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The Ray Kurzweil Reader >
What the Future Will Bring
Permanent link to this article: http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0622.html
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What the Future Will Bring
"Follow your passion," Ray Kurzweil advised graduates in a commencement address on May 21 at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, one of the nation's earliest technological universities. "Creating knowledge is what will be most exciting in life. To create knowledge you have to have passion, so find a challenge that you can be passionate about and you can find the ideas to overcome that challenge." Kurzweil also described the three great coming revolutions-genetics, nanotechnology and robotics-and their implications for our lives ahead.
Transcript of the Commencement Address by Ray Kurzweil at Worcester
Polytechnic Institute, May 21, 2005, Worcester, Massachusetts. Published
on KurzweilAI.net, June 15, 2005.
Click
here for audio recording.
President Berkey, trustees, esteemed faculty, honored graduates,
proud parents and guests, it’s a pleasure to be here. It’s
a great honor to receive this distinction. Congratulations to all
of you. I've long been an admirer of WPI and this is a terrific
way to start your career. Actually judging by the practical experience
you've had and the entrepreneurship which is blossoming on this
campus you've already started your career.
A commencement is a good time to reflect on the future, on your
future, and I've actually spent a few decades thinking about the
future, trying to model technology trends. I suppose that’s
one reason you asked me to share my ideas with you on what the future
will hold, which will be rather different and empowering in terms
of our ability to create knowledge, more so than many people realize.
I started thinking about the future and trying to anticipate it
because of my interest in being an inventor myself. I realized that
my inventions had to make sense when I finished a project, which
would be three or four years later, and the world would be a different
place. Everything would be different—the channels of distribution,
the development tools. Most inventions, most technology projects
fail not because the R&D department can't get it to work—if
you read business plans, 90 percent of those groups will do exactly
what they say if they're given the opportunity yet 90 percent of
those projects will still fail because the timing is wrong. Not
all the enabling factors will be in place when they're needed. So
realizing that, I began to try to model technology trends attempting
to anticipate where technology will be. This has taken on a life
of its own. I have a team of 10 people that gathers data in many
different fields and we try to build mathematical models of what
the future will look like.
Now, people say you can't predict the future. And for some things
that turns out to be true. If you ask me, “Will the stock price
of Google be higher or lower three years from now?” that’s
hard to predict. What will the next wireless common standard be?
WiMAX, G-3, CDMA? That’s hard to predict. But if you ask me,
“What will the cost of a MIPS of computing be in 2010?”
or, “How much will it cost to sequence a base pair of DNA in
2012?” or, “What will the special and temporal resolution
of non-invasive brain scanning be in 2014?,” I can give you
a figure and it’s likely to be accurate because we've been
making these predictions for several decades based on these models.
There’s smooth, exponential growth in the power of these information
technologies and computation that goes back a century—very
smooth, exponential growth, basically doubling the power of electronics
and communication every year. That’s a 50 percent deflation
rate.
The same thing is true in biology. It took us 15 years to sequence
HIV. We sequenced SARS in 31 days. We’ll soon be able to sequence
a virus in just a few days’ time. We're basically doubling
the power of these technologies every year.
And that’s going to lead to three great revolutions that
sometimes go by the letters GNR: genetics, nanotechnology and robotics.
Let me describe these briefly and talk about the implications for
our lives ahead.
G, genetics, which is really a term for biotechnology, means that
we are gaining the tools to actually understand biology as information
processes and reprogram them. Now, 99 percent of the drugs that
are on the market today were not done that way. They were done through
drug discovery, basically finding something. “Oh, here’s
something that lowers blood pressure.” We have no idea why
it works or how it works and invariably it has lots of side effects,
similar to primitive man and woman when they discovered their first
tools. “Oh, here’s a rock, this will make a good hammer.”
But we didn't have the means of shaping the tools to actually do
a job. We're now understanding the information processes underlying
disease and aging and getting the tools to reprogram them.
We have little software programs inside us called genes, about
23 thousand of them. They were designed or evolved tens of thousands
of years ago when conditions were quite different. I'll give you
just one example. The fat insulin receptor gene says, “Hold
on to every calorie because the next hunting season may not work
out so well.” And that’s a gene we'd like to reprogram.
It made sense 20 thousand years ago when calories were few and far
between. What would happen if we blocked that? We have a new technology
that can turn genes off called RNA interference. So when that gene
was turned off in mice, these mice ate ravenously and yet they remained
slim. They got the health benefits of being slim. They didn't get
diabetes, didn't get heart disease or cancer. They lived 20 to 25
percent longer while eating ravenously. There are several pharmaceutical
companies who have noticed that might be a good human drug.
There’s many other genes we'd like to turn off. There are
genes that are necessary for atherosclerosis, the cause of heart
disease, to progress. There are genes that cancer relies on to progress.
If we can turn these genes off, we could turn these diseases off.
Turning genes off is just one of the methodologies. There are new
forms of gene therapy that actually add genes so we'll not just
have designer babies but designer baby boomers. And you probably
read this Korean announcement a couple of days ago of a new form
of cell therapy where we can actually create new cells with your
DNA so if you need a new heart or new heart cells you will be able
to grow them with your own DNA, have them DNA-corrected, and thereby
rejuvenate all your cells and tissues.
Ten or 15 years from now, which is not that far away, we'll have
the maturing of these biotechnology techniques and we'll dramatically
overcome the major diseases that we've struggled with for eons and
also allow us to slow down, stop and even reverse aging processes.
The next revolution is nanotechnology, where we're applying information
technology to matter and energy. We'll be able to overcome major
problems that human civilization has struggled with. For example,
energy. We have a little bit of sunlight here today. If we captured
.03 percent, that’s three ten-thousandths of the sunlight that
falls on the Earth, we could meet all of our energy needs. We can't
do that today because solar panels are very heavy, expensive and
inefficient. New nano-engineered designs, designing them at the
molecular level will enable us to create very inexpensive, very
efficient, light-weight solar panels, store the energy in nano-engineered
fuel cells, which are highly decentralized, and meet all of our
energy needs.
The killer app of nanotechnology is something called nanobots,
basically little robots the size of blood cells. If that sound very
futuristic, there are four major conferences on that already and
they're already performing therapeutic functions in animals. One
scientist cured Type-1 diabetes with these blood cell-sized nano-engineered
capsules.
In regard to the 2020s, these devices will be able to go inside
the human body and keep us healthy by destroying pathogens, correcting
DNA errors, killing cancer cells and so on and even go into the
brain, and interact with our biological neurons. If that sounds
futuristic, there are already neural implants that are FDA-approved
so there are people walking around who have computers in their brains
and the biological neurons in their vicinity are perfectly happy
to interact with these computerized devices. And the latest generation
of the neural implant for Parkinson’s disease allows the patients
to download new software to their neural implant from outside the
patient. By the 2020s, we'll be able to greatly enhance human intelligence,
provide full immersion virtual reality, for example, from within
the nervous system using these types of technologies.
And finally R, which stands for robotics, which is really artificial
intelligence at the human level, we'll see that in the late 2020s.
By that time this exponential growth of computation will provide
computer systems that are more powerful than the human brain. We'll
have completed the reverse engineering of the human brain to get
the software algorithms, the secrets, the principles of operation
of how human intelligence works. A side benefit of that is we'll
have greater insight into ourselves, how human intelligence works,
how our emotional intelligence works, what human dysfunction is
all about. We’ll be able to correct, for example, neurological
diseases and also expand human intelligence. And this is not going
to be an alien invasion of intelligent machines. We already routinely
do things in our civilization that would be impossible without our
computer intelligence. If all the AI programs, narrow AI, that’s
embedded in our economic infrastructure were to stop today, our
human civilization would grind to a halt. So we're already very
integrated with our technology. Computer technology used to be very
remote. Now we carry it in our pockets. It'll soon be in our clothing.
It’s already begun migrating into our bodies and brains. We
will become increasingly intimate with our technology.
The implications of all this is we will extend human longevity.
We've already done that. A thousand years ago, human life expectancy
was about 23. So most of you would be senior citizens if this were
taking place a thousand years ago. In 1800, 200 years ago, human
life expectancy was 37. So most of the parents here, including myself,
wouldn't be here. It was 50 years in 1900. It’s now pushing
80. Every time there’s been some advance in technology we've
pushed it forward.: sanitation, antibiotics. This biotechnology
revolution will expand it again. Nanotechnology will solve problems
that we don't get around to with biotechnology. We'll have dramatic
expansion of human longevity.
But actually life would get boring if we were sitting around for
a few hundred years—we would be doing the same things over
and over again—unless we had radical life expansion. And this
technology will also expand our opportunities, expand our ability
to create and appreciate knowledge. And creating knowledge is what
the human species is all about. We're the only species that has
knowledge that we pass down from generation to generation. That’s
what you've been doing for the last four years. That’s what
you will continue doing indefinitely. We are expanding exponentially
human knowledge and that is really what is exciting about the future.
I was told that commencement addresses should have a vision, which
I've tried to share with you, and some practical advice. And my
practical advice is that creating knowledge is what will be most
exciting in life. And in order to create knowledge you have to have
passion. So find a challenge that you can be passionate about, and
there many of them that are worthwhile. And if you’re passionate
about a worthwhile challenge, you can find the ideas to overcome
that challenge. Those ideas exist and you can find them. And persistence
usually pays off. You've all had timed tests where you had two or
three hours to complete a test. But the tests in life are not timed.
If you need an extra hour you can take it. Or an extra day, an extra
week, an extra year, an extra decade. You’re the only one that
will determine your own success or failure. Thomas Edison tried
thousands of filaments to get his light bulb to work and none of
them worked. And he easily could have said, “I guess all those
skeptics who said that a practical light bulb was impossible were
right.” Obviously he didn't do that. You know the rest of the
story.
If you have a challenge that you feel passionately about that’s
really worthwhile, then you should never give in. To quote Winston
Churchill, “Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never,
never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in.”
Congratulations once again. This is a great achievement. I wish
all of you long lives—very long lives—of success, creativity,
health and happiness. And may the Force be with you.
' 2005 KurzweilAI.net
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Mind·X Discussion About This Article:
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Re: What the Future Will Bring
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The nature of human life didn't change the last 50 years that much.
Really? From 1955 to 2005? How much is "that much"? In 1955 TVs were rare, showed only one to three channels (only in black and white) and had no remotes. Living in the suburbs and high-rise apartments was still a new experience. No VCRs, laserdiscs, DVDs, CDs, microwave ovens, styrofoam, cordless (much less cell) phones, laser surgery, four-wheel disc brakes, re-runs, running shoes, Internet, stereo in the home, weather prediction using satellites, automatic dishwashers in the home, anti-static sheets for the dryer and much, much more. Don't think that's "much"? Try giving up all the technological innovations introduced since 1955 for a year and then tell us how you feel about the subject.
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Re: What the Future Will Bring
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Extropia,
What I mean is that these two global, interconnecting phenomena in all likelihood are now upon us (Global Warming most definitely; Peak Oil we'll know for sure shortly, probably within a year). Consequently, IT, biotech and nanotech must operate within these constraints, constraints that will shape the direction(s) these fields will (and won't) take. Peak Oil and Global Warming now set the framework of the debate.
Moving forward, as the long arc of oil depletion sets in, the Big Enchilada is whether enough highly concentrated energy (in the form of oil, coal, uranium and plutonium) remains to drive IT, biotech and nanotech R&D up to and through the Singularity, in the face of all the competing demands for this energy, from carbon dioxide mitigation and water-treatment facilities for the Third World to rap DVDs and Godiva chocolates. |
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Re: What the Future Will Bring
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Extropia writes,
In the case of one energy source running out and whether or not alternatives can be found in time, this situation seems similar to that which occurrs every time a particluar form of computer (vancuum tube-driven ones, for example) begin to hit their physical limits. The experts moan that The Curve is approaching the end, but as the end grows nearer research gets pumped into developing alternatives and the Curve carries on upwards without missing a beat.
