by Angela Guess
A recent press release reports, “Ray Kurzweil, inventor, author and futurist, discussed the law of accelerating returns for technology and its impact on business and society on 8 June 2016 during The Optical Society’s centennial Light the Future program at CLEO:2016 Conference and Expo in San Jose, California, USA. Dr. Steven Chu, Nobel laureate, former U.S. Secretary of Energy and OSA Fellow and Honorary Member, led the conversation with Kurzweil covering a range of issues from jobs to ethics. The Q&A with Kurzweil and Chu is available at osa.org/lightthefuture. Kurzweil’s presentation, titled ‘Business and Society in the Age of Accelerating Returns,’ depicted numerous examples, both realized and predicted, of the exponential behavior of technology. For decades Kurzweil has based his predictions, most of which have been impressively accurate, on the numerical results of exponential extrapolation. Looking to the future, he said: ‘AI (Artificial Intelligence) was given its name in 1956. I predict that by 2029 – in 13 years – machines will achieve human intelligence’.”
The release continues, “He points out that where most peoples’ linearly driven intuition has failed, compounded doubling of computational ability has prevailed. This is true far beyond just Moore’s law, appearing in Kurzweil’s plots of Internet traffic, DNA sequencing cost, and photovoltaic capacity, just to name a few. And these trends are essentially independent of even the largest global events, such as World Wars and economic catastrophes. At most, such occurrences show up as only minor perturbations in otherwise robust curves of accelerating returns. Projecting into the future, Kurzweil discussed the roles of nascent technologies such as 3D printing and nanobotics in the larger context of societal advancement. Just as the brain develops complex abilities from a hierarchical feedback system of simpler ones, Kurzweil sees society evolving collectively with increasingly complex abilities.”
Read more at BusinessWire.
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