On Tuesday’s episode of The Glenn Beck Program, Glenn invited well known futurist Ray Kurzweil onto his television show. Kurzweil is famous for his ability to predict technological innovations, including the rise of the internet.
One of Kurzweil’s predictions involves what he calls the “singularity”, a point where technology will be evolving so quickly that it will irreversibly change human life. It is at this point where human will begin to augment their own biology and intelligence with technology and artificial intelligence. He believes this will occur in 2045.
Kurzweil's website explains:
Within a quarter century, nonbiological intelligence will match the range and subtlety of human intelligence. It will then soar past it because of the continuing acceleration of information-based technologies, as well as the ability of machines to instantly share their knowledge. Intelligent nanorobots will be deeply integrated in our bodies, our brains, and our environment, overcoming pollution and poverty, providing vastly extended longevity, full-immersion virtual reality incorporating all of the senses (like “The Matrix”), “experience beaming” (like “Being John Malkovich”), and vastly enhanced human intelligence. The result will be an intimate merger between the technology-creating species and the technological evolutionary process it spawned.
Technology new site The Verge profiled the Singularity movement, and noted Kurzweil as it's optimistic prophet:
Kurzweil is the Singularity’s optimistic prophet. As a young inventor, he set out to help the blind to see and the mute to speak. Incredibly, he accomplished these lofty goals, creating technologies that touched many lives, and making himself a millionaire many times over the process. So perhaps it’s not surprising that he truly believes he can solve the vexing problem of mortality, and even, as he explains in the documentary Transcendent Man, bring his dead father back to boot. In Kurzweil’s vision of the future, we can merge our brains with computers, giving us a near godlike intelligence and the ability to back up our memories and thus live forever. This new species of man-machine will spread out across the universe, a super race on an infinite quest for knowledge.
Kurzweil was the subject of the documentary The Transcendent Man, and you can watch the trailer for that film below:
Watch the interview from TheBlaze TV below:
Part 1:
Part 2:
Part3: