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The Future of Intelligent Technology and Its Impact on Disabilities
Future technologies for sensory impairments will include automatic subtitles on the fly for the hearing-impaired, pocket-sized reading machines, automatic language translators, and intelligent devices sent through the bloodstream. These devices will also augment the senses for the general population.
Originally published in the Journal
of Visual Impairment & Blindness October 2003. Excerpted
on KurzweilAI.net on March 15, 2004.
Technology for sensory impairments
By 2010, computers will disappear. They will be so tiny that they
will be embedded in our environment, in clothing, and so on. We
will have high-bandwidth connections to the Internet at all times.
We will have eyeglasses for the sighted that display images directly
in our retina: contact lenses for full-immersion virtual reality.
We will also have relatively powerful (but not human level) artificial
intelligence (AI) on web sites—artificial personalities such
as the avatar-like Ramona, who greets visitors and answers questions
at the KurzweilAI.net web site.
For people who are hearing impaired, we will have systems that
provide subtitles around the world. We're getting close to the point
where speaker-independent speech recognition will become common.
Machines will create subtitles automatically and on the fly, and
these subtitles will be a pretty accurate representation of what
people are saying. It won't be error-free—but then, our own
auditory understanding is not error-free, either. We will also have
listening systems that will allow deaf persons to understand what
people are saying.
For people who are blind, we will have reading machines within
a few years that are not just sitting on a desk, but are tiny devices
you put in your pocket. You'll take pictures of signs on the wall,
handouts at meetings, and so on. We encounter text everywhere—on
the back of packages, on menus, on electronic displays—and
these pocket-sized reading machines will enable a blind person to
read this material. By 2010, these devices will be very tiny. You
will be able to wear one on your lapel and scan in all directions.
These devices probably will be used by sighted people as well, because
they will allow us to get visual <a href="javascript:loadBrain('Information')" onMouseOver="playBrain('Information')" onMouseOut="stopBrain()" class="thought">information</a> from all around us.</p>
<p>Such devices will also translate the information from one <a href="javascript:loadBrain('Language')" onMouseOver="playBrain('Language')" onMouseOut="stopBrain()" class="thought">language</a>
to another for everyone. The current reading machine technology
used in the Kurzweil 1000 and Kurzweil 3000 reading systems uses
a new generation of synthetic speech. Although it sounds relatively
normal, it is not recorded human speech.</p>
<p>We are not yet on the verge of creating cybernetic <a href="javascript:loadBrain('Genius')" onMouseOver="playBrain('Genius')" onMouseOut="stopBrain()" class="thought">genius</a>es. But
we have many systems in our societies that already can perform intelligently
in narrow areas. We have hundreds of examples of these machines.
Some of them are flying and landing our airplanes, or guiding intelligent
<a href="javascript:loadBrain('Weapon')" onMouseOver="playBrain('Weapon')" onMouseOut="stopBrain()" class="thought">weapon</a>s. We have electrocardiogram systems that provide an analysis
as accurate as your doctor's. We have some systems that can diagnose
blood-<a href="javascript:loadBrain('Cell')" onMouseOver="playBrain('Cell')" onMouseOut="stopBrain()" class="thought">cell</a> images, others that automatically make financial decisions
involving stock-market investments. In fact, $1 trillion in stock-market
investments use these systems. Other intelligent systems look for
credit card fraud and find optimal routes for e-mail messages and
cell phone calls. Likewise, a disabled person has a narrow need.
A person who is blind needs <a href="javascript:loadBrain('Access')" onMouseOver="playBrain('Access')" onMouseOut="stopBrain()" class="thought">access</a> to ordinary printed material.
A person who is deaf needs to be able to understand ordinary speech
from people he or she encounters at random. Devices to perform these
tasks can work in close concert with the much broader, more flexible
intelligence of the disabled persons themselves.</p>
<h2>Enhancing our own intelligence </h2>
<p>In some ways, machines can perform better than humans. Computers
are much faster than people when they master tasks and can share
<a href="javascript:loadBrain('Knowledge')" onMouseOver="playBrain('Knowledge')" onMouseOut="stopBrain()" class="thought">knowledge</a>. Something a computer has learned can be shared with thousands
of other computers instantly, whereas, if I learn French, I can't
just <a href="javascript:loadBrain('Download')" onMouseOver="playBrain('Download')" onMouseOut="stopBrain()" class="thought">download</a> that to you.</p>
<p>The implication of this will not be just an alien invasion of intelligent
machines to compete with us. We are going to enhance our own intelligence
by getting closer and closer to machine intelligence— and that's
already happening.</p>
<p>There are many people walking around now who are essentially <a href="javascript:loadBrain('Cyborg')" onMouseOver="playBrain('Cyborg')" onMouseOut="stopBrain()" class="thought">cyborg</a>s
and have computers in their brains interfacing with their <a href="javascript:loadBrain('Biological')" onMouseOver="playBrain('Biological')" onMouseOut="stopBrain()" class="thought">biological</a>
<a href="javascript:loadBrain('Neuron')" onMouseOver="playBrain('Neuron')" onMouseOut="stopBrain()" class="thought">neuron</a>s. The Food and Drug Administration just approved a neural
implant for <a href="javascript:loadBrain('Parkinson\'s Disease')" onMouseOver="playBrain('Parkinson\'s Disease')" onMouseOut="stopBrain()" class="thought">Parkinson's disease</a> that replaces the portion of the
<a href="javascript:loadBrain('Brain')" onMouseOver="playBrain('Brain')" onMouseOut="stopBrain()" class="thought">brain</a> destroyed by that <a href="javascript:loadBrain('Disease')" onMouseOver="playBrain('Disease')" onMouseOut="stopBrain()" class="thought">disease</a>. And there are more than a dozen
different types of implants like that in use or being developed.
