Quotes from Ray Kurzweil

As Einstein said, "Make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler.")

Our brains are subject to either sudden or gradual decline with age, to self-destructive addictive behaviors, to depression and anxiety disorders, and to many other limitations, not to mention potentially catastrophic lapses of judgment.

The role of the infinitely small is infinitely large.

Ultimately, we will be able to port our mental processes to a more suitable computational substrate. Then our minds won't have to stay so small.

In the latest brain image studies, we can see real-time movies of individual interneuronal connections actually creating new synapses (connection points between neurons), so we can see our brain create our thoughts and in turn see our thoughts create our brain.

It needs only to be good enough, which in the case of our species meant a level of intelligence sufficient to enable us to outwit the competitors in our ecological niche

do not think there is any thrill that can go through the human heart like that felt by the inventor as he sees some creation of the brain unfolding to success. —NIKOLA TESLA, 1896, INVENTOR OF ALTERNATING CURRENT

If these biochemical phenomena sound similar to those of the fight-or-flight syndrome, they are, except that here we are running toward something or someone; indeed, a cynic might say toward rather than away from danger. The changes are also fully consistent with those of the early phases of addictive behavior. The Roxy Music song "Love Is the Drug" is quite accurate in describing this state (albeit the subject of the song is looking to score his next fix of love).

If we were building a consciousness detector, Searle would want it to ascertain that it was squirting biological neurotransmitters. American philosopher Daniel Dennett (born in 1942) would be more flexible on substrate, but might want to determine whether or not the system contained a model of itself and of its own performance. That view comes closer to my own, but at its core is still a philosophical assumption.

When people have difficulty achieving regular releases of dopamine through these kinds of socially accepted activities, they will often seek a shortcut.

We are being propelled into this new century with no plan, no control, no brakes…. The only realistic alternative I see is relinquishment: to limit development of the technologies that are too dangerous, by limiting our pursuit of certain kinds of knowledge. —BILL JOY, "WHY THE FUTURE DOESN'T NEED US

The need to congregate workers in offices will gradually diminish.

Nanotechnology will enable the design of nanobots: robots designed at the molecular level, measured in microns (millionths of a meter), such as "respirocytes" (mechanical red-blood cells).33 Nanobots will have myriad roles within the human body, including reversing human aging (to the extent that this task will not already have been completed through biotechnology, such as genetic engineering).

Given that self-improving strong AI cannot be recalled, Yudkowsky points out that we need to "get it right the first time," and that its initial design must have "zero nonrecoverable errors."45

The genes describe certain rules and constraints for patterns of interneuronal connections, but the actual connections we have as adults are the result of a self-organizing process based on our learning. The final result—who we are—is deeply influenced by both nature (genes) and nurture (experience).

Ever since we picked up a stick to reach a higher branch, we have used our tools to extend our reach, both physically and mentally.

Order is information that fits a purpose. The measure of order is the measure of how well the information fits the purpose.

The Singularity involves an event that will take place in the material world, the inevitable next step in the evolutionary process that started with biological evolution and has extended through human-directed technological evolution.

T]here are no hard problems, only problems that are hard to a certain level of intelligence.

To express this another way, we won't experience one hundred years of technological advance in the twenty-first century; we will witness on the order of twenty thousand years of progress (again, when measured by today's rate of progress), or about one thousand times greater than what was achieved in the twentieth century.4

Singularity? It's a future period during which the pace of technological change will be so rapid, its impact so deep, that human life will be irreversibly transformed.

capacity, and bandwidth) of information technologies

Most important, the intelligence that will emerge will continue to represent the human civilization, which is already a human-machine civilization. In other words, future machines will be human, even if they are not biological. This will be the next step in evolution, the next high-level paradigm shift, the next level of indirection.

To appreciate its apparent complication, it is useful to zoom in on its image (which you can access via the links in this endnote).