This is a common viewpoint of Technological Optimists. Some kind of ingenious alternative technology (10 years ago it was biotech; now it's nanotech) will eventually solve the world's dependence on oil, probably long before Peak Oil arrives. When considering this possibility, I think it's very important to remember that energy is NOT synonymous with technology. IOW, energy and technology are NOT the same thing.
By remembering that energy and technology are not the same thing, the nature and dept of the challenge posed by Peak Oil becomes clear. When you think about it, there are only five energy sources available to us. Four are non-renewable (oil, natural gas, coal, and nuclear), and the fifth is renewable solar (which includes wind, hydro, PV, and bio-mass, all dependent in some way on sunlight acting on the earth.) The hope of Technological Optimists is that technology (in some unknown way) will allow us to capture an equivalent amount OF energy from renewables that we now get from non-renewables, thereby keeping the Curve moving exponentially up to and through the Singularity. Maybe, but it's a EXTREMELY dicey proposition, given the diffuse nature of renewables and what appears to be fundamental limitations on concentrating it. It's a LOT more complicated that simply "unplugging" the OIL and "replacing" it with some TECHNOLOGY.
There are certainly a number of interesting incremental advances now being made, especially in nanotech. But all of them put together have barely begun to bring us to the point where renewable energy can be concentrated in anywhere near the amounts that non-renewables currently provide us with. Unfortunately, from where I sit, all too many Technological Optimists appear to suffer from a kind of Jiminy Cricket syndrome: If you wish for something, it will come true.
That's now how the world works. |
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Re: What the Future Will Bring
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When you think about it, there are only five energy sources available to us. Four are non-renewable (oil, natural gas, coal, and nuclear), and the fifth is renewable solar (which includes wind, hydro, PV, and bio-mass, all dependent in some way on sunlight acting on the earth.) The hope of Technological Optimists is that technology (in some unknown way) will allow us to capture an equivalent amount OF energy from renewables that we now get from non-renewables, thereby keeping the Curve moving exponentially up to and through the Singularity. Maybe, but it's a EXTREMELY dicey proposition, given the diffuse nature of renewables and what appears to be fundamental limitations on concentrating it. It's a LOT more complicated that simply "unplugging" the OIL and "replacing" it with some TECHNOLOGY.
Actually, you forgot a few energy sources, including tidal, wave-motion and geo-thermal. Of all the new ones, tidal is the best, as it is not affected by weather (as solar and wave-motion are). More than 90% of humanity (and more than 90% of Americans) live near a coast, and some Scandinavians already have some tidal powerplants up and running. There was supposed to be a "test" plant opened near San Francisco, but I haven't heard more lately and in this political climate, who knows.
By the way, technically oil, natural gas, coal and nuclear are all "renewable". It just takes a very, very long time in the case of oil, NG and coal. New breeder reactor designs would actually grow the supply of fissionables, but there are varying degrees of political objection in some countries.
As for replacing oil for lubricants, making plastics and powering transportation, various synthetics and substitutes are already known and the technologies to produce them well understood. For example, GM, Ford, VW and Fiat have been happily selling "flex" cars (vehicles that can run on ethanol or gasoline) in Brazil for many years. The Brazillians obtain their ethanol from sugarcane that they grow domestically. Such a technology could be easily introduced into the infrastructure in the same way that government required gas stations to start offering unleaded gasoline, and with the same lack of disruption. There is nothing "dicey" about it. The energy corporations are well aware of these potential substitutes and already heavily invested in them, but first they intend to wring every penny out of their oil, gas and coal investments that they can.
So you see, no special "technological optimism" is required.
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Re: What the Future Will Bring
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Moving forward, as the long arc of oil depletion sets in, the Big Enchilada is whether enough highly concentrated energy (in the form of oil, coal, uranium and plutonium) remains to drive IT, biotech and nanotech R&D up to and through the Singularity, in the face of all the competing demands for this energy, from carbon dioxide mitigation and water-treatment facilities for the Third World to rap DVDs and Godiva chocolates.
Since IT (including robotics), biotech, and nanotech are all seen as central to future military capabilities and so are receiving lavish R&D funding, it is almost certain that they will also be provided with all the energy and protection from the effects of global warming that they require, regardless of who among us has to be denied water treatment, rap DVDs or chocolates.
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