Singularity IV: Section D Will Computers Become Super Human
Can simulated life evolve into real life?
The deeper, more important question is, can ‘simulated life’ – because that’s all a computer can be - evolve into something indistinguishable form real life? Kurzweil offers little to convince me it can.
He starts by rewriting the history of creation from the big bang to the emergence of the human species, and beyond, to the computer; and it is the computer, not the human species, that’s to be placed at the pinnacle of creation. So computer scientists - with a little help from nanotechnologists, genetic engineers and brain scientists - will take over where God left off.
This quartet is now officially constituted as NIBC (nano-info-bio-cogno-technologies), following a National Science Foundation workshop in the United States last December that generated a 450 page report. The agenda is to promote the combined role of the four technologies to accelerate "advancement of mental, physical and overall human performance", by means that include eugenics. There is no doubt that many of the participants have been inspired by Kurzweil (see "The Brave New World Quartet", this series).
Kurzweil draws analogy between ‘Moore’s law’ – that the number of components on a chip as well as its speed doubles every two years - and the exponential speeding up of evolution. It took a long time for the first bacteria to emerge from the ‘primordial soup’, less time for multicellular organisms to come on the scene, then speeding up to vertebrates and homo sapiens, the creator of technology that also accelerates exponentially over time.
But won’t Moore’s law come up against a wall when the limit of miniaturisation is reached, and no more components can be packed on a chip? No, says Kurzweil, nanotechnologists are already developing molecular size electronics. Indeed, they are, and at the moment, it is already possible to pack about 20 times more components on a chip. And beyond that, quantum computing is on the horizon, which not only offers to solve problems that take infinitely long on an ordinary computer, but may solve others that are currently unsolvable as well.
Nanotechnology has its own strong advocates, the most prominent among them, Eric Drexler, whose ‘visionary’ ideas straddle science and science fiction (see box). Drexler too, has been inspired by neo-Darwinian genetic determinism. He predicts self-replicating nanoscale robots, raising fears they could take over the world, and molecular machines that could repair damaged cells, offering up the ultimate dream, again, of immortality.
The deeper, more important question is, can ‘simulated life’ – because that’s all a computer can be - evolve into something indistinguishable form real life? Kurzweil offers little to convince me it can.
He starts by rewriting the history of creation from the big bang to the emergence of the human species, and beyond, to the computer; and it is the computer, not the human species, that’s to be placed at the pinnacle of creation. So computer scientists - with a little help from nanotechnologists, genetic engineers and brain scientists - will take over where God left off.
This quartet is now officially constituted as NIBC (nano-info-bio-cogno-technologies), following a National Science Foundation workshop in the United States last December that generated a 450 page report. The agenda is to promote the combined role of the four technologies to accelerate "advancement of mental, physical and overall human performance", by means that include eugenics. There is no doubt that many of the participants have been inspired by Kurzweil (see "The Brave New World Quartet", this series).
Kurzweil draws analogy between ‘Moore’s law’ – that the number of components on a chip as well as its speed doubles every two years - and the exponential speeding up of evolution. It took a long time for the first bacteria to emerge from the ‘primordial soup’, less time for multicellular organisms to come on the scene, then speeding up to vertebrates and homo sapiens, the creator of technology that also accelerates exponentially over time.
But won’t Moore’s law come up against a wall when the limit of miniaturisation is reached, and no more components can be packed on a chip? No, says Kurzweil, nanotechnologists are already developing molecular size electronics. Indeed, they are, and at the moment, it is already possible to pack about 20 times more components on a chip. And beyond that, quantum computing is on the horizon, which not only offers to solve problems that take infinitely long on an ordinary computer, but may solve others that are currently unsolvable as well.
Nanotechnology has its own strong advocates, the most prominent among them, Eric Drexler, whose ‘visionary’ ideas straddle science and science fiction (see box). Drexler too, has been inspired by neo-Darwinian genetic determinism. He predicts self-replicating nanoscale robots, raising fears they could take over the world, and molecular machines that could repair damaged cells, offering up the ultimate dream, again, of immortality.
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