Now, they require surgical implantation; but by 2029, we will be
able to send these intelligent devices through the bloodstream.</p>
<h2>The <a href="javascript:loadBrain('Import')" onMouseOver="playBrain('Import')" onMouseOut="stopBrain()" class="thought">import</a>ance of hanging around </h2>
<p>The most profound implication of these developments will be an
expansion of human intelligence. Right now, we are restricted to
a mere hundred trillion interneural connections. That may sound
like a large <a href="javascript:loadBrain('Number')" onMouseOver="playBrain('Number')" onMouseOut="stopBrain()" class="thought">number</a>, but I personally find it rather limiting. Many
people send me books to read, web sites to visit, conferences to
attend, and I would <a href="javascript:loadBrain('Love')" onMouseOver="playBrain('Love')" onMouseOut="stopBrain()" class="thought">love</a> to be able to do all these things, but
our human bandwidth is quite limited.</p>
<p>Ultimately, we won't be restricted to 100 trillion connections.
We will able to create new virtual connections with <a href="javascript:loadBrain('Nanobot')" onMouseOver="playBrain('Nanobot')" onMouseOut="stopBrain()" class="thought">nanobot</a>s, so
we can expand the number of interneuronal connections we have in
our brain many fold. We are today profoundly expanding human intelligence
as a <a href="javascript:loadBrain('Species')" onMouseOver="playBrain('Species')" onMouseOut="stopBrain()" class="thought">species</a> through the Internet and all of our technology. Through
much more intimate connections with this technology, we will continue
to profoundly expand human intelligence.</p>
<p>Human <a href="javascript:loadBrain('Life')" onMouseOver="playBrain('Life')" onMouseOut="stopBrain()" class="thought">life</a> expectancy is another one of those <a href="javascript:loadBrain('Exponential Trend')" onMouseOver="playBrain('Exponential Trend')" onMouseOut="stopBrain()" class="thought">exponential trend</a>s.
Every year during the 18th and 19th centuries, we added a few days
to human life expectancy. Now, we are at the intersection of <a href="javascript:loadBrain('Biology')" onMouseOver="playBrain('Biology')" onMouseOut="stopBrain()" class="thought">biology</a>
and information <a href="javascript:loadBrain('Science')" onMouseOver="playBrain('Science')" onMouseOut="stopBrain()" class="thought">science</a>. Today, we are adding about 120 days every
year to human life expectancy. With the full flowering of the <a href="javascript:loadBrain('Biotechnology')" onMouseOver="playBrain('Biotechnology')" onMouseOut="stopBrain()" class="thought">biotechnology</a>
revolution, within 10 years, we will be adding more than a year
to the human life expectancy every year.</p>
<p>So if we can hang in there for another 10 years, we may actually
get to <a href="javascript:loadBrain('Experience')" onMouseOver="playBrain('Experience')" onMouseOut="stopBrain()" class="thought">experience</a> the full measure of the profound century ahead.</p>
<p><i>© 2004 <a href="http://www.afb.org/jvib/main.asp" target="_blank">JVIB,
American Foundation for the Blind</a>. Reprinted with permission.</i>
</p>
<p> </p>
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<td bgcolor=#CCCCCC><p>The Future of Intelligent Technology and Its Impact on Disabilities<br><span class="mindxheader"><i>posted on 10/17/2004 6:18 PM by <a href="/mindx/profile.php?id=1488">michaelsalisbury</a></i></span></td>
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<td bgcolor=#DDDDDD colspan="4"><p>This is great, I am a developer, and love reading about the coming years, I to believe that huge change is coming, very quickly! Great article.
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Michael</p></td>
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<td bgcolor=#CCCCCC><p>Re: The Future of Intelligent Technology and Its Impact on Disabilities<br><span class="mindxheader"><i>posted on 03/12/2005 11:33 AM by <a href="/mindx/profile.php?id=1804">scipio</a></i></span></td>
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<td bgcolor=#DDDDDD colspan="4"><p>A general question: Has AI been applied in any utilitarian form to assist people suffering with ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease)?</p></td>
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<td bgcolor=#CCCCCC><p>Re: Intelligent Technology and Human Life Expectancy<br><span class="mindxheader"><i>posted on 03/12/2005 12:56 PM by <a href="/mindx/profile.php?id=1051">jrichard</a></i></span></td>
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<td bgcolor=#DDDDDD colspan="4"><p>As this article suggests, human life expectancy is increasing today at a rate of 120 days per year and at that rate, by 2010 or so, the average male could expect to live to be eighty years old.
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However, the rate of improvement in medical technology is such that this rate may already be 300 days of more by 2010. Already, new companies are starting up to address the medical problems caused by mis-folded proteins (I believe ALS, Alzheimers, Parkinsons, and Diabetes fall into this category).
<br>
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By 2015, the rate of improvement may be up to 500 days per year. This is when the baby boomer generation would be somewhere between 65-70 years old. The question then is whether or not this rate of improvement would begin to level off. I think Ray and Aubrey De Gray would argue that the improvements will continue and that the aging process itself will be impacted.
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Suppose then that by 2020, methods for reversing the aging process are developed with limited success but with expectations that further refinements will lead to greater success. What then happens socially and politically?
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Certainly, government programs such as Social Security and Medicare will have to be totally redesigned to be sustainable. Some advanced form of aqua-culture would have to be developed to supplement the food supply.
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All this in fifteen years! Fifteen years is almost the equivalent of tomorrow.
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