More on Ray Kurzweil

While reading through various articles about singularity, I settled on a book by Ray Kurzweil called The Singularity Is Near. While I didn’t read the book, I read a few different summaries of the book. The link for Wikipedia’s summary is below. At first, the book seemed rational. It discussed the growing computational capacity, which is very accurate. I am a scientific computing minor, meaning I use programming to solve problems, and many of my professors have discussed the growing abilities computers give us through Moore’s Law, which is also presented in the book. It’s often said that we can now use computers to solve problems we could not solve 10 years ago. The book also discussed what was needed to create an AI, which Kurzweil stated was a model of the brain. Kurzweil predicted that would be accomplished in 2010. Simulating all parts of a brain simultaneously has not yet been done. Many researchers can simulate different parts of the brain such as memory and neuron firing, I can even simulate a basic decision between two neurons. However, there is no complete model, and I don’t think we are near creating one. His predictions grew less realistic to me as they went on, but maybe you’ll have a different opinion. Whether you find Kurzweil realistic or not, it’s still a very entertaining read.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Singularity_Is_Near