Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: Ray Kurzweil – Page 30

Becoming immortal is one of mankind’s many quixotic notions that most people will relegate to the world of fantasy and science fiction. However, there is a subset of prominent scientists who believe that immortality is not only attainable, but it is something that will come to fruition in as little as 25 years. This idea is shared by men like Google’s Director of Engineering, Ray Kurzweil; Tesla Motors CEO, Elon Musk; and one of the most interesting presidential candidates outside of Donald Trump and Deez Nuts, Zoltan Istvan. All three men identify as trans-humanist, and for those who don’t know, trans-humanism is the idea that mankind will one day be able to transcend our biological limitations through the use of science and technology; not to mention, the movement has accumulated over 3 million supporters worldwide. So the question remains, with the multitude of prominent intellectuals who believe immortality is a tangible goal, just how will they go about achieving it? Well, the six answers below could possibly hold the key to everlasting life.

Number Six: Uploading Minds to Computers. Futurists believe that at some point in the near future we will be able to copy and scan all of the data that exists in our brains and upload the information into a computer. This will allow us to perpetually exist as incorporeal inhabitants of cyberspace. Of course, the idea of mind uploading is still purely science fiction, but if it ever becomes tangible, progeny could possibly live in a limitless world, that echoes notions expressed in the Matrix; minus the robot despots.

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This is not good especially as we look at those aspirations for more nanobots to connect us to the cloud plus Mr. Kurzweil’s desire to live forever.

Medical device manufacturers are struggling to safeguard their newly connected designs from current and emerging security threats.

Natick, MA (PRWEB) January 29, 2016.

The medical device sector will be among the fastest growing markets for embedded security software through the next five years, according to a new report by VDC Research (click here to learn more). The market for medical devices spans a variety of hardware profiles including high-performance imaging systems, mobile diagnostic equipment and pumps, and wearable or implantable devices. Until recently, the majority of medical device manufacturers and others within the ecosystem treated security as an optional value-add under the misconception that their devices/products did not produce valuable data or would be a target for a hacker. The Internet of Things has enlarged the crosshairs on medical devices as such systems become more accessible and integrated with enterprise hospital platforms.

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Nice tribute.

Marvin Minsky at One Laptop per Child office, Cambridge Mass. 2008 (credit: Bcjordan/Wikimedia Commons)

Ray Kurzweil, January 25, 2016

When I was fourteen I wrote Marvin Minsky a letter asking to meet with him. He invited me to visit him at MIT and he spent hours with me as if he had nothing else to do.

When my daughter Amy was about eleven and we went out for a meal at the Harvest Restaurant in Cambridge with my wife Sonya and his wife Gloria, Amy and Marvin built a large structure on the restaurant table using all of the silverware, experimenting with different ways that the utensils could create stable structures.

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Dear readers,

I had the honor of speaking on the future of technology at the Nobel Prize gatherings in Gothenburg, Sweden. Every year, the Nobel Prize picks a theme of interest to the world on the state of sciences in different arenas. This year’s theme was the future of intelligence, with a focus on different technologies that are changing our ability to see and understand large sets of information and create computer systems that might reach human level thinking — I believe that progress is accelerating.

I enjoyed giving the keynote and participating in panel discussions with interesting colleagues during the day long event called Nobel Week Dialog, which takes place the week of the Nobel Prize awards. The day is open to the public and hosts top scientific thinkers presenting on the future of innovation and knowledge. I also attended the gala and awards ceremony — a spectacular display of the power of ideas and research helping the world to progress and solve serious challenges.

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This is a huge position to take on AI. Very gutsy of Ray.

All technology impacts our individual daily lives one way or another—but perhaps no technology makes us question our collective humanity as much as artificial intelligence.

Ray Kurzweil, inventor and futurist, spoke to an audience during a session last summer about a few of the political and philosophical implications of AI when he was asked, “In a world where AI passes the Turing test, who gets to vote? Does democracy make sense?”

Kurzweil describes a fictional scenario where an advanced AI sues for its rights as a citizen. While that alone may seem strange, the implications of granting rights to AI are even more bizarre. One major difference between living people and aware machines? The ability to count one human mind and individual person is easy. Not so much for interconnected, intelligent machines.

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Ray Kurzweil: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Kurzweil#Health_and_aging

Raymond “Ray” Kurzweil is an American author, computer scientist, inventor and futurist. Aside from futurology, he is involved in fields such as optical character recognition (OCR), text-to-speech synthesis, speech recognition technology, and electronic keyboard instruments. He has written books on health, artificial intelligence (AI), transhumanism, the technological singularity, and futurism. Kurzweil is a public advocate for the futurist and transhumanist movements, and gives public talks to share his optimistic outlook on life extension technologies and the future of nanotechnology, robotics, and biotechnology.

Kurzweil admits that he cared little for his health until age 35, when he was found to suffer from a glucose intolerance, an early form of type II diabetes (a major risk factor for heart disease). Kurzweil then found a doctor (Terry Grossman, M.D.) who shares his non-conventional beliefs to develop an extreme regimen involving hundreds of pills, chemical intravenous treatments, red wine, and various other methods to attempt to live longer. Kurzweil was ingesting “250 supplements, eight to 10 glasses of alkaline water and 10 cups of green tea” every day and drinking several glasses of red wine a week in an effort to “reprogram” his biochemistry. Lately, he has cut down the number of supplement pills to 150.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/agingreversed

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By 2030 solar energy will have the capacity to meet all of our energy needs. The production of food and clean water will also be revolutionized.

Kurzweil believes solar energy could satisfy 100% our power needs. — CNN

If we could capture one part in ten thousand of the sunlight that falls on the Earth we could meet 100% of our energy needs, using this renewable and environmentally friendly source.

As we apply new molecular scale technologies to solar panels, the cost per watt is coming down rapidly. Already Deutsche Bank, in a recent report, wrote “The cost of unsubsidized solar power is about the same as the cost of electricity from the grid in India and Italy. By 2014 even more countries will achieve solar ‘grid parity.’”

The total number of watts of electricity produced by solar energy is growing exponentially, doubling every two years. It is now less than seven doublings from 100%.

Similar approaches will address other resource needs. Once we have inexpensive energy we can readily and inexpensively convert the vast amount of dirty and salinated water we have on the planet to usable water.

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A few weeks ago, I wrote about Ray Kurzweil’s wild prediction that in the 2030s, nanobots will connect our brains to the cloud, merging biology with the digital world.

Let’s talk about what’s happening today.

Over the past few decades, billions of dollars have been poured into three areas of research: neuroprosthetics, brain-computer interfaces and optogenetics.

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