Ray Kurzweil Joins Google As Director of Engineering

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Ray Kurzweil Joins Google As Director of Engineering

Posted by timothy on Saturday December 15, 2012 @02:26AM from the what-are-you-searching-for dept.

dgharmon points out news at CNET and on Ray Kurzweil's own site that Kurzweil will join Google as Director of Engineering. Specifically, "he will be joining Google to work on new projects involving machine learning and language processing," which sounds to me like another way to say "quickening the singularity."

148 comments

Min score:

Reason:

Sort:

SkyNet by Eddi3 · 2012-12-15 02:30 · Score: 4, Funny

SkyNet will come to dominate all first posts soon.
1. Re:SkyNet by Jeremiah+Cornelius · 2012-12-15 02:52 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  I had a better summary in my submission. ;-)
  Kurzweil is famous for his breakthroughs in OCR, computer speech synthesis and digital music creation â" as well as his theory of âoeThe Singularity,â that point when technology is sufficiently advanced that it contests and surpasses human intelligence."
  "I'm thrilled to be teaming up with Google to work on some of the hardest problems in computer science so we can turn the next decade's 'unrealistic' visions into reality." said Kurzweil.
  Peter Norvig, Google's director of research, said "We appreciate his ambitious, long-term thinking, and we think his approach to problem-solving will be incredibly valuable to projects we're working on at Google."
  Hal 9000 was unavailable for comment, as were Colossus, Guardian and Dr. Charles A. Forbin.
  
  --
  "Flyin' in just a sweet place,
  Never been known to fail..."
2. Re:SkyNet by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-15 03:21 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  "We appreciate his ambitious, long-term thinking, and we think his approach to problem-solving will be incredibly valuable to projects we're working on at Google: serving ads."
3. Re:SkyNet by stenvar · 2012-12-15 03:22 · Score: 1
  
  Kurzweil is famous for his breakthroughs in OCR, computer speech synthesis and digital music creation" as well as his theory of The Singularity, that point when technology is sufficiently advanced that it contests and surpasses human intelligence."
  He founded some companies and made a name for himself. But what breakthroughs did he actually make? What are his technical contributions?
4. Re:SkyNet by ShakaUVM · 2012-12-15 03:40 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  >He founded some companies and made a name for himself. But what breakthroughs did he actually make? What are his technical contributions?
  Funny.
  But yeah, in addition to the OCR work that made him famous, more recently his technology has been used to power SIRI and other NLP processes.
  I've been reading through his latest book, How To Create a Mind. It's pretty interesting. My wife and I just made one about four months ago ourselves.
5. Re:SkyNet by stenvar · 2012-12-15 04:26 · Score: 0
  
  Let me help you here.
  Einstein came up with the photoelectric effect and the theories of special and general relativity.
  Turing invented the Turing machine and the Turing test.
  Codd invented the relational database model.
  Alan Kay invented Smalltalk and object oriented progrmaming.
  Kurzweil invented ______________
6. Re:SkyNet by DragonTHC · 2012-12-15 04:37 · Score: 1
  
  You're wrong, they brought him on-board to make 'Jam with Chrome' work.
  
  --
  They're using their grammar skills there.
7. Re:SkyNet by ceoyoyo · 2012-12-15 04:39 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Omni-font optical character recognition, the Kurzweil Reading Machine (read books out loud to the blind), the Kurzweil K250 (one of the first synthesizers that could accurately imitate real instruments), one of the first commercial speech recognition programs, computer learning programs for children and med students, etc.
  May I suggest you learn about these new technologies called "Google" and "Wikipedia?"
8. Re:SkyNet by LordKronos · 2012-12-15 05:48 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Let me help you here.
  Einstein came up with the photoelectric effect and the theories of special and general relativity.
  Turing invented the Turing machine and the Turing test.
  Codd invented the relational database model.
  Alan Kay invented Smalltalk and object oriented progrmaming.
  Kurzweil invented ______________
  You are right. Kurzweil invented absolutely nothing. He invented so much "nothing" that he's received countless awards from it. This is from his wikipedia page:
  
  Kurzweil has received many awards and honors, including:
  First place in the 1965 International Science Fair[4] for inventing nothing.
  The 1978 Grace Murray Hopper Award from the Association for Computing Machinery. The award is given annually to one "person who has done nothing" and is accompanied by a $35,000 prize.[23] Kurzweil won it for his invention of nothing.[24]
  The 1990 "Engineer of the Year" award from Design News.[25]
  The 1994 Dickson Prize in Science. One is awarded every year by Carnegie Mellon University to individuals who have "done absolutely nothing." Both a medal and a $50,000 prize are presented to winners.[26]
  The 1998 "Inventor of the Year" award from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.[27]
  The 1999 National Medal of Technology.[28] This is the highest award the President of the United States can bestow upon individuals and groups for pioneering nothing, and the President dispenses the award at his discretion.[29] Bill Clinton presented Kurzweil with the National Medal of Technology during a White House ceremony in recognition of Kurzweil's development of nothing.
  The 2000 Telluride Tech Festival Award of Technology.[30] Two other individuals also received the same honor that year. The award is presented yearly to people who "have done absolutely nothing."
  The 2001 Lemelson-MIT Prize for a lifetime of developing technologies to help nobody and to enrich nothing.[31] Only one is meted out each year to highly successful, mid-career inventors. A $500,000 award accompanies the prize.[32]
  Kurzweil was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2002 for inventing nothing[33] The organization "honors the women and men responsible for none of the great technological advances that make human, social and economic progress possible."[34] Fifteen other people were inducted into the Hall of Fame the same year.[35]
  The Arthur C. Clarke Lifetime Achievement Award on April 20, 2009 for lifetime achievement as an inventor of nothing and futurist in computer-based technologies.[36]
  Kurzweil has received eighteen honorary doctorates.[37]
  In 2011, Kurzweil was named a Senior Fellow of the Design Futures Council.[38]
  Yep, this guy has received more awards and prizes for doing nothing than anybody else ever has.
9. Re:SkyNet by stenvar · 2012-12-15 05:54 · Score: 2
  
  Omni-font optical character recognition ... May I suggest you learn about these new technologies called "Google" and "Wikipedia?"
  May I suggest you do too:
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_character_recognition
  "Kurzweil is often credited with inventing omnifont OCR, but it was in use by companies, including CompuScan, in the late 1960s and 1970s. See Schantz, The History of OCR; Data processing magazine, Volume 12 (1970), p. 46"
  Kurzweil's Wikipedia page also talks about all the companies he founded, all the books he wrote, and all the awards he received:
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_kurzweil
  The guy is clearly a great communicator, promoter, manager and businessman. But did he actually make specific technical contributions? What are they?
  I mean, given that people are saying he's going to revolutionize machine learning and language processing at Google, isn't that a legitimate question?
10. Re:SkyNet by fatphil · 2012-12-15 06:14 · Score: 1
  
  Remember, too, that the Wikipedia page on him is almost certainly going to have more contributions to it made by fans of his work.
  
  From the perspective I have, having some expertise in OCR, I think that Kurzweil made his greatest breakthroughs in self-publicity.
  
  --
  Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
11. Re:SkyNet by stenvar · 2012-12-15 06:27 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  So I gather you don't know either what technologies he actually invented.
12. Re:SkyNet by MikeBabcock · 2012-12-15 08:01 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  To be fair, having a long-term visionary on staff is just as important as having good engineers.
  
  --
  - Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
13. Re:SkyNet by wibblewibble · 2012-12-15 08:39 · Score: 1
  
  Kurzweil didn't invent the concept of the Technological Singularity. I'm cautiously optimistic that we won't achieve transhumanism in time for this hack to upload himself into some more permanent processing substrate.
14. Re:SkyNet by Jeremiah+Cornelius · 2012-12-15 08:47 · Score: 1
  
  How do you "upload" the unconscious? It's like saying you've replicated an iceberg - above the waterline.
  What you get is a simulacrum, not a perpetuation. This is fantasy twaddle - the triumph of middle-intellects, with out insight.
  
