Bill Gates called Kurzweil "the best I know at predicting the future of artificial intelligence." Kurzweil is also known for other predictions that go beyond artificial intelligence. This article is devoted to the most interesting, in my opinion, Kurzweil's predictions for the next twenty-odd years. But first, let's find out who Ray Kurzweil is?
A futurist and currently Google CTO, Kurzweil has authored seven books (five of which have become bestsellers), holds twenty honorary doctorates, and has received distinctions from three American presidents.
He is also the inventor of many technologies, from the first flatbed CCD scanner to the first reading machine for the blind. He is also a co-founder of Singularity University and is working with Larry Page to develop artificial intelligence at Google.
In short, Ray Kurzweil is quite smart and his predictions are quite interesting. He constantly reminds us that we are living in the most interesting time in human history. Let's go through some of Kurzweil's predictions that came true.
Kurzweil's predictions over the past 25 years
In 1990 (25 years ago) he predicted …
… that the computer will beat the 1998 world chess champion. In 1997, Deep Blue (IBM) beat Garry Kasparov.
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… that personal computers will be able to answer questions with wireless Internet access in 2010. As you can see, he was right.
… that in the early 2000s, exoskeletons would allow disabled people to walk. Companies like Ekso Bionics and others are developing technologies (and have already developed) that do just that and more.
In 1999 he predicted …
… that people will be able to give voice commands to computers as early as 2009. While natural language interfaces like Siri and Google Now were just beginning a long journey in 2009, it is likely that we will soon get rid of keyboards altogether.
… that computer displays will be embedded in glasses, creating augmented reality, in 2009. In laboratories and by scientists, such displays were created long before 2009, but Google began experimenting with prototypes of Google Glass in 2011.
Now we are seeing an explosion in the field of augmented and virtual reality. Microsoft just unveiled the HoloLens, and Magic Leap is working on some pretty cool technologies - not to mention the rest.
In 2005 he predicted …
… that by 2010 virtual solutions will enable real-time language translations, where words in a foreign language will be translated into text in another language. It is worth saying that Microsoft (Skype Translate), Google (Translate) and others have already implemented this. Some apps like Word Lens can actually translate words in your camera shots.
Kurzweil's predictions for the next 25 years
The above are just a few predictions. While he could be wrong about small things, up to a year, his track record looks impressive. But there are others that entrepreneurs might find interesting, for example. Some can make money from them. The business of others is to be directly influenced.
“By the end of 2020, glasses will project images directly onto the retina. Ten terabytes of processing power (about the same as the human brain) will cost $ 1,000.
By the 2020s, most diseases will disappear as nanobots become smarter than current medical technology. Normal human nutrition can be replaced by nanosystems. The Turing test will be run continuously. Self-driving cars will flood the roads, people will be banned from driving on highways on their own.
By the 2030s, virtual reality will feel 100% real. We will be able to upload our own brain / consciousness by the end of this decade.
By the 2040s, nonbiological intelligence will be a billion times more capable than biological intelligence (i.e. ours). Nanotechnology will be able to create food and any objects of the physical world literally out of thin air.
By 2045, we will be able to multiply our intelligence a billion times by wirelessly connecting the cortex of our hemispheres to an artificial neocortex in the cloud."
An important point is worth making. It's not about predictions. The point is what they represent. Kurzweil's predictions are a by-product of his (and ours, in principle) understanding of Moore's Law, the Law of Increasing Return, and exponential technology.
These technologies follow an exponential curve based on the principle that computing power doubles every two years. We humans are used to thinking linearly. Entrepreneurs are required to think exponentially.
Most of us do not understand the predictions of futurists because they mislead us in the early stages of the development of exponential technologies. First of all, we see them as destructive - just look at the massive companies that have been destroyed by technological advances in artificial intelligence, virtual reality, robotics, the Internet, mobile phones and so on. But each of these technologies goes a path of demonetization and democratization of access to products, and this path is not linear - it is exponential (think of Moore's Law).
Today, these same technologies are at the heart of multi-billion dollar companies and are affecting the lives of billions of people.