Acknowledgements The essays in this collection were published on KurzweilAI.net during 2001-2003, and have benefited from the devoted efforts of the KurzweilAI.net editorial team. Our team includes Amara D. Angelica, editor; Nanda Barker-Hook, editorial projects manager; Sarah Black, associate editor; Emily Brown, editorial assistant; and Celia Black-Brooks, graphics design manager and vice president of business development. Also providing technical and administrative support to KurzweilAI.net are Ken Linde, systems manager; Matt Bridges, lead software developer; Aaron Kleiner, chief operating and financial officer; Zoux, sound engineer and music consultant; Toshi Hoo, video engineering and videography consultant; Denise Scutellaro, accounting manager; Joan Walsh, accounting supervisor; Maria Ellis, accounting assistant; and Don Gonson, strategic advisor. —Ray Kurzweil, Editor-in-Chief TABLE OF CONTENTS LIVING FOREVER 1 Is immortality coming in your lifetime? Medical Advances, genetic engineering, cell and tissue engineering, rational drug design and other advances offer tantalizing promises. This section will look at the possibilities. Human Body Version 2.0 3 In the coming decades, a radical upgrading of our body's physical and mental systems, already underway, will use nanobots to augment and ultimately replace our organs. We already know how to prevent most degenerative disease through nutrition and supplementation; this will be a bridge to the emerging biotechnology revolution, which in turn will be a bridge to the nanotechnology revolution. By 2030, reverse-engineering of the human brain will have been completed and nonbiological intelligence will merge with our biological brains. Human Cloning is the Least Interesting Application of Cloning Technology 14 Cloning is an extremely important technology—not for cloning humans but for life extension: therapeutic cloning of one's own organs, creating new tissues to replace defective tissues or organs, or replacing one's organs and tissues with their "young" telomere-extended replacements without surgery. Cloning even offers a possible solution for world hunger: creating meat without animals. Dialogue Between Ray Kurzweil, Eric Drexler, and Robert Bradbury 18 What would it take to achieve successful cryonics reanimation of a fully functioning human brain, with memories intact? A conversation at the recent Alcor Conference on Extreme Life Extension between Ray Kurzweil and Eric Drexler sparked an email discussion of this question. They agreed that despite the challenges, the brain's functions and memories can be represented surprisingly compactly, suggesting that successful reanimation of the brain may be achievable. The Alcor Conference on Extreme Life Extension 29 On November 15-17, 2002, leaders in life extension and cryonics came together to explore how the emerging technologies of biotechnology, nanotechnology, and cryonics will enable humans to halt and ultimately reverse aging and disease and live indefinitely. Arguments for a Green and Gray Future 35 Ray Kurzweil and Gregory Stock, Director, UCLA Program on Medicine, Technology and Society, debated "BioFuture vs. MachineFuture" at the Foresight Senior Associate Gathering, April 27, 2002. This is Ray Kurzweil's presentation. Foreword to ‘Dark Ages II’ 39 Our civilization’s knowledge legacy is at great risk, growing exponentially with the exploding size of our knowledge bases. And that doesn’t count the trillions of bytes of information stored in our brains, which eventually will be captured in the future. How long do we want our lives and thought to last? HOW TO BUILD A BRAIN 43 A machine is likely to achieve the ability of a human brain in the coming years. Ray Kurzweil has predicted that a $1,000 personal computer will match the computing speed and capacity of the human brain by around the year 2020. With human brain reverse engineering, we should have the software insights before 2030. This section explores the possibilities of machine intelligence and exotic new technologies for faster and more powerful computational machines, from cellular automata and DNA molecules to quantum computing. It also examines the controversial area of uploading your mind into a computer. The Intelligent Universe 45 Within 25 years, we'll reverse-engineer the brain and go on to develop superintelligence. Extrapolating the exponential growth of computational capacity (a factor of at least 1000 per decade), we'll expand inward to the fine forces, such as strings and quarks, and outward. Assuming we could overcome the speed of light limitation, within 300 years we would saturate the whole universe with our intelligence. Deep Fritz Draws: Are Humans Getting Smarter, or Are Computers Getting Stupider? 