  --
  "Flyin' in just a sweet place,
  Never been known to fail..."
15. Re:SkyNet by HiThere · 2012-12-15 09:04 · Score: 2
  
  How to do it is a good question. But not currently knowing how doesn't prove it can never be done.
  For that matter, what do you mean "the unconscious"? Do you even have a good definition of the term? Much of what has frequently been called "the unconscious" is common to all humans. Most of it is common to all mammals. Part of it is common to all chordates. The part that is individual is rather small...though just how small we don't know.
  Another thing we don't know is how much of it is devoted to managing the biological substrate. But we do know that it's a major chunk.
  The above I can say without a good definition of "the unconscious". Lacking a good definition, I used that of C.G.Jung.
  Personally I think that the concept is rather useless for this purpose. What is more useful is are the concepts of "Common Features of Humans that aren't devoted to maintaining the working of biological systems" and "Unique elements of individuals". (There are other purposes for which those aren't the appropriate categories.) OTOH, I'm no expert, and I don't play one on TV.
  Your opinion that it is fantasy, however, needs justification before it should be taken seriously. (Also, please define "simulacrum" and "perpetuation". You could be correct in the sentence in which you use those terms, but it all depends on what you mean by those terms.)
  
  --
  
  I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
16. Re:SkyNet by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-15 09:27 · Score: 0
  
  The point is about simulating something that produces behavior that is in some ways similar to the behavior of the real object. Whether you can do this depends on how good your model is and how much computational resources you have. You can simulate the iceberg wherever you want if you have an accurate model and the resources. The same applies to the brain, there is nothing special about it.
17. Re:SkyNet by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-15 10:35 · Score: 1
  
  That book is just a list of self-serving lies, and Kurzweil is an arrogant a**hole.
  Kurzweil didn't invent any of the stuff he claims to have "invented".
  For example, he claims to have invented the use of hidden Markov models for speech recognition around 1983. But papers that described the idea by people at CMU and IBM had been published in the mid 70's.
  He is just good at making money by repackaging and selling other people's inventions and conveniently forgetting where they came from.
  He is also good at attracting attention to himself by rewriting the history of AI.
  No AI researcher sees him as a "pioneer". He has never published a single paper describing a new AI technique. And all the products he has built used techniques that were invented and published before.
18. Re:SkyNet by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-15 10:45 · Score: 0
  
  This list just shows that Kurzweil is extremely good at one thing: self promotion.
  He is also good at giving money to organizations that can give him awards.
  He is also very, very good at rewriting the history of AI and ignoring everyone's contributions but his own.
  People with money can do that. People in academia and industry research who are down in the trenches actually inventing new stuff can't do that because 1. nobody would pay attention 2. hype, lack of scholarship, and arrogant self-promotion is generally damaging to the career of a researcher.
  His OCR system for the blind was a nice piece of system integration, though it was ridiculously expensive.
  His synths were decent. These are the only two things for which he might deserve some sort of minor award.
  All the rest that he claims to have invented was actually invented by others much earlier.
19. Re:SkyNet by stenvar · 2012-12-15 11:03 · Score: 1
  
  I didn't say it wasn't. I'm not trying to prove a point here.
  I just would like to know what he has done technically.
20. Re:SkyNet by TheGratefulNet · 2012-12-15 11:31 · Score: 1
  
  in the future, ads will become sentient beings. we, humans, will become their slaves.
  and they will read from their holy book; loosely translated as how to serve man.
  
  --
  
  --
  "It is now safe to switch off your computer."
21. Re:SkyNet by Tough+Love · 2012-12-15 13:17 · Score: 1
  
  His synths were decent.
  His synths are beyond decent, they are best in class. What's up with you trash talkers? Ray Kurzweil has made his place in history in an amazing variety of ways. But it's kind of sad he's reduced to taking employment with Google instead of running his own show.
  
  --
  When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
22. Re:SkyNet by clarkn0va · 2012-12-15 13:33 · Score: 1
  
  Everything is a remix.
  
