The one and only certainty that we have in life is that one day, without knowing when, it will stop. However, while some accept more calmly the fact that they will not be able to exist forever, others fear the idea of an end and dream of immortality , knowing that this is not possible. However, a scientist and futurist has shaken up the ancestral beliefs of human beings by claiming that man will be able to achieve this incredible goal by 2030. Let’s try to better understand how and why.
Ray Kurzweil, computer scientist and futurist, has published his predictions on the goal that man will reach by 2030, namely the possibility of becoming immortal . He based his observations on advances in artificial intelligence, so it will be a few more years before we can experience eternity in life.
This is not the first time that Kurzweil has accurately predicted technology-related innovations: in 1990, he claimed that a computer would beat human chess champions before the end of the millennium, as well as the emergence of computers laptops, smartphones, wireless and the advent of the internet. In 2010, he conducted a recap of his previous predictions to assess the trend and results. He concluded that 115 of the 147 predictions made in 1990 around the year 2000 turned out to be “completely correct”, while 12 were “largely correct” and only three turned out to be completely wrong.
Although his prediction on eternity therefore seems impossible, it is not excluded that the scientist is totally wrong. This is not the first time that the futurologist has embarked on ambitious predictions, coming very close to the dates he predicted.
“The year 2029 is the consistent date I have predicted for when an artificial intelligence will pass a valid Turing test and thus reach the level of human intelligence. I have set the year 2045 for the ‘ singularity ‘ , that is to say the moment when we will multiply our effective intelligence a billion times, by merging with the intelligence that we will have created”. According to Kurzweil, by 2030, humans will therefore be able to “increase human life expectancy by more than one year per year.
According to his predictions, nanobots will flow through our veins, perform repairs and connect our brains to the cloud. At that time, we will be able to send videos or emails directly with our mind, and even make backups of our memories. According to Ray, the singularity should not scare us, but it will make us better, leading us to become “divine”. “We’ll be more fun and we’ll be better able to express our feelings of love. If we want to access 10,000 computers for two seconds, we can do it wirelessly. That’s what we’ll do with our neocortex.”
In fact, nanobots have been used to deliver drugs to brain tumors before, but they have not yet reached a level of development that would allow this prediction to come true anytime soon. On the other hand, brain-machine interfaces have reached unimaginable levels: think, for example, of completely paralyzed people able to pronounce words and sentences using their minds.
To find out if his prediction will turn out to be correct, all that remains is to wait.
Source used:
https://www.facebook.com/Ray.Kurzweil.official