Instapundit has an interesting interview with Ray Kurzweil about his latest book, The Singularity Is Near. They cover several different topics including the singularity, AI, technological progress and science fiction as futurism, among others.

Of course, being Ray Kurzweil, he makes clear his belief that we will create a strong AI when we can adequately model and simulate the human brain, which he says should be within reach in 2029. Now, I’m not as smart as Ray, but I do have some experience with AI and AI systems, even if it is 14 years old. It’s my belief, and I’ve seen some studies whose suggestions back this up, that the human brain isn’t just a computer running ‘software’. I think that there is some quantum interaction going on in the brain that we may never be able to model. I think this is what is partly responsible for the ‘mind’ and certainly plays a large role in human creativity. As such, even with quantum computers, if we can ever develop such, I’m not sure we can ever create a strong AI. We may get extremely complex expert systems that ‘feel’ alive (weak AI, I think), but we won’t create an actual, ‘living’ machine intelligence, however you want to define ‘living’ and ‘intelligence’. Of course, the point of the singularity is that the abilities of our computers will quickly surpass our ability to comprehend their output so I suppose this is a loophole of sorts in my belief. If we do indeed create a singularity, then it may be possible that our computers design a strong AI. Machines creating a god in their own image as it were. An ironic reversal of humanity’s religious beliefs, and one where we played a part, even if we didn’t do it on our own.

Anyway, lots of interesting stuff to think about in this article. I think I’ll be adding this book to my list.

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  5. Popular Science and the Singularity

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