Kurzweil is a really interesting guy, and clearly has a brain the size of at least 5 very large rooms. But processing power only gets you so far, and he's proof positive that logic doesn't operate in a political or philosophical vacuum.
To be sure, his prognoses always operate on a ridiculously short timeline. But my main problem with him is that he sells humanity so short. It seems that, for him, sentience is just a by-product of advanced processing power; but I'd say that it's highly signicant that computers are no closer to self-awareness than they were in Babbage's time.
Computers are still just dumb machines. Anything they do, they do because someone has told them to. It's certainly very easy to be seduced by a calculator's ability to do resolve comples mathematical equations, but it would be more truthful to marvel at the programmer's ingenuity in instructing it how to do so.
But then, people have always been willing to be seduced by the illusion of mechanical intelligence.
I find it stange for someone like Kurzweil, given his background, to fall into this trap, but whenever I hear him speak about the singularity, I see him going for it head first.
Simon Schaffer writes about all this stuff, and more, with more clarity and insight than I will ever muster
To be sure, his prognoses always operate on a ridiculously short timeline. But my main problem with him is that he sells humanity so short. It seems that, for him, sentience is just a by-product of advanced processing power; but I'd say that it's highly signicant that computers are no closer to self-awareness than they were in Babbage's time.
Computers are still just dumb machines. Anything they do, they do because someone has told them to. It's certainly very easy to be seduced by a calculator's ability to do resolve comples mathematical equations, but it would be more truthful to marvel at the programmer's ingenuity in instructing it how to do so.
But then, people have always been willing to be seduced by the illusion of mechanical intelligence.
I find it stange for someone like Kurzweil, given his background, to fall into this trap, but whenever I hear him speak about the singularity, I see him going for it head first.
Simon Schaffer writes about all this stuff, and more, with more clarity and insight than I will ever muster