55 The Deep Fritz computer chess software only achieved a draw in its recent chess tournament with Vladimir Kramnik because it has available only about 1.3% as much brute force computation as the earlier Deep Blue's specialized hardware. Despite that, it plays chess at about the same level because of its superior pattern recognition-based pruning algorithm. In six years, a program like Deep Fritz will again achieve Deep Blue's ability to analyze 200 million board positions per second. Deep Fritz-like chess programs running on ordinary personal computers will routinely defeat all humans later in this decade. A Wager on the Turing Test: The Rules 59 An explanation of rules behind the Turing Test, used to determine the winner of a long bet between Ray Kurzweil and Mitch Kapor over whether artificial intelligence will be achieved by 2029. A Wager on the Turing Test: Why I Think I Will Win 63 Will Ray Kurzweil's predictions come true? He's putting his money where his mouth is. Here's why he thinks he will win a bet on the future of artificial intelligence. The wager: an AI that passes the Turing Test by 2029. Response to Mitchell Kapor’s “Why I Think I Will Win” 69 Ray Kurzweil responds to Mitch Kapor's arguments against the possibility that an AI that will pass a Turing Test in 2029 in this final counterpoint on the bet: an AI will pass the Turing Test by 2029. WILL MACHINES BECOME CONSCIOUS 73 “Suppose we scan someone’s brain and reinstate the resulting ‘mind file’ into suitable computing medium,” asks Ray Kurzweil. “Will the entity that emerges from such an operation be conscious?” How Can We Possibly Tell if it’s Conscious? 75 At the Tucson 2002: Toward a Science of Consciousness conference, Ray Kurzweil addressed the question of how to tell if something is conscious. He proposed two thought experiments. My Question for the Edge: Who am I? What am I? 78 Since we constantly changing, are we just patterns? What if someone copies that pattern? Am I the original and/or the copy? Ray Kurzweil responds to Edge publisher/editor John Brockman's request to futurists to pose "hard-edge" questions that "render visible the deeper meanings of our lives, redefine who and what we are." Live Forever—Uploading the Human Brain… Closer Than You Think 81 Ray Kurzweil ponders the issues of identity and consciousness in an age when we can make digital copies of ourselves. The Coming Merging of Mind and Machine 87 Ray Kurzweil predicts a future with direct brain-to-computer access and conscious machines. VISIONS OF THE FUTURE 93 Science fiction becoming fact: instant information everywhere, virtually infinite bandwidth, implanted computer, nanotechnology breakthroughs. What’s next? The Matrix Loses Its Way: Reflections on 'Matrix' and 'Matrix Reloaded' 95 The Matrix Reloaded is crippled by senseless fighting and chase scenes, weak plot and character development, tepid acting, and sophomoric dialogues. It shares the dystopian, Luddite perspective of the original movie, but loses the elegance, style, originality, and evocative philosophical musings of the original. Reflections on Stephen Wolfram’s ‘A New Kind of Science’ 101 In his remarkable new book, Stephen Wolfram asserts that cellular automata operations underlie much of the real world. He even asserts that the entire Universe itself is a big cellular-automaton computer. But Ray Kurzweil challenges the ability of these ideas to fully explain the complexities of life, intelligence, and physical phenomena. What Have We Learned a Year After NASDAQ Hit 5,000? 115 The current recession reflects failure to develop realistic models of the pace at which new information-based technologies emerge and the overall acceleration of the flow of information. But in the longer-range view, recessions and recoveries reflect a relatively minor variability compared to the far more important trend of the underlying exponential growth of the economy. Remarks on Accepting the American Composers Orchestra Award 117 The Second Annual American Composers Orchestra Award for the Advancement of New Music in America was presented on November 13 to Ray Kurzweil by American Composers Orchestra. Kurzweil reflects on creativity and the jump from the blackboard to changing peoples' lives. Foreword to The Eternal E-Customer 119 How have advances in electronic communications changed power relationships? The toppling of a government provides one not-so-subtle example. Ray Kurzweil talks about those advances in this forward to The Eternal E-Customer, a book that looks at the principles companies must adopt to meet the needs and desires of this new kind of customer. Response to Fortune Editor’s Invitational 121 Ray Kurzweil was invited to participate in the 2001 Fortune Magazine conference in Aspen, Colorado, which featured luminaries and leaders from the worlds of technology, entertainment and commerce. Here are his responses to questions addressed at the conference. THE SINGULARITY 125 “The Singularity” is a phrase borrowed from the astrophysics of black holes. The phrase has varied meanings; as used by Vernor Vinge and Ray Kurzweil, it refers to the idea that accelerating technology will lead to superhuman machine intelligence that will soon exceed human intelligence, probably by the year 2030. KurzweilAI.net News of 2002 127 In its second year of operation, 2002, KurzweilAI.net continued to chronicle the most notable news stories on accelerating intelligence.