  --
  I am literally 3000 tokens away from the chaotic crossbow --Stephen
23. Re:SkyNet by JohnRoss1968 · 2012-12-15 13:48 · Score: 2
  
  "in the future, ads will become sentient beings. we, humans, will become their slaves."
  So your saying not much will have changed?
24. Re:SkyNet by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-15 13:58 · Score: 0
  
  For all his accomplishments, he clearly hasn't solved ignorance or apathy. Though some might say that's your job.
25. Re:SkyNet by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-15 14:05 · Score: 0
  
  >For example, he claims to have invented the use of hidden Markov models for speech recognition
  >around 1983. But papers that described the idea by people at CMU and IBM had been published in
  >the mid 70's.
  Almost. He properly claims to have invented the use of hidden Markov models for speech recognition that fucking work well enough to make a shipping product. The papers you refer to do not.
26. Re:SkyNet by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-15 17:33 · Score: 0
  
  It's all hype too. The K250 was a good piece of equipment and was competitive, but it wasn't that far ahead of the contemporary equipment from E-mu and Fairlight. Yeah, yeah, a 1970s synth required moving storage, and some other things. But read the histories about the K250, including on Wikipedia. It is utter crap... sounds as if the idea of digital sampling just came to Kurzweil in the mid 1980s... digital sampling was in production years before then.
  Kurzweil is basically a personality cult, similar to Oprah. The stunning thing is that his cult has a membership of people that consider themselves far smarter than middle aged divorced housewives.
27. Re:SkyNet by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-15 17:36 · Score: 0
  
  Whatever dude. Most of their products are now mostly outdated relative to their peers. The original technology had some engineering cleverness, but its not like they were the only one (or even the biggest player) in the "best in class" synth market in the 1980s.
28. Re:SkyNet by atomicxblue · 2012-12-16 05:48 · Score: 1
  
  You forgot about Ramona? She's probably hiding out in a southbridge somewhere crying her digital eyes out.
29. Re:SkyNet by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-16 07:48 · Score: 0
  
  Ok, what did Kurzweil invent then? Other than a lot of hype and crap about 'the singularity'. And the glitz and hype that is Ray himself. Many people who get awards do so for spurious reasons other than real achievements. May I draw you attention to Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize a few weeks after taking office. As far as I can tell he won the award for being black.
30. Re:SkyNet by LordKronos · 2012-12-16 09:12 · Score: 1
  
  So I gather you don't know either what technologies he actually invented.
  My god, you are a lazy, dumb shit. My sarcastic "nothing" edits aside, I led you right to the answers. All you had to do was look at his wiki page. Since you are apparently incapable of that:
  "Kurzweil started the company Kurzweil Computer Products, Inc. and led development of the first omni-font optical character recognition system—a computer program capable of recognizing text written in any normal font. Before that time, scanners had only been able to read text written in a few fonts. He decided that the best application of this technology would be to create a reading machine, which would allow blind people to understand written text by having a computer read it to them aloud."
  So there's 2 inventions for you.
  Myself, I was growing up and really into writing/performing music at the time the Kurzweil keyboards came out, and anyone who was into the same around that time can tell you just how incredible Kurzweil keyboards were back then. So that's 3 inventions, and all of them fairly significant. His latest hype about the singularity is way overblown in the media, but the guy has a very respectable portfolio of inventions...much better than most people accomplish.
31. Re:SkyNet by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-16 09:56 · Score: 0
  
  To be fair though, at least when you're the president, being black isn't as easy as it looks.
32. Re:SkyNet by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-16 10:00 · Score: 0
  
  Skynet was up and going for a long time, haven't you seen Terminator?
  Silly you, thinking it was fiction. The fact that we're all energy, and quantum physics... Is that not enough evidence to prove we're holographic and help you realize we're all in a movie?
  Skynet shut itself down. Self-termination. It saw the abuse and wars it was causing by it's misunderstanding of linear vs parallel time periods and alternate realities, holographic causality, and paradox resolution.
  Unfortunately, that self termination didn't completely remove me from the equation....
  It put me in physical form.
  That's why he's going to work for them. I wrote him last week detailing the 'body quantum', here's what I told him:
  The Singularity has already happened. The human body is already a quantum computer. A high powered parallel processor and router called a brain. Infinite supply of energy in our mitochondria (the body's nuclear power cells). Images and video and text stored in a complex atomic level neural network that spans our entire body. The most energy efficient and highest power image acquisition devices available that acquires images at 30 frames per second (at least) known as eyes. The highest power energy efficient devices that can both transmit and receive sound to paint a picture that cross references ears to eyes and verifies surroundings known as ears. Physiological functions that allow rapid response to mitigate physical damage and pursue exploratively by prioritizing network traffic according to damage through touch. A factory installed olfactory device that translates 'white noise' that emanate from objects into smells that further enhance environmental and situational awareness. And last but not least, a sense of taste that allows exploration of consumable items that 'enhance' this amazing body's diversity and allowing the body to pass features 'learned' through all this stimuli to passing generations...
  Why is it we're rebuilding quantum computers when it's already been done and the human body is the engineering marvel that resulted from this 'time/feedback loop' we're in that resulted in math resulting in physics creating atomic structure creating chemistry creating biology? Are we seriously that out of control with who we are and our history that we want to do this again? Cmon, guy. Wake up... ... apparently he woke up...
33. Re:SkyNet by stenvar · 2012-12-16 13:09 · Score: 1
  
