
Google's Ray Kurzweil on the computers that will live in our brains - palidanx
http://www.marketplace.org/topics/tech/googles-ray-kurzweil-computers-will-live-our-brains
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frisco
The thing about Ray Kurzweil is that he's basically entertainment, in the same
way William Gibson or George Lucas are entertainment. He excites and inspires
the lay population, but is ultimately pretty weak on the non-fiction part.

There aren't any scientists that are saying, "hey, no, that whole advancing
technology thing sounds like a terrible idea!" Of course that would be
awesome. The reason Kurzweil gets ragged on by the scientific community is
because when it comes to specific claims and technical details, his batting
average is terrible. His books are notorious for making technical statements
that are just simply wrong. One of my favorite graphs from "The Singularity Is
Near" is a plot of linear versus exponential growth with a point labeled on
the exponential curve, "the knee of the curve". He was trying to make a point
about how exponential growth looks slow until it hits some "knee" and then it
takes off. Hey, anyone, what's the derivative of e^x? Exactly. The
neuroscience background he brought to "How to Create a Mind" was first-year
grad student at best.

Kurzweil is _a_ director of engineering at Google, not _the_ director of
engineering as per the article, and Google has many of them. He is an
entertainer who attracts attention and sometimes asks interesting questions. I
wouldn't worry too much about specific technical statements he makes today.
He's way out of his research area of OCR and text-to-speech.

~~~
gwgarry
Some say most of his singularity stuff has to do with his personal fear of
death. He's good with hardware predictions, he doesn't understand software
nearly that well. And his understanding of biology is trivial.

------
jimbokun
"When computers can achieve these things it's not for the purpose of
displacing us it's really to make ourselves smarter," Kurzweil says. "And
smarter in the sense of being more loving... Really enhancing the things that
we value about humans."

Sounds an awful lot like wishful thinking on Kurzweil's part. Does he have any
strong arguments for why superhuman intelligence will be chiefly interested in
bettering the human condition, without displacing us in important ways?
Certainly can't find historical evidence for this, in the way human beings
have treated less intelligent species, or even less developed human
civilizations.

~~~
quux
I have nothing to back this up with (just like Kurzweil.) but I have a gut
feeling that if superhuman intelligence were to emerge, it would quickly
become preoccupied with things only it can think about, and largely
indifferent to the needs and concerns of normal humans. It may also become
frustrated by not being able to explain things in a way that we understand,
and may just give up on trying.

Dr. Manhattan from Watchmen, or The Powers in Vernor Vinges "A fire upon the
deep" are what I'm thinking of.

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kenko
I lost a ton of respect for google when they hired Kurzweil, and more when I
realized they put money into the singularity thing. Didn't they realize that
Kurzweil will tell them what they want to hear for free, too?

~~~
psbp
Oh come on, you can slight Kurzweil for his whacky futurist theories, but
allowing him to work with Knowledge graph seems like a tremendous use of his
talents. His insights (and accomplishments) in machine learning aren't to be
taken lightly.

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palidanx
Call me a luddite, but I found these 2030 comments from Ray Kurzweil extremely
disturbing.

~~~
mr_eel
Don't freak out. I'm personally dubious of most things he says. The ideas are
often evocative, but I feel he has no grasp of the practical difficulties of
his claims.

~~~
ilaksh
Except that he has been building leading-edge artificial intelligence systems
since he was a teenager and studying those practical difficulties you mention
for decades, and has now been hired as a Director of Engineering at the
world's leading information technology company to lead the effort to build the
most capable natural language understanding system ever created.

Would you like to be more specific about those technical difficulties that Mr.
Kurzweil hasn't grasped? Or are you just saying that because you find it hard
to believe his predictions?

~~~
coldtea
> _Except that he has been building leading-edge artificial intelligence
> systems since he was a teenager and studying those practical difficulties
> you mention for decades,_

Except that you can do all these things and still be prone to wishful
thinking.

Especially if there was a traumatic event involving, say, the loss of your
father, an event that makes you obsessive about your mortality, eternal life
through tech et al.

Linus Pauling even had two nobels, but he was saying BS about Vitamin C. And
Wilhelm Reich was a smart guy too, until he got lost on his own make believe
world. Ditto for Nash, ditto for Godel, Howard Hughes, the list goes on.

Genius and insanity are not that far. And merely-brilliant (which Kurzweill
is) to obsessive wishful thinker, are even closer.

Especially if you have an audience of ex-hippy rich Californians that like to
hear your transcendental techno-religious jive.

~~~
ilaksh
Maybe we should all be a little bit more obsessive about our mortality.

I think that if you can look at all of the amazing transformations technology
has made in the last century and not have high expectations for even more
incredibleness then you are not understanding reality correctly.

~~~
coldtea
> _Maybe we should all be a little bit more obsessive about our mortality._

This generally leads to an early grave, emotional paralysis in real life, and
the "thousand small deaths" of the coward. Like Howard Hughes, Godel, Michael
Jackson, and tons of other examples.

Nothing worse for living your life to the fullest than being obsessive about
mortality.

------
psbp
"Google Now, a voice-activated search assistant, launched on iPhone this week"

I listen to marketplace every day, and they always seem to make mistakes like
this when talking about technology.

------
angelixd
Did anyone else catch Ray Kurzweil's supposed twitter account in the article?

<https://twitter.com/raykurzweil2035>

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OGinparadise
_> >"Like if I see a television commercial for baby diapers, I'm annoyed by it
because I stopped buying baby diapers 30 years ago. But if I get an ad for
something I really care about, some new supplement let's say, then I actually
appreciate the ad."_

He's already talking like a Google public relations robot. Google has been
trying to substitute ads for content and trying to get people to go along with
it. Of course Google can show you a multitude of sites about supplements and
maybe 2-3 ads, not 30 ads and a few results (buried by ads.) Just because an
ad is "relevant" doesn't mean it's anywhere near the same, financially
speaking, for the user. Of course Google can do whatever they like, provided
it's legal, but then we have the right to question their motives.

I don't care if this gets down-voted to oblivion by the ever-busy, MV worker
bees

~~~
yuhong
> Google has been trying to substitute ads for content and trying to get
> people to go along with it. Of course Google can show you a multitude of
> sites about supplements and maybe 2-3 ads, not 30 ads and a few results
> (buried by ads.) Just because an ad is "relevant" doesn't mean it's anywhere
> near the same, financially speaking, for the user.

Evidence?

~~~
OGinparadise
You want evidence that the most advertised product is not necessarily the
"best" one? OK, but right after I prove that the sun rises, more or less, from
the East.

~~~
yuhong
Of course not, that was not what I meant. So what is the evidence they are
actually substituting ads for content?

~~~
OGinparadise
Chew on this:
[http://1-ps.googleusercontent.com/h/www.searchenginejournal....](http://1-ps.googleusercontent.com/h/www.searchenginejournal.com/wp-
content/uploads/2012/05/625x552xmiddle-school-search-
ads.jpg.pagespeed.ic.VJwEW-pvW4.jpg)

[http://www.fuzzone.com/blog/wp-
content/uploads/2012/07/credi...](http://www.fuzzone.com/blog/wp-
content/uploads/2012/07/credit-cards-on-google-results-page.jpg)

[http://www.localseoguide.com/wp-
content/uploads/2012/03/Goog...](http://www.localseoguide.com/wp-
content/uploads/2012/03/Google-Comparison-Ads-1.jpg)

~~~
yuhong
Ah. Well, I can scroll down. But it does reminds me of complaints about the
shades of yellow used. It is #FFF8E7 BTW. On some laptop computers, it does
look more whitish the more you tilt the screen to the front. As for why, read
Douglas Bowman's infamous post about why he quit Google for clues.

~~~
OGinparadise
_Well, I can scroll down._

So scroll down. who cares. Most people don't scroll down and probably most
don't know that they clicked on ads.

Adios now.

