Ray Kurzweil: Get ready for hybrid thinking

Two hundred million years ago, our mammal ancestors developed a new brain feature: the neocortex. This stamp-sized piece of tissue (wrapped around a brain the size of a walnut) is the key to what humanity has become. Now, futurist Ray Kurzweil suggests, we should get ready for the next big leap in brain power, as we tap into the computing power in the cloud.

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[Zeuts]

It never fails to amuse me that Kurzweil's tone when explaining dramatic, forever world-changing developments is about the same as one would expect from a discussion of last week's weather.

[MercuryManProduction]

To all the people saying this is bad, or scary... that's fine, you don't have to do it. Eventually you will die, and you won't matter anymore. In every generation, there are revolutionary inventions, and there are always people who say it is too much and refuse to participate. There were people who opposed the idea of writing things down, thousands of years ago, because they believed that by writing things down, you no longer have to remember them and it would result in people becoming stupider. People opposed the idea of exploration. They opposed the steam engine, cars, technology, computers, the internet, telephones, and cell phones. They grumble about how the new things are bad, and then they die, and the new generation accepts what the old could not.

[Brisius]

9 years later what he has predicted literally happened. Natural language models understand what is written in the internet, and can give us an interpretation or summary of what we're looking for -> Chat GPT & Bing.

[schabalabadingdong]

7 Years later and we have GTP-3 That can understand and summarize any literature like complicated research papers😳 but we don't have it in a everyday use case like google assistant yet

[salasvalor]

Even if Ray Kurzweil doesn't get his singularity, he has made it possible for public discourse to include such ideas. I think he has been the greatest pioneer of mainstream acceptance of transhumanist notions. The best salesperson and popularizer. He is the father of giving us transhumanists a fighting chance/voice.

[bobgillis]

Anybody else see any problem with allowing someone to implant computers in your head?

[ryanhm]

I Came here from a Dawrkesh Patel interview and these kind of "understanding" machines will do are quite close with chatgpt and these multimodality coming for it. This neocortéx could even sounds like science fiction back then, but 7 years from now it does seems possible. This guy is in another scale of thoughts and inteligence.

[BoStanfordify]

Kurzweil as director of Engineering at google. I can only imagine his conversations with the guys at deepmind. Fascinating.

[davidjackson]

If I want my brain to be on a cloud I'll smoke some pot thank you very much

[vichkovski]

hopefully he will make it till his singularity point in time

[tobytoxd]

Yes! It seems like a brilliant idea, to let a company control your mind! Thank You xD

[psilosofos]

When they promise that humanity will evolve through technology just remember that someone else will control that technology not us...

[cloddvanderhoof]

Wow. I can't wait 'til I fully evolve.

[TomekSamcik]

It's interesting how Ray Kurzweil doesn't raise any questions or doubts, he just announces

[baldieman]

"Yeah, yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should".

Dr Ian Malcolm - Jurassic Park 

[amenostalgique]

Nobody talks about the implications and consequences of cutting-edge research. This will only accelerate our extinction as specie.

[YisYtruth]

In the future, google will think for you.

[marcellocapone]

Twenty years from now sounds really interesting all of a sudden. I'll remember that when another inevitable bout of depression comes along.

[pierresplace]

I've always felt power with a computer extending my hands and mind, doing things that I could not necessarily do myself. Now going to the cloud as an extension of my mind? Imagine no more forgetting? No more erroneous computations? No more errors in judgement?

Amazing possibilties for a senior citizen. Where do I sign up???!!! :-)

[justgivemethetruth]

He calls Watson a computer that understands human language ... but the connotation of the word "understand" is really silly ... the computer does not understand, to understand it needs a context and a point of existence ... otherwise it is just a machine reporting on its connections.  It's an amazing accomplishment, but I wish they would not use the word understand, of qualify what they mean.