Ray Kurzweil

Ray Kurzweil first began speculating about the future when he was a child, but only later as an adult did he become seriously involved with trying to accurately forecast future events. Kurzweil came to realize that his success as an inventor depended largely on proper timing: His new inventions had to be released onto the market only once many other, supporting technologies had come into existence. A device issued too early and without proper refinement would lack some key element of functionality, and a device put out too late would find the market already flooded with a different product, or consumers demanding something better.

It thus became imperative for Kurzweil to have an understanding of the rates and directions of technological development. He has, throughout his adult life, kept close track of advances in the computer and machine industries, and has precisely modeled them. By extrapolating past trends into the future, Kurzweil has found a way to predict the course of technological development.

After several years of closely tracking these trends, Kurzweil came to realize that the innovation rate of computer technology was increasing in an exponential- as opposed to linear manner. As a computer scientist, Kurzweil also understood that there was no technical reason that this type of performance growth could not continue well into the 21st century.

Since growth in so many fields of science and technology depends upon the power of computers, improvements to computing power translate into improvements to human knowledge and to non-computer sciences like nanotechnology, biotechnology, and materials science. Considering the ongoing exponential growth in computer capabilities, this means fantastic new technologies will become available long before the vast majority of people--who intuitively think linearly about technological advance--expect. This core idea is expressed by Kurzweil's "Law of Accelerating Returns."

Touching on his most important predictions, Kurzweil believes that, between now and 2050, technology will become so advanced that new medicines and medical techniques will allow people to radically extend their lifespans while preserving and even improving quality of life. The aging process could at first be slowed, then halted, and then reversed as newer and better medical technologies became available. Kurzweil believes that much of this will be thanks to medical nanotechnology, which will allow microscopic machines to travel through one's body and repair all types of damage at the cellular level. But equally consequential developments will occur within the realm of computers as they become increasingly powerful, numerous and cheap between now and 2050. Kurzweil believes that they will gain the ability to think for themselves and will thus become Artificially Intelligent. An Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) could handle the full range of human intellectual tasks and would be both emotional and self-aware. Kurzweil believes that A.I.'s will inevitably become far smarter and more powerful than humans, and will come to dominate the world in many ways. But he also believes that humanity will be protected from extermination because machines will exhibit moral thinking and will respect humans as their ancestors, and because the line between humans and machines will have--by the time the machines become powerful enough to take over--blurred thanks to the widespread use of cybernetics among the human population. Cybernetic implants will greatly enhance human cognitive and physical abilities, and allow direct interface between humans and machines. Humans and machines will exist on a continuum instead of as two, distinct species. His beliefs regarding (among other things) the potential for human immortality and the peaceful rise of a supreme machine race place Kurzweil amongst the most personally optimistic of futurists.

Ray Kurzweil is now one of the world's leading futurists, and spends a great deal of time giving public lectures and making T.V. appearances to explain his ideas, which have only been very basically summarized thus far by this section. Kurzweil is also a Transhumanist because he believes it is ethical and beneficial for people to use technology--including radical technologies that don't yet exist--to improve their lives and to improve the world as a whole. For example, as a Transhumanist, Kurzweil sees no problem with allowing people to forever cheat death through the use of advanced technologies or to upgrade themselves to superhuman extremes through cybernetics, whereas most non-Transhumanists would reject these ideas on religious grounds or because they violate the laws of nature and the fundamental norms of human life. In fact, Kurzweil believes that radical, technology-based improvements to human beings will lead them to richer, more satisfying lives in which they may also better contribute to the rest of society.

Kurzweil's standing as a leading futurist and Transhumanist have gained him positions of prominence within pertinent organizations:

In December 2004, Kurzweil joined the advisory board of the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence.
In October 2005, Kurzweil joined the scientific advisory board of the Lifeboat Foundation.
On May 13, 2006, Kurzweil was the first speaker at the Stanford University Singularity Summit.
Futurism, as a philosophical or academic study, looks at the medium to long-term future in an attempt to predict based on current trends. Raymond Kurzweil states his belief that the future of humanity is being determined by an exponential expansion of knowledge, and that the very rate of the change of this exponential growth is driving our collective destiny irrespective of our narrow sightedness, clinging archaisms, or fear of change. Our biological evolution, according to Kurzweil, is on the verge of being superseded by our technological evolution. An evolution conjoined of cogent biological manipulation with a possible emerging self-aware, self-organizing machine intelligence. The rate of the change of the exponential explosion of knowledge and technology not only envelops us, but also irreversibly transforms us.

Accordingly, in Kurzweil's predictions, we are currently (as of the end of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty first century) exiting the era in which our human biology is closed to us, and are entering into the posthuman era, in which our extensive knowledge of biochemistry, neurology and cybernetics will allow us to rebuild our bodies and our minds from the ground up. Kurzweil believes that Strong A.I., advanced nanotechnology and cybernetics are enabling technologies that will initiate the Posthuman Era through a disruptive, worldwide event known as the Singularity. By extrapolating past and current trends of technological growth into the future, Kurzweil has concluded that the aforementioned technologies will be available in 2045, and that the Singularity will thus occur in the same year.