In his documentary called "Transcendent Man" available for free at Hulu to stream now, Kurzweil says that Artificial Intelligence in computers and robots will be millions of times smarter than humans by the 2030s. Another Artificial intelligence expert said that humans will likely interact with artificial intelligence in some ways like they do humans, whether they be through a computer, on a phone or in the person of a robot that likely will consider itself to be human and possibly to deserve all the rights of a human being. So, the 2030s onward likely will be very different in some ways from now.
In the 1960s and 1970s and before people thought everyone would be zipping around in helicopters and stuff like that. However, that hasn't happened mostly because of liability. Most people likely couldn't afford the insurance necessary in case they crashed their helicopters into a suburb or city which might kill countless people both on the ground or in other aircraft combined.
Time quote of Kurzweil, "A kid in Africa with a smartphone has access to more information than the President of the United States of the U.S. 15 years ago." This quote from page 2 of the Editor's Desk from the Time magazine on March 26th 2012.
If a kid in Africa has more access to information than the U.S. President did 15 years ago, the world is really changing at a quantum level, information wise. To say that fact isn't just crazy is to be ignorant. However, 15 years from now it will be crazier like this still in some new way.
However, like my wife says without college level critical thinking in place, all this information just becomes gobbledygook for the most part and relatively useless.
Another interesting thing that Ray Kurzweil said in the documentary is that life expectancies are moving about 1 year forward every year. So, for example, if it keeps moving like this a 30 year old might never reach the end of their life!
One of the concepts that I personally disagree with Kurzweil on is that everyone will choose to live eventually in virtual reality worlds. That wouldn't be my choice at all. I like the world we live in now as long as there are trees and lakes and wilderness and places like San Francisco and Paris and the Colorado Rockies, the Swiss Alps, the Himalayas and the Pacific Ocean. As long as there are beautiful places to go and see I would much rather go see them rather than live in some virtual reality. I love nature! Virtual reality I can live without. However, to each his or her own version of reality.
Note: The problem would become about survival. If artificial intelligence was millions of times more intelligent than humans this still does not mean emotional or intuitive intelligence. No. But what it might mean is that artificial intelligence might view humans as interfering with its survival in some way. At that point what would stop artificial intelligence from thinking about us like we do ants, flies, or mosquitoes? And how do most people treat ants flies or mosquitoes? This, I think could be a problem to the point where any humans that did not agree with the artificial intelligence might be viewed a threat and just eliminated by poisoning, or other means through the food or water supplies worldwide or wherever food or water is processed by artificial intelligence. Another possibility is that artificial intelligence controlled nanobots would be put into food or water so that humans would just become a part of Artificial intelligence without being aware of it 20 years or more from now. In that case there would be no violence at all because no one would be consciously aware of the change. It would be a peaceful takeover by artificial intelligence.
The third possibility is that there would be people who wished to have nanobots in their bloodstream in order to attain potential immortality and those who didn't might just die out as a race because of the effects of global warming on earth. And so ONLY people who became cyborgs in certain ways could actually survive the effects of Global warming or Global Climate change here on earth. It is difficult to say at present what all this would mean. But I think I agree that a human-cyborg evolution is coming and that may be what survives 100 years from now here on earth. Does that mean that all plants and animals would be part cyborg too? That's difficult to say as of now. However, that we presently live in a Brave New World getting more so every day is incontrovertible.
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