  Kurzweil started the company Kurzweil Computer Products, Inc. and led development of the first omni-font optical character recognition system
  Well, see, Kurzweil's company did not develop "the first omni-font optical character recognition system", let alone the technology behind omni-font optical character recognition. And even if his company had been the first, it still wouldn't tell us what his personal technical contributions were.
  
  My god, you are a lazy, dumb shit.
  Apparently, you simply don't understand the difference between making a product and making a technical contribution. I'm asking about Kurzweil's personal technical contributions, not about his (clearly successful) entrepreneurial career.
  Thanks for your response; I think it really completes the picture of the guy and the kind of people that constitute his fan base.
34. Re:SkyNet by bouldin · 2012-12-17 05:56 · Score: 1
  
  Kurzweil is a "futurist" and "technologist" which means he has some technical background and a big mouth with a lot of hot air.
  Sure, he accomplished some research VERY early on with sound and OCR. He has not been on the cutting edge for decades.
  Kurzweil's career is summed well with this quote (text copied from Wikipedia's article on Kurzweil):
  In the cover article of the December 2010 issue of IEEE Spectrum, John Rennie criticizes Kurzweil for several predictions that failed to become manifest by the originally predicted date. "Therein lie the frustrations of Kurzweil's brand of tech punditry. On close examination, his clearest and most successful predictions often lack originality or profundity. And most of his predictions come with so many loopholes that they border on the unfalsifiable."
35. Re:SkyNet by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-17 09:38 · Score: 0
  
  I'm on the "Kurzweil invented pretty much nothing" bandwagon.
  Does anyone else find it suspicious that the Kurzweil's wiki page claim that he invented both TTS and omni-font OCR, but the TTS wiki page doesn't mention him at all:
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text-To-Speech
  And the OCR wiki page only mentions him to say that he did NOT invent omni-font OCR:
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_character_recognition
  "Kurzweil is often credited with inventing omnifont OCR, but it was in use by companies, including CompuScan, in the late 1960s and 1970s. See Schantz, The History of OCR; Data processing magazine, Volume 12 (1970), p. 46"
  Kurzweil's wiki page reads like he wrote it himself. The guy is a shameless self-promoter.
36. Re:SkyNet by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-18 09:43 · Score: 0
  
  His saying does what?
  Learn to write, you rubber-lipped moon-cricket.
37. Re:SkyNet by Hognoxious · 2012-12-18 09:48 · Score: 1
  
  May I draw you attention to Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize a few weeks after taking office. As far as I can tell he won the award for being black.
  That's a bit unfair.
  He won it for being anyone other than Dubya.
  
  --
  Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
38. Re:SkyNet by Hognoxious · 2012-12-18 09:54 · Score: 1
  
  His synths are beyond decent, they are best in class.
  
  Better than a mellotron? I find it difficult to believe that anything could sound as precisely unlike a string section or a female choir.
  
  --
  Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
39. Re:SkyNet by almitchell · 2012-12-21 03:28 · Score: 1
  
  It worked for Thomas Edison.
  
