Comment by gwbas1c
18 hours ago
Does anyone remember the book "The Singularity is Near?"
I read it about 20 years ago, and once it got into nanobots and Kurzweil's vision that the whole universe would be intelligent, I didn't find the book credible.
But I'm wondering if the short-term prediction, that in the 2030s we won't be able to anticipate what tech does for us, (IE, the Singularity,) is useful?
I've read most of Kurzweil's books and been a believer in the Moore's law like stuff but always skeptical on the nanobots. And a lot of stuff related to health or fashion. He takes ideas from a variety of sources and the nanobot idea seems to be quite questionable.
The "whole universe would be intelligent" bit I think is quite plausible in the long term. You need robots that can build robots and for them to be able to mine asteroids and build factories in space and then it's all go. I'm not sure it's that far off. A decade or two maybe?
>in the 2030s we won't be able to anticipate what tech does for us
His prediction was 2029 for the Turing test which I think was a bit conservative - I think 2025? He said 2045 for the singularity which was roughly when things are weird enough to be hard to predict.
Exact same here. Now I worry he was right about everything, more or less.
Even if he turns out to be a decade or two off, that’s basically exactly correct in the sweep of history sense.
Wild time to be alive.