
Ray Kurzweil Responds to the Issue of Accuracy of His Predictions - ca98am79
http://nextbigfuture.com/2010/01/ray-kurzweil-responds-to-issue-of.html
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mortenjorck
It's funny how some predictions that sound outlandish have come fairly close
to the mark in less sexy ways. Kurzweil's defense of "computers commonly
embedded in clothing and jewelry" as applying to iPod Nanos embedded in
pockets is a bit of a stretch, but in practicality not far at all.

Though I think anyone with a sense for usability could have told you in 1999
that speech recognition, despite its eventual technological maturity, wouldn't
be anywhere near the primary mode of text entry a decade later. Ultimately,
I'd chalk that up to Kurzweil understanding technology somewhat better than he
understands humans.

~~~
dhume
_Kurzweil's defense of "computers commonly embedded in clothing and jewelry"
as applying to iPod Nanos embedded in pockets is a bit of a stretch, but in
practicality not far at all._ I'll accept this when the iPod is embedded with
some degree of permanency and doesn't have to be taken out when I do laundry.

~~~
ZachPruckowski
Do you honestly believe that it's not possible to waterproof/heatproof an
iPod? The technology exists to do that, but it's not commercially practical,
because no-one buys an iPod for every shirt they own.

I bet if I really wanted to, I could pull a shuffle out of it's case, use more
expensive and denser flash memory, and shove all this in a tiny
waterproof/heatproof baggie or small and thin container, swap the USB
connector for mini-USB, insulate the wires, build caps for the external wiring
ends, and sew the whole thing to the inside of my shirt behind my
shoulderblade. It'd have exposed ports to connect mini-USB to my computer and
earbuds to my ears, and if I wanted to wash it, I'd stick the port-caps in and
seal it somehow. It'd take a fair few prototypes, but it could be done with
today's tech.

Edit: I don't think this is commercial viable, but if one of you guys builds
it and gets rich, I expect royalties :-)

~~~
scott_s
_The technology exists to do that, but it's not commercially practical,
because no-one buys an iPod for every shirt they own._

Clearly the implication of such a prediction is that the technology will be at
a point where it is commercially practical.

~~~
ZachPruckowski
So a prediction that we would have tiny computers that we carried everywhere
in our clothes and bodies is wrong because instead of carrying them in our
clothes, we carry them in our pockets? Kurzweil's predictions relate to the
level of computational power for a given cost and what we can do with that
power. Just because my turn-by-turn directions come from my phone instead of a
wrist-strap doesn't make those predictions less wrong.

In the absence of iPods or cell phones, it's likely that sewn-in or wearable
computers would be more attractive.

~~~
scott_s
_Kurzweil's predictions relate to the level of computational power for a given
cost and what we can do with that power._

Indeed they do. And there's an order of magnitude separating the computational
power and cost of iPods from what we can currently incorporate into reasonably
priced clothing. A friend of mine does research in the area of wearable
computing. We're not at the iPod-in-shirt level yet.

Further, if we don't hold predictions to what they actually said, then there's
no point. We can always manufacture an interpretation in which the prediction
is true.

------
axiom
Reading through this:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictions_made_by_Raymond_Kur...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictions_made_by_Raymond_Kurzweil)

I get the distinct sense that the person who made those predictions just
watched far too many sci-fi movies. Nearly everything he predicted for 2020 in
1999 is something that already existed in some form, and his claim is that it
will be smaller/faster/ubiquitous etc. The rest are just silly UI predictions
(e.g. simulated persons, holograms, video phone calls etc.)

~~~
jk4930
You sound as this is unimpressive. His motive was the right timing for a
product. Knowing about the computing power, UIs, a.s.o. at the time of market
launch is essential. There are enough developers (and especially academic
organizations) who get that wrong or ignore that totally.

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yannis
Kurtzweil's predictions are mostly on target so far and his arguments hold
that if he is a couple of years off on a prediction, the prediction is still
essentially correct. I am not sure though that I agree with him on the timing
of the 'singularity issue'. I pretty much agree with him though, that we are
at the dawn of a new era where computers and bioengineering will have a
profound effect on humans.

There are many reasons as to why I am skeptical about the singularity -
primarily stemming from my experience in programming. At present we do not
have the engineering tools to do so - and nobody is really working hard on it.
We are lacking efficient ways of generating software and most importantly the
management skills to do so for _extreme_ , extreme as extremely large
software. Secondly to simulate the way the brain works we need to have a
paradigm shift in how we _build_ computers. It is also my contention that a
large part of what we call _human intelligence_ lies in language and NLP is a
hard still unsolved problem.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Agreed.

Kurtzweil has the general thrust of where we're headed -- the details and
timing are going to work out in a manner completely unforeseen, however.

Personally I think Kurtzweil is off in his timing by about five hundred years.
There's just some really tough stuff out there that needs nailing down. But
that's just a SWAG on my part.

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varjag
There are two massive obstacles to wearable electronics: seasonal fashion and
air travel security. Those are not going anywhere any time soon.

~~~
dan_the_welder
Fashion yes, the best industrial designers barely understand fashion. The only
thing I can remember where a fashion designer attempted to incorporate tech is
those sneakers with the LEDs in the heels... and since they were a fashion,
they provoked strong opinions, had their time and went away.

As far as air travel security goes, very few people fly that often and it will
be dealt with like we deal with laptops and mp3 players now. Just don't show
up with some homebrew contraption (MIT student LED shirt reference).

~~~
varjag
You are not allowed to use electronics during take-off and landing, and
emitting devices in duration of the whole flight. Imposes certain restriction
on your PAN-enabled shirt, socks and underpants..

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teeja
I just wanna know one thing: is this singularity gizmo going to get me into a
flying car, or not?

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joe_the_user
It seems like there a danger of the accuracy of Kurzweil's specific
predictions being confused with the accuracy of overall "singularity"
prediction.

Neither implies the other.

~~~
gwern
Maybe not, but they're closely connected. Kurzweil's methodology, from what I
vaguely remember of reading his books years ago, is to take his extrapolation
of Moore's law, and apply it to non-CPU things. This is sane, because to get a
Singularity, you need those non-CPU things - you can't build a Singularity
just because you suddenly have a bunch of exaflops; we just don't have the
software.

If computing power keeps growing, but we aren't getting actual new benefits
out of it, then that does drastically affect the accuracy of the 'overall'
prediction.

(Even if we had literally infinite computing power, I don't know whether we
could build an AI quickly; the theoretical models I've heard of like AIXI
exist only as theorems, and though we would be able to brute-force the space
of all possible programs, how would we know which one is the AI we want? This
shows you that Moore's law likely is not the restraint on the Singularity.)

~~~
codexon
_This is sane, because to get a Singularity, you need those non-CPU things_

No one knows including Kurzweil. Maybe it really does take x number of flops,
maybe we need better software. Maybe we need quantum computers. Anyone that
pretends to know is lying.