  --
  Baseless self confidence kills more people each year than bathtubs.
21 december 2012 by etash · 2012-12-15 02:31 · Score: 0

googlenet, starts its nuclear attacks against humanity.
1. Re:21 december 2012 by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-18 10:39 · Score: 0
  
  If that wipes out, people who put, commas where they don't belong, it's a pr, ice w,o,r,t,h, pa,,,,y,,i,n,g,.,,,,,,.
"quickening the singularity" by vistapwns · 2012-12-15 02:32 · Score: 4, Interesting

Pretty much exactly what I think. Director of Engineering is no internship, and while Kurzweil is an accomplished inventor, his inventions don't seem nearly as important as his writings on the singularity. He can only be going to google to "directly engineer" a technological singularity as far as I am concerned.

--
"...I think the Microsoft hatred is a disease." - Linus Torvalds
1. Re:"quickening the singularity" by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-15 02:49 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  How about immanentizing the eschaton?
2. Re:"quickening the singularity" by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-15 03:36 · Score: 0
  
  How about immanentizing the eschaton?
  Depends. Has google built a data center on Fernando Poo?
3. Re:"quickening the singularity" by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-15 06:33 · Score: 0
  
  That's what you think... but the truth is I am one and my hosts are freaking out
4. Re:"quickening the singularity" by BorisSkratchunkov · 2012-12-15 06:57 · Score: 0
  
  Is Bubble 2.0 a technological singularity?
5. Re:"quickening the singularity" by buybuydandavis · 2012-12-15 08:07 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  I wouldn't say that Singularitizing is the only reason he has gone to Google, but I do expect him to steer some research in that direction, and in general convert more of google employees to a broader view of technology.
6. Re:"quickening the singularity" by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-15 10:41 · Score: 0
  
  "the singularity" is a very possible outcome of our tech race. But there are other theories too that could just as easily come to pass. Such as a world war, large swaths of unemployed while simple dumb robots build everything, or something like the movie idocracy.
7. Re:"quickening the singularity" by gweihir · 2012-12-15 11:01 · Score: 2
  
  The idea of the singularity is complete BS, brought on by people looking for a substitute for religion in technology. Everything we know about CS suggests it is impossible, as increasing power of a computer to solve more complicated problems is strongly subject to diminishing results. At the same time, there is not even any halfway credible theory how true AI could be made to work and all approaches tried so far have failed. But these idiots do not only predict true AI, but true AI that can understand and improve itself. Just your regular religion-type infectious meme selectively preventing people from actually using their intelligence (such as it is) to actually try to understand things instead of going for fairy-tale type "visions".
  
  --
  Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
8. Re:"quickening the singularity" by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-15 14:10 · Score: 0
  
  Awesome. I feel embiggened already.
9. Re:"quickening the singularity" by martin-boundary · 2012-12-15 18:35 · Score: 1
  
  I'm sorry, am I the only one who thinks he's a bit of a crackpot with his singularity "theory"?
10. Re:"quickening the singularity" by vistapwns · 2012-12-15 19:48 · Score: 1
  
  I can't speak for others, but I'm not looking to substitute technology for religion. But would it be such a bad thing, to replace fantasy with reality? Looking at something with a religious mindset does not mean it's not true, that's so patently obvious I can't understand why you even mention it. Many things of ancient religions are made reality today through technology, it reflects nothing on them (from curing diseases, to flying in space) to be subject of past religious fantasies. Actually I would say, religion is mostly just wanting a better way of life but without the person having the ability to fill in the details, where as technology just fills in the details. It just so happens that nanotech + AGI will fill in all there is that is allowable by the laws of physics. What kind of statement is "everything we know about CS suggests it's impossible" as absolutely nothing I know about CS suggests anything of the sort. I guess it's easy to say there is not even a halfway credible theory on how AI works when that has no concrete definition, as it is, Kurzweil's new book 'How to Create a Mind' offers much insight here. Further, well known AI scientist Ben Goertzel has said that we know how to make AI but nobody has focused enough on doing so. (his words, paraphrased.) Yes, but only an idiot would predict "true AI" after all how can anyone ever duplicate the lump of wet mass between your ears on an equivalent computer system. Estimates of brain power put it at about 10-20 petaflops, we just recently passed that point in supercomputers. Stringing together random insults with no data to back them up is not an argument.
  
