[ExI] Kurzweil shares five key insights from his new book, The Singularity Is Nearer

[Kelly Anderson]

Having read the book, the argument for anti-aging is that the current
advances in AI with protein folding, biological simulation and
personalized medicine based on that kind of approach, will turn
medicine from a "throw it at the wall and see if it sticks" kind of
approach to testing proteins we find in the wild into the kind of
information technology that the law of accelerating returns can be
applied to. While that is an interesting hypothesis, there was not a
detailed statement that I can recall relating to where and when we are
on that curve currently. If indeed AI turns anti-aging tech into
something that the LOAR can be applied to, there is still the question
of whether we are far enough up that curve currently to be able to
accomplish something meaningful in 5 years. There is, in particular,
and overly optimistic idea that the FDA will be able to speed things
up given that testing can be done in silicon, rather than in real
people in the real world. I don't see the FDA magically becoming
something it is not now. Transhumanism is our thing... but do we
really believe in Transgovernmentalism?

So while I get that Ray's hopes are that he will not die any time
soon, and that might shade his perspective as his own age goes up...
maybe he's trying to convince people to create a future. Like they
say, to create a future you have to envision it first. And Ray
Bradbury, Isaac Asimov and others including, Gene Roddenberry and Ray
Kurtzweil have helped us envision things, some stuff comes true faster
than others.

I really do think the LOAR is a real thing. The leap of faith is that
AI will turn medicine into one of the things that the LOAR can be
applied to. Personally, it seems logical that it could, and almost
certainly will at some point. I do wonder about the basis for this
particular timeline, as this most recent book wasn't nearly as
breathtaking as TSIN (2005)...

-Kelly

On Wed, Jul 10, 2024 at 4:18 PM BillK via extropy-chat
<extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
> The article provides the details for each prediction.
> BillK
>
> <https://nextbigideaclub.com/magazine/merging-ai-mean-humanity-according-futurist-ray-kurzweil-bookbite/50146/>
>
> Quotes:
> 1. Information technology is advancing at an exponential rate.
> 2. Artificial intelligence will reach and immediately soar past
>     human-level intelligence by 2029.
> 3. We will solve aging in the next five to ten years by applying AI to medicine.
> 4. AI is about to leap from transforming the digital world to
>     transforming the physical world.
> 5. By 2045, we will reach the Singularity and expand our intelligence
>     a millionfold.
> --------------------------------
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