I regret that I have been only informed about this magnificent book only in September 2017. Nearly 12 years later after being published.. Kruzweil is an incredible futurist and researcher. Here I am copying you the most important sentences that I selected for you.
“Our intelligence will become increasingly nonbiological and trillions of times more powerful than it is today”
“We currently understand the speed of light as a bounding factor on the transfer of information.”
“machines can share their knowledge at extremely high speed, compared to the very slow speed of human knowledge-sharing through language”
“Ultimately, the entire universe will become saturated with our intelligence. This is the destiny of the universe. (See chapter 6.) We will determine our own fate rather than have it determined by the current "dumb," simple, machinelike forces that rule celestial mechanics.”
“In biological evolution the overall problem has always been to survive. In particular ecological niches this overriding challenge translates into more specific objectives, such as the ability of certain species to survive in extreme environments or to camouflage themselves from predators. As biological evolution moved toward humanoids, the objective itself evolved to the ability to outthink adversaries and to manipulate the environment accordingly.”
“There are only eight hundred million bytes of information in the entire human genome, and only about thirty to one hundred million bytes after data compression is applied.”
“Fredkin believes that the universe is very literally a computer and that it is being used by someone, or something, to solve a problem. It sounds like a good-news/bad-news joke: the good news is that our lives have purpose; the bas news is that their purpose is to help some remote hacker estimate pi to nine jillion decimal places.”
“An evolutionary algorithm can start with randomly generated potential solutions to a problem, which are encoded in a digital genetic code.”
“Once a computer achieves a human level of intelligence, it will necessarily soar past it. A key advantage of nonbiological intelligence is that machines can easily share their knowledge. If you learn French or read War and Peace, you can't readily download that learning to me, as I have to acquire that scholarship the same painstaking way that you did. I can't (yet) quickly access or transmit your knowledge, which is embedded in a vast pattern of neurotransmitter concentrations (levels of chemicals in the synapses that allow one neuron to influence another) and interneuronal connections (portions of the neurons called axons and dendrites that connect neurons).”
“The most compelling scenario for mastering the software of intelligence is to tap directly into the blueprint of the best example we can get our hands on of an intelligent process: the human brain. Although it took its original "designer" (evolution) several billion years to develop the brain, it's readily available to us, protected by a skull but with the r“ight tools not hidden from our view. Its contents are not yet copyrighted or patented.”
“The pace of building working models and simulations is only slightly behind the availability of brain-scanning and neuron-structure information. There are more than fifty thousand neuroscientists in the world, writing articles for more than three hundred journals.11 The field is broad and diverse, with scientists and engineers creating new scanning and sensing technologies and developing models and theories at many levels.”
“The brain gets its resilience from being a deeply connected network in which information has many ways of navigating from one point to another..
“You create your brain from the input you get.”
“It may be 'natural,' but I don't see anything positive in losing my mental agility, sensory acuity, physical limberness, sexual desire, or any other human ability. I view disease and death at any age as a calamity, as problems to be overcome.”
“Nature shows that molecules can serve as machines because living things work by means of such machinery. Enzymes are molecular machines that make, break, and rearrange the bonds holding other molecules together. Muscles are driven by molecular machines that haul fibers past one another. DNA serves as a data-storage system, transmitting digital instructions to molecular machines, the ribosomes, that manufacture protein molecules. And these protein molecules, in turn, make up most of the molecular machinery.”
“Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.”
“Because computers can merge together instantly. Ten computers—or one million computers—can become one faster, bigger computer. As humans, we can't do that. We each have a distinct individuality that cannot be bridged.”
“The ongoing acceleration of many intertwined technologies produces roads paved with gold. (I use the plural here because technology is clearly not a single path.) In a competitive envi”
“ronment it is an economic imperative to go down these roads. Relinquishing technological advancement would be economic suicide for individuals, companies, and nations.”
“Progress in medical science depends on progress in chemistry, physics, biology, computer science and other fields. Advanced medical treatments require expensive, high-tech equipment that can be made available only by a technologically progressive, economically rich society”
“Extensive studies have shown that this grain, as well as many other genetically modified organisms (GMOs), is safe. For example, in 2001 the European Commission released eighty-one studies that concluded that GMOs have "not shown any new risks to human health or the environment, beyond the usual uncertainties of conventional plant breeding. Indeed, the use of more precise technology and the greater regulatory scrutiny probably make them even safer than conventional plants and foods."39”
“Another concern expressed by Jaron Lanier and others is the "terrifying" possibility that through these technologies the rich may gain certain advantages and opportunities to which the rest of humankind does not have access.39”
“Drugs are essentially an information technology, and we see the same doubling of price-performance each year as we do with other forms of information technology”
“y. In the second decade of “this century, we will routinely be interacting with virtual humans that, although not yet Turing-test capable, will have sufficient natural language understanding to act as our personal assistants for a wide range of tasks
“evolution moves toward greater complexity, greater elegance, greater knowledge, greater intelligence, greater beauty, greater creativity, greater love.”
“Emulating the ideas of nature is the most effective way to harness the enormous powers that future technology will make available.”
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Sunday 1 October 2017
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