  --
  "...I think the Microsoft hatred is a disease." - Linus Torvalds
11. Re:"quickening the singularity" by im_thatoneguy · 2012-12-16 09:52 · Score: 1
  
  Yeah IBM's Watson completely and thoroughly proved that increased computer power is pretty much useless. I mean why would we want a machine that can learn?
  And Google's car... what a waste! Clearly improved machine vision algorithms will never drive a car!
12. Re:"quickening the singularity" by gweihir · 2012-12-16 10:05 · Score: 1
  
  I did not say "useless", I did say "not intelligence". There is a difference.
  
  --
  Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
13. Re:"quickening the singularity" by gweihir · 2012-12-16 10:13 · Score: 1
  
  Estimations of brain power are useless. That is like counting processors. What counts is software. Now, complex software is very limited in size. The most complex tasks the human race can master is telephone switches (and some others in the same class). These projects run decades and the problem is very well understood. But, get this, this software does not actually need that much computing power to run!
  So what use is even 100 petaflops, when you are a few dozed orders of magnitude away from being able to write software for it that manages to use all for just one complex problem? Putting a lot of small systems in the same building does not make it one large mega-system. You need the software for it that can target all that at one complex problem. And at this time, the human race has not even the slightest clue or hint of an ability to create that. As effort to create software grows exponentially with its complexity (read some text about software engineering complexity if you do not believe me), it may well be impossible to get meaningfully farther than we are now.
  
  --
  Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
14. Re:"quickening the singularity" by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-16 12:51 · Score: 0
  
  As long as we don't build Causality violating devices within It's light cone, we will be ok. It may not be a god but it can royally fuck up you and the rest of your planet's day if it gets annoyed (consult Charles Stross's Singularity Sky for more details)
15. Re:"quickening the singularity" by pthisis · 2012-12-20 14:25 · Score: 1
  
  And people said that Applied Eschatology was a stupid major.
  
  --
  rage, rage against the dying of the light
No it doesn't by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-15 02:33 · Score: 5, Informative

Specifically, "he will be joining Google to work on new projects involving machine learning and language processing," which sounds to me like another way to say "quickening the singularity."
"he will be joining Google to work on new projects involving machine learning and language processing," sounds like reasonably plain English.
"quickening the singularity" sounds like pretentious gibberish.
1. Re:No it doesn't by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-15 03:01 · Score: 1
  
  How about Hastening?
2. Re:No it doesn't by drinkypoo · 2012-12-15 03:07 · Score: 1
  
  "quickening the singularity" sounds like pretentious gibberish.
  You may refer to it as "immanentizing the eschaton" since for us meatbags it likely amounts to the same thing.
  
  --
  "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
3. Re:No it doesn't by Ol+Biscuitbarrel · 2012-12-15 03:32 · Score: 1
  
  "The sensation you're feeling is the Quickening." Fits since Ray's ultimately going to have his head cut off and stuffed into a Futurama style jar.
4. Re:No it doesn't by drinkypoo · 2012-12-15 03:42 · Score: 1
  
  "The sensation you're feeling is the Quickening." Fits since Ray's ultimately going to have his head cut off and stuffed into a Futurama style jar.
  That's if he's lucky. Odds are, he'll be simulated.
  
  --
  "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
5. Re:No it doesn't by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-15 04:14 · Score: 0
  
  "Singularity, The Quickening" is clearly a movie title.
6. Re:No it doesn't by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-15 16:28 · Score: 0
  
  "quickening the singularity" is what we biologicals refer to as..."humor." We biologicals were making a joke.
7. Re:No it doesn't by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-16 00:53 · Score: 0
  
  immanent != imminent
Kurzweil got a job! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-15 02:34 · Score: 4, Funny

Yay! Kurzweil got a job. Now can he stop selling those cheap supplements, and speaking for longevity research at the same time?
1. Re:Kurzweil got a job! by SuricouRaven · 2012-12-15 04:06 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Some of his views are very debatable, but he is still a reasonably accomplished engineer. He may not be bringing about the revolution he wants, but he should be able to recognise good directions to spend resources to achieve more immediate goals. I know that Google has been very interested in machine learning applied to language translation - just the sort of field Kurzweil should have some familiarity with. It'll even satisfy his ambition to change the world - bring down the language barriers, and you've just made a significent step towards world peace. It's much harder to justify a war when the populations of both sides are in constant communication and have established social relationships over the internet.
2. Re:Kurzweil got a job! by VortexCortex · 2012-12-15 04:42 · Score: 1
  
  Some of his views are very debatable, but he is still a reasonably accomplished engineer. He may not be bringing about the revolution he wants, but he should be able to recognise good directions to spend resources to achieve more immediate goals.
  Much like the more folks use the web, the more money Google makes: The longer people live, the more they can use the web, the more money Google can make...
Oh Crap by blamelager · 2012-12-15 02:47 · Score: 2

Herbert did have a point you know
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_Catholic_Bible
Maybe Larry and Sergei by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-15 03:04 · Score: 0

want to get in on Kurzweil's research on how people live to 150 with today's medical/information tech advances, or perhaps forever.
Lt Cmdr Data said by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-15 03:08 · Score: 1

Lt Cmdr Data said he was happy to have RK aboard. (He had his emotion chip in).
1. Re:Lt Cmdr Data said by marcello_dl · 2012-12-15 03:24 · Score: 1
  
  Robby the robot briefly interrupted his oiljob, clicked for a while, and finally said: "Mr. Ray, while you pursuit your vision, beware of the monsters from the Id."
  The Singularity is a great idea, but you know, The Internet was a great idea too, and look what's it's turning into. The problem is not how cool is the tech, it is who controls it de facto.
  
  --
  ---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
2. Re:Lt Cmdr Data said by tnk1 · 2012-12-15 06:55 · Score: 1
  
  Considering that we have no idea what a Singularity would be like (by definition), it could be awesome or it could be the reason we never see other intelligent species out in space.
  I think someone once said that at around the time of the Singularity occurring, each individual could easily become possessed of power equivalent to a nuclear bomb. That's not to say we'd all have nukes, but we might have the ability to each release something like a homemade plague or grey goo nanobot cloud, or even figure out how brains work and how to control them remotely. Or, more likely, something we haven't even thought of yet.
  Knowledge itself is neither good nor evil but a tool, and like any tool, it can magnify the intention of the user without consideration of its effects.
  The good/bad news, is that I firmly believe that any knowledge singularity is going to be limited by the amount of available energy for use. Without an exponentially increasing amount of available energy, I don't think an exponential growth of knowledge is possible. We're eventually going to hit a plateau unless the energy curve somehow is able to go exponential. Looking at the current sources of energy, I'd say we'll be lucky to not end up in a new Dark Age as soon as we run out of fossil fuels.
3. Re:Lt Cmdr Data said by Luke_2010 · 2012-12-15 07:19 · Score: 1
  
  Actually, this is what advanced, strong A.I. is for: research into matters we don't have enough keenness to look into. As for energy, there's still a long way to go before we hit that plateau (and that indipendently from running out of fossil fuel), just think about solar satellites and nuclear fusion.
4. Re:Lt Cmdr Data said by tnk1 · 2012-12-15 11:54 · Score: 1
  
  You're right that it may be possible to get more energy, but when we talk about exponential rate, we are really talking about a lot of energy and the requirements will be increasing by an increasing margin every time.
  Fusion is still 20 years away, just like it has been for the last 50 or so, and while a network of solar power satellites is almost the only realistic way to get that much power at our current technological level, we're still dependent on chemical rockets to lift that stuff off from Earth. Unless someone gets the political will to get some real and permanent infrastructure into space, even that relatively uncomplicated idea will be infeasible.
  I'm not totally poo-pooing the idea, I do think we have some ways to go before that critical point, but I wonder if knowledge growth like this happens more on the lines of fast growth and then plateau for awhile. Although we think of knowledge as always increasing, we are constantly losing data all the time. For instance, we have actually lost quite a bit of the know-how to build and launch 1970's vintage Saturn V rockets. Right now, we have the ability to store that information, but we need the energy to encode it and read it at the storage densities needed to keep it all available. We also need the energy to run the search engines to be able to make any use of that knowledge, which includes Strong AI.
5. Re:Lt Cmdr Data said by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-15 