Saturday, March 14, 2015

Ray Kurzweil and the coming singularity



Ray Kurzweil, 2005 "The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology."

He describes an exponential increase in technologies like
  • Computing
  • Genetics
  • Nanotechnology
  • Robotics
  • A.I.


  Questions for reflection:

 1) If what Kurzweil is predicting is true, what are the dangers?

2) What are some theological issues involved in human technological evolution?

3) What are the social issues involved? What about ethical issues?

4) Kurzweil believes that the human brain will be reverse engineered by 2045 and shortly afterthat will be downloadable as software into super computers (and believes in looming A.I.).

How do we think about the human soul and singularity?

How will further technological development affect how we think about evil and redemption? What potential for evil use of technology is presented by his predictions?

Historical evolution of human technologies

Assuming that technology continues to develop at an accelerating pace (even if Kurtzweil is wrong in his predictions)

How should we prepare?

How will it effect business, education, family life, religion and church life?

What new human needs will appear?


How does this change the way we relate to history? to sacred tradition? or does it make it more necessary?

and finally, how should we prepare our children and grandchildren?

Ray Kurtzweil's predictions on Wikipedia:

Predictions made by Ray Kurzweil

Quote from Wikipedia; 
"According to Ray Kurzweil, 89 out of 108 predictions he made were entirely correct by the end of 2009. An additional 13 were what he calls “essentially correct" (meaning that they were likely to be realized within a few years of 2009), for a total of 102 out of 108. Another 3 are partially correct, 2 look like they are about 10 years off, and 1, which was tongue in cheek anyway, was just wrong. Kurzweil later released a more detailed analysis of the accuracy of his predictions up to 2009, arguing that most were correct."

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