" predictions popular in the 1950s, the film is largely successful at fostering a curious sort of fascination with the current point in history and the staggering number of possibilities present within our lifetime. Kurzweil himself is to thank for much of that, as his smooth, relaxed speaking gives the impression that anything is possible, even if (as some of his detractors point out during the film's apex) he completely overlooks humanity's tendency to use such moments for evil causes as well as good. Intensely interesting stuff that effectively sows the seeds of conception.
- drqshadow-reviews
- Jan 10, 2012
- Permalink
I hope he's right...
....but this whole film seems to be based on the foundation that every prediction Raymond Kurzweil has made so far has been correct, and that every invention he's created has been successful. I find this to be disingenuous at best. The handful of correct predictions presented as evidence merely serves to make me wonder : Did Kurzweil only make this small list of correct predictions, and shut up the rest of the time? Was his plethora of correct predictions so overwhelming that severe editing was required for brevity? I find this impossible to accept. If you want me to be impressed with your successes, Ray, you must admit your defeats. Kurzweil's claim that man's lifespan used to be 25 years is a blatant misuse of statistics. His claim of rapidly multiplying information ignores that much new information disproves old information. I'll stop now.
Mediocre
- Cosmoeticadotcom
- Jan 31, 2013
- Permalink
Beware of Expertism: a Ph.D. in CSE does not a neurologist make
Kurweil and many others have been chattering about their "Singularity" since at least the mid- 1990s. This is not the astronomical phenomenon, but is similarly dense. Basically, the notion that machines, specifically computers, will someday soon exceed the intelligence, cognitive, perceptual, analytical, and other mental powers of humans, and become "self-aware" and achieve consciousness. As seen in the Terminator movies, The Matrix, this has become one of the basic, stock tropes of science fiction, though it has been around in fundamentally the same form as present since the early 1980's, at least.
Interesting stuff, and not only for entertainment purposes. And clearly machines will (and have already) become more able than humans at a wide range of tasks. From Big Blue beating Gary Kasparov at chess more than a dozen years ago, to welding robots in auto plants, machines do many things faster, and ultimately better than man. Persons under 20 have much less "data" in their heads, having come to rely so heavily on Wikipedia and Google (having been taught to do so by parents and teachers, in fact), and the online fact is up-to- the-minute and dead-accurate, isn't it? More reliable than what lies in your mind? No doubt computers will continue to increase in power, and in the influence they have on our lives. And we will come to rely even more on them than we do now.
However, Kurweil, like almost all the other exponents of the Singularity, including those offering a much darker version of the future than Kurweil's, fails to understand and take account of a number of critical points. First, the notion of consciousness/awareness, and even of intelligence itself is poorly defined. Neurologists, brain scientists, psychologists, who study the human mind as a profession disagree fundamentally as to what these qualities even are, how they work, or why one individual human has them in abundance, another hardly at all. The human mind and brain may truly be the last frontier of science. We know less, understand less, about the brain and mind than we did of infectious disease in the early 19th century, and psychologists and brain scientists would agree. We are only making a bare beginning at understanding the brain and nervous system, and how it works, and how we actually use it.
For Kurweil, or anyone else, to predict machines of any sort will attain human levels of consciousness, intelligence, or thought by 2040, or even by 2080 (two frequently cited dates) is a patent absurdity which takes no account of the state of neuro-science and psychology. Who will design or program this machine that emulates, then exceeds, the human brain/mind? In order to make a copy, you have to understand the original in every nuance. Not the kludgy, narrow silliness of "Eliza" or "Racter", but something that can reliably pass a Turing test and also learn. And as for self-awareness, that would be a trick, wouldn't it? You'd need some sort of reverse Turing test to apply to the machine. That's Kurweil's problem, and that of his colleagues. They are, none of them, professionals in medicine, psychology, brain science, or neurology, nor do any of them (that I am aware of) have ANY training in these disciplines. And until brain science advances a GREAT deal, I fear there is little hope of a machine that even approaches human consciousness, nor general ability and ADAPTABILITY and the ability to LEARN. For focused, targeted tasks there are super-human machines, and will be more and better every year. Futurists would do well to understand the question before giving out answers, especially extraordinary 'predictions.' There are computer scientists working with research physicians and brain scientists, each learning the others fields (a very healthy activity for progress into such a brave new world), and the most optimistic among them might predict a computer that you can actually have a real, spoken conversation with (on LIMITED subject matter) in another 20 years. As for a whole mind, anything coming anywhere NEAR to the overall human capacity for language, learning, problem solving, changing one's self to suit the environment (and the environment to suit one's self), and both analytical/logical thought as well as creative/lateral/syncretic thought, that will have to wait until we first understand what it is.
