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   CONSPRCY      How big is your tinfoil hat?      2,445 messages   

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   Message 2,346 of 2,445   
   Mike Powell to All   
   Kurzweil's AI predictions feel strikingl   
   06 Feb 26 08:11:47   
   
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   'What will people do in the year 2050, given the enormous intellectual power   
   computers are likely to have?': The man Google calls the spiritual father of   
   AI asked big questions in 1991 - 35 years later, we're still wrestling with   
   the answers   
      
   By Wayne Williams   
      
   Ray Kurzweil's AI predictions feel strikingly familiar today   
      
   Back when artificial intelligence was still poorly understood outside research   
   labs, Ray Kurzweil was already frustrated with how narrowly it was being   
   discussed. In a 1991 interview with Computerworld, he pushed back forcefully   
   against claims that AI had failed to live up to its promise.   
      
   "That's unfair, because every time we master a particular area of AI, it   
   ceases to be considered AI. It's just like a magic trick - when you know   
   how it's done, it's no longer magic," he said, adding, "Take machine   
   vision, for example, which today [in 1991] is a $300 million business. People   
   don't consider that AI, but it is part of AI."   
      
   Kurzweil argued that public expectations were skewed not by failure, but by   
   familiarity.   
      
   "People usually just mean expert systems when they refer to AI, but that's   
   just one small part of it. By the end of this decade, most software will be   
   intelligent, but it won't necessarily be called AI."   
      
   AI then and now   
      
   More than three decades later, image recognition, speech-to-text,   
   recommendation systems, and automated decision-making are everywhere, and   
   rarely even thought of as AI anymore. The label has simply moved on to the   
   likes of ChatGPT and Google Gemini.   
      
   At the time of the Computerworld interview, Kurzweil was already deeply   
   embedded in the commercial side of artificial intelligence, having founded   
   multiple companies focused on pattern recognition, music synthesis, and speech   
   recognition. When asked whether he was surprised by how computing had evolved   
   since his teenage years, he dismissed the suggestion.   
      
   "I'm not really surprised. I've always felt that digital information   
   could encompass many types of phenomena - from sound, speech and music to   
   pictures and three-dimensional objects. Almost everything can be digitized.   
   Even our genetic code can be digitized."   
      
   For Kurzweil, the question was never if machines could do these things, but   
   when they would become cheap and fast enough to matter.  "It was also clear   
   to me that a gradual price/performance revolution of digital electronics would   
   ultimately allow all of these types of information to become practical and   
   cost-effective."   
      
   That framing - economics over breakthroughs - underpins much of today's   
   AI boom. The models themselves are impressive, but their sudden usefulness is   
   largely the result of scale, compute, and cost curves finally aligning.   
      
   When asked directly how he defined artificial intelligence, Kurzweil avoided   
   the sci-fi tropes of the time, explaining: "AI is the art of creating   
   machines that perform functions we associate with human intelligence.   
   Intelligence is the ability to use limited resources in an effective way using   
   abstract reasoning, the ability to recognize patterns and the ability to solve   
   problems in a limited time period."   
      
   Kurzweil then added a detail that feels even more relevant today than it did   
   back then.  "But probably 80% to 90% of our brains are devoted to pattern   
   recognition and skill acquisition."   
      
   Modern machine learning systems are built almost entirely on that assumption.   
   They do not reason in the way humans like to imagine, but they excel at   
   recognizing patterns across vast amounts of data - exactly the cognitive   
   function Kurzweil identified as dominant.   
      
   AI and consciousness   
      
   Later in the interview, he was asked where AI stood in its evolution. His   
   answer was cautious, and revealing.   
      
   "We are creating systems that can emulate human intelligence within a narrow   
   domain. They diagnose a limited domain of illnesses, play a game like chess,   
   make a type of financial decision, guide a missile toward a building."   
      
   The limitation, he explained, was context.  "These systems become idiots   
   again when they go outside their area of expertise. As AI matures, we're   
   trying to broaden the machine's areas of expertise by combining different AI   
   systems such as speech recognition, natural language understanding and the   
   ability to make decisions within a certain expert domain."   
      
