Essay Sample on Ray Kurzweil's Bold Predictions: The Legacy of Prometheus

Introduction

Ray Kurzweil has come to be known the world over for his bold predictions of a bleak future that revolves around the enlightenment of robots through artificial intelligence, which is currently in development and research. He seems to think that sometime in the near future, machines are going to become sentient and they are going to take over the world, enslaving their human masters, a phenomenon termed as the 'singularity' (Eden and Moor, 2012).

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Save 25%

George Luger in the Legacy of Prometheus talks about the Greek mythology story of Prometheus, a Greek god who stole fire from Mount Olympus, against the wisdom of Zeus, the Chief god and without his knowledge and presented it to the humans Zeus had created. This act of kindness that was performed to try and make the lives of the humans more bearable comes back to bite them. George likens this story to the current and future state of artificial intelligence. Just like Prometheus gave fire to humans against Zeus' knowledge and late got hefty punishments for the same, will human beings pay a substantial penalty or price for the creation and development of Artificial intelligence when machines begin to think for themselves.

Ray puts this technological melting point at just 30 years from now when machines intelligence becomes uncontrollable. The Turing test is a test that was invented in the late 1950s by Alan Turing, a pioneer in computer science (Furness, 2014). Turing's test is simple - If a machine is indistinguishable from a human, then it was 'thinking' (Furness, 2014). According to the inventor of the test. A computer needs to dupe or 'fool' 30% of its human interrogators to be deemed as having passed the test (Dorrier, 2014). The Turing test has been seen as both a legendary and a limitation. Some of the computer science critics would hold the opinion that the Turing test should not be used to test for the intelligence of machines since they are already capable for doing so much more than humans, such as large and complicated mathematical problems. Turing's test limits the computer's intelligence to the scope of the limited human mind. Despite this concern, Turing's test is still highly regarded in the scientific community.

According to George F. Luger, the Turing test has three essential characteristics. The test tries to project an idea of intelligence in this characteristic; the test analyses the computer's responses to a particular set of questions. A standard is thereby set that will be used to gauge the level of intelligence of the machine. The test is also designed to draw away all forms of distractions from the interrogator. Some of the distractions include questions that cannot be answered, such as the processes the computer must or is supposed to use to come up with a decision or response. The test is also designed to remove any form of favouritism, a natural and inherent characteristic of human beings, by motivating the interrogator to put their focus on the answers to the questions asked.

With time, Scott Santens guarantees that robots will indeed take over many jobs. This already being witnessed in many current industries. In the next 10 years, the level of artificial intelligence is projected to rise to get more sophisticated dot the level of being able to swiftly and smoothly write up a clean school essay or assignment and will be able to drive big vehicles and machines a great deal more accurately than humans ever will (Coats, 2013). Some of the industries greatly affected by AI include transport industry, home services, health care, education, entertainment and public service, among others.

Stepping into the shoes of Ray Kurzweil, the publisher of The Singularity is Near, fresh new light is cast on the whole subject of singularity as Ray tries to show the entire world why the technological singularity is not just a possibility, but a reality. Ray argues that as technology continues to advance and get more sophisticated, progress will eventually become instant. The moment technology can achieve instantaneous development for human beings, that is when singularity will have been met. He also posits that mainstream technology that is computers would, further down the development road merge with other forms of advanced technologies such as nanotechnology. In 2006, this was almost alien like. A few years later, the idea is not so improbable after all.

Moore's law is derived from the observation that there has been an increase in the number of production of transistors in integrated circuits (ICs) by a factor of two every couple of years (Moore, 1965). Ray is observant that the technology industry has played within the bounds of Moore's law for the past 50 years, but now that is changing since production is going beyond Moore's law. The limit of Moore's law is evident with the slowing down of the production. According to Ray, Moore's law is about to come to a halt, as soon as 2020.

Many machines are doing the work that was initially designed for humans from car assembly robots to vacuum cleaner robots to the battlefield. Humans are becoming obsolete in this way. Gene editing has been praised in this current age. Altering genes to treat chronic diseases such as cancers has come to be accepted a mode of treatment through improved targeting. The newest tool, and most effective by far is the CRISPR. It is used to edit genes and has been a great tool in the treatment of life-threatening diseases such as cancer (Satell, 2016).

Conclusion

Ray thinks that by 2045, the technological singularity will have been achieved. Other futurists have put down their predictions which come a little sooner or later than Ray's predictions. Past forecasts of Ray have come true, and it would not be a wonder if this one came true as well. It is also possible that they could all be wrong, and singularity will never be achieved. This is a matter best left to time. What is certain is that the rate of technological advancement right now is staggering and the future to which it leads is very bright and teeming with possibilities. Singularity might be one of them.

References

Furness, H. (2014). Computer passes 'Turing Test' for the first time after convincing users it is human. The Telegraph. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/10884839/Computer-passes-Turing-Test-for-the-first-time-after-convincing-users-it-is-human.html

Dorrier, J. (2014). How will we know when computers can think for themselves? Singularity Hub. https://singularityhub.com/2014/06/29/how-will-we-know-when-computers-can-think-for-themselves/

Moore, Gordon E. (1965). "Cramming more components onto integrated circuits". Electronics. Retrieved 2016-07-01. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0By83v5TWkGjvQkpBcXJKT1I1TTA/view?usp=sharing

Eden, A. H., and Moor, J. H. (2012). Singularity hypotheses: A Scientific and Philosophical Assessment. Dordrecht: Springer. Pp. 1-2. ISBN 9783642325601

Satell, G. (2016). Three reasons to believe the singularity is near. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/gregsatell/2016/06/03/3-reasons-to-believe-the-singularity-is-near/#702997d77b39