Oh, of course. I forgot. What about the machine that improves and modifies itself when the lights are turned off? It'd first have to have a motive or some sort of imperative to do that, and more importantly, some model of what it was modifying itself INTO, and would have to understand that model at its essence, which is the whole problem and main barrier to the human endeavor towards this end. It's a catch-22: you need consciousness and human intelligence to build it, and to WANT to build it. So sorry Ray, it ain't gonna happen in your lifetime (and you should look elsewhere for the talents and ideas that will eventually get us there. They aren't to be found is CSE programs or Silicon Valley).
"Transcendent Man" was a fun docu to watch. Kurweil is an articulate spokesman for his ideas, and a likable fellow. This is a thoughtful, well-made non-fiction film, and should spark a great deal of thought in those interested in the subject.
Interesting stuff, and not only for entertainment purposes. And clearly machines will (and have already) become more able than humans at a wide range of tasks. From Big Blue beating Gary Kasparov at chess more than a dozen years ago, to welding robots in auto plants, machines do many things faster, and ultimately better than man. Persons under 20 have much less "data" in their heads, having come to rely so heavily on Wikipedia and Google (having been taught to do so by parents and teachers, in fact), and the online fact is up-to- the-minute and dead-accurate, isn't it? More reliable than what lies in your mind? No doubt computers will continue to increase in power, and in the influence they have on our lives. And we will come to rely even more on them than we do now.
However, Kurweil, like almost all the other exponents of the Singularity, including those offering a much darker version of the future than Kurweil's, fails to understand and take account of a number of critical points. First, the notion of consciousness/awareness, and even of intelligence itself is poorly defined. Neurologists, brain scientists, psychologists, who study the human mind as a profession disagree fundamentally as to what these qualities even are, how they work, or why one individual human has them in abundance, another hardly at all. The human mind and brain may truly be the last frontier of science. We know less, understand less, about the brain and mind than we did of infectious disease in the early 19th century, and psychologists and brain scientists would agree. We are only making a bare beginning at understanding the brain and nervous system, and how it works, and how we actually use it.
For Kurweil, or anyone else, to predict machines of any sort will attain human levels of consciousness, intelligence, or thought by 2040, or even by 2080 (two frequently cited dates) is a patent absurdity which takes no account of the state of neuro-science and psychology. Who will design or program this machine that emulates, then exceeds, the human brain/mind? In order to make a copy, you have to understand the original in every nuance. Not the kludgy, narrow silliness of "Eliza" or "Racter", but something that can reliably pass a Turing test and also learn. And as for self-awareness, that would be a trick, wouldn't it? You'd need some sort of reverse Turing test to apply to the machine. That's Kurweil's problem, and that of his colleagues. They are, none of them, professionals in medicine, psychology, brain science, or neurology, nor do any of them (that I am aware of) have ANY training in these disciplines. And until brain science advances a GREAT deal, I fear there is little hope of a machine that even approaches human consciousness, nor general ability and ADAPTABILITY and the ability to LEARN. For focused, targeted tasks there are super-human machines, and will be more and better every year. Futurists would do well to understand the question before giving out answers, especially extraordinary 'predictions.' There are computer scientists working with research physicians and brain scientists, each learning the others fields (a very healthy activity for progress into such a brave new world), and the most optimistic among them might predict a computer that you can actually have a real, spoken conversation with (on LIMITED subject matter) in another 20 years. As for a whole mind, anything coming anywhere NEAR to the overall human capacity for language, learning, problem solving, changing one's self to suit the environment (and the environment to suit one's self), and both analytical/logical thought as well as creative/lateral/syncretic thought, that will have to wait until we first understand what it is.
Oh, of course. I forgot. What about the machine that improves and modifies itself when the lights are turned off? It'd first have to have a motive or some sort of imperative to do that, and more importantly, some model of what it was modifying itself INTO, and would have to understand that model at its essence, which is the whole problem and main barrier to the human endeavor towards this end. It's a catch-22: you need consciousness and human intelligence to build it, and to WANT to build it. So sorry Ray, it ain't gonna happen in your lifetime (and you should look elsewhere for the talents and ideas that will eventually get us there. They aren't to be found is CSE programs or Silicon Valley).
"Transcendent Man" was a fun docu to watch. Kurweil is an articulate spokesman for his ideas, and a likable fellow. This is a thoughtful, well-made non-fiction film, and should spark a great deal of thought in those interested in the subject.
Fantastic Thought Provoking Concept Explained
The best future prediction there is.
The future isn't talked about enough. We need to be able to predict where we are going as a society so we can be ready for what's going to happen. Ray Kurzweil is a futurist. He spends all day every day thinking about the future. He is a genius inventor and he even invents things that we don't have the technology to make yet. If there's someone who can predict the future of technology, this is the guy. If you read his book, The Singularity is Near, you know exactly what "The Singularity" is and what is means for the human race. To put it in one sentence, it's the point where technology advances so exponentially fast that we can't even comprehend the growth. Ray explains that technology is advancing exponentially, and in a few decades, it will be advancing too fast for our own brains to comprehend. In order to keep up, we must merge with machines to enhance our intelligence and become immortal, super-intelligent, god-like cyborgs that will mostly spend time in full submersion virtual reality doing whatever our imaginations can imagine. The book explains everything that this documentary doesn't and if this doc interests you then I highly recommend the read. It's really hopeful stuff and people need to realize how important technology is going to become. We use our cellphones so much that they become a part of us. Sooner or later they will be a part of us. This is a very good summary to a very interesting subject. If you're very religious you may not like it due to its atheist theme, but people with an open mind will be very intrigued.
- rileyedwardcowan
- Jun 28, 2012
- Permalink
Portrait of a Hopeless Optimist
The subject of this documentary, Ray Kurzweil, is an accomplished inventor and futurist whose creations include a reading machine for the blind. The film focuses on Kurzweil's ideas about "The Singularity" an event in which humans will be able to incorporate machines into their bodies, including their brains, and augment their intelligence. Kurzweil sees a great deal of promise in this, including the potential for immortality.
The film provides an interesting portrait of the man and his ideas, but it suffers from a relative lack of questioning of his optimism. Kurzweil has an at times deterministic vision of technological progress that fails to account for human foibles, and the double-edged sword of technology itself.
For example,Kurzweil dismisses the issue of class totally as it applies to who can benefit from technological advancement. Kurzweil argues that the costs of new technology are only prohibitive during its early stages. He points to the fact that his reading machines for the blind have become more affordable. This ignores the fact that even in a wealthy society like the United States, many people cannot afford even basics like health care. The benefits of Kurzweil's techno-utopia are likely to fall on the wealthy alone.
Furthermore, the law of accelerating returns that Kurzweil relies on seems deterministic, and ignores variables such as declining natural resources. At times, his faith in technological progress has an almost religious quality, particularly given the fact that he places so much hope on technology for achieving immortality.
The film provides an interesting portrait of the man and his ideas, but it suffers from a relative lack of questioning of his optimism. Kurzweil has an at times deterministic vision of technological progress that fails to account for human foibles, and the double-edged sword of technology itself.
For example,Kurzweil dismisses the issue of class totally as it applies to who can benefit from technological advancement. Kurzweil argues that the costs of new technology are only prohibitive during its early stages. He points to the fact that his reading machines for the blind have become more affordable. This ignores the fact that even in a wealthy society like the United States, many people cannot afford even basics like health care. The benefits of Kurzweil's techno-utopia are likely to fall on the wealthy alone.
Furthermore, the law of accelerating returns that Kurzweil relies on seems deterministic, and ignores variables such as declining natural resources. At times, his faith in technological progress has an almost religious quality, particularly given the fact that he places so much hope on technology for achieving immortality.
- TheExpatriate700
- Mar 13, 2011
- Permalink
One big sound bite
This presentation was just a lot of half-formed, repetitive sound bites. The information is dated, the concept is dated, and frankly, we have seen it all before in the movies. There was nothing concrete or usable. When it got boring, they would throw in a celebrity or two as Colin Powell or William Shatner to spice it up a tad. I know this presentation is really an attempted biography but still falls short of its purpose.
It went from the possibility of improving man to the machine then eventually building the ultimate man/machine as in the film "Over Sexed Rugsuckers from Mars" (1989).
I did like looking at the old-time computers and bygone personalities.
William Shatner makes a comeback in Shatner in Space (2021).
It went from the possibility of improving man to the machine then eventually building the ultimate man/machine as in the film "Over Sexed Rugsuckers from Mars" (1989).
I did like looking at the old-time computers and bygone personalities.
William Shatner makes a comeback in Shatner in Space (2021).
- Bernie4444
- May 3, 2024
- Permalink
Kurzweil means well but...
Kurzweil did not seem to me to be doing a good job of bridging the gap between current technology and his predictions. It is one thing to predict that technology will continue to advance and another thing entirely to try and guess where that advancement will end up. I'm sure you've heard this before but there are two types of people in the world. Those who can't predict the future and those who don't know they can't predict the future. I do not think that the current acceleration in technology can continue as "business as usual". I also believe we lost control of this acceleration a long time ago. The abbreviation WTSHTF (when the crap hits the fan) has become common on YouTube and for good reason. My prediction is that whatever happens will be a complete surprise.
- mcspaddengary
- Apr 25, 2019
- Permalink