   Kurzweil was asked by Computerworld what he envisioned when looking into the   
   future, and replied: "The question is: What is really going to happen when   
   computers can compete with human intelligence or exceed it? Once a computer can   
   emulate essential human functionality, it can then combine that with the   
   enormous superiority it already displays in its ability to remember billions or   
   trillions of facts with extreme precision, to access that information at   
   extremely high speed and to perform functions over and over again very   
   quickly."   
      
   He then pointed out, "If it can read a book, there's nothing to stop it   
   from reading every book that's ever been published and all magazines and   
   technical journals and from mastering all human knowledge. Once it reaches   
   equality with human intelligence in some areas, it is necessarily going to be   
   greatly superior to human intelligence in other areas."   
      
   Kurzweil concluded that thought with a comment which is especially pertinent   
   today: "The ramifications of that are difficult to understand. Much of our   
   pride is associated with our confidence in being superior in the intellectual   
   realm."   
      
   One of the most philosophically loaded questions in the interview came when   
   Kurzweil was asked whether a machine could ever be conscious. His response   
   sidestepped easy answers.   
      
   "The key is the issue of consciousness and what it means to be a living,   
   conscious entity and whether a machine that appears to emulate human-like   
   functionality is conscious," he said.   
      
   "Perhaps the best way to understand the paradoxes this issue confronts us   
   with is to examine the following scenario: Eventually, we'll be able to scan   
   a human being, and a computer will take note of the exact structure of all of   
   our neurons and other cells. You could then imagine creating a new computer   
   that would be wired up in exactly the same way that the person just scanned."   
      
   Kurzweil was not trying to solve consciousness as an engineering problem. He   
   was reframing it as a question of identity. If a system looks, speaks, and   
   remembers exactly like a person, then the question of consciousness stops being   
   technical and becomes philosophical.   
      
   "If you ran into this computer, it would seem very much like the original   
   person to you. The question then is, is it the same person? Does this computer   
   have consciousness? One might say yes, because you'd get all the sense of   
   consciousness if you interviewed it. The bottom line is: There is no scientific   
   experiment you can conduct to determine whether any other entity - an animal,   
   machine or person - is conscious."   
      
   Today, as AI systems produce language about emotions, identity, and   
   self-awareness, Kurzweil's framing feels less hypothetical and more   
   uncomfortable. He was not claiming machines would be conscious, of course, only   
   that humans lack a reliable way to deny it once that behavior becomes   
   convincing.   
      
   That uncertainty surfaced in real life in 2022, when Google engineer Blake   
   Lemoine became convinced that the company's LaMDA system was sentient, shared   
   his claims with The Washington Post, and was promptly suspended.   
      
   The 1991 interview also tackled public anxiety about automation and work, which   
   is a major topic today.   
      
   Kurzweil said: "It will have a very profound impact on society and the role   
   that human beings play. Despite the fact that computers, automation and   
   machines have increasingly been able to perform functions that human beings   
   can, human employment has increased quite dramatically. We went from 12 million   
   jobs employing 30% of the population 100 years ago to over 120 million jobs   
   employing 50% of the population. Not only that, the sophistication of the jobs   
   has increased, and they pay six times as much in constant dollars. However, the   
   question remains: What will people do in the year 2050, given the enormous   
   intellectual power computers are likely to have?"   
      
   Kurzweil didn't attempt to answer his own question, but instead left it   
   deliberately open.   
      
   Today, in his late seventies, Kurzweil works at Google and is often described   
   as the "spiritual father of AI." Many of the ideas shaping modern machine   
   learning echo arguments he was already making back in 1991.   
      
   Thirty-five years later, we are much closer to the future he described - but   
   no closer to answering the question he left hanging.   
      
      
   https://www.techradar.com/pro/what-will-people-do-in-the-year-2050-given-the-en   
   ormous-intellectual-power-computers-are-likely-to-have-the-man-google-calls-the   
   -spiritual-father-of-ai-asked-big-questions-in-1991-35-years-later-were-still-w   
   restling-with-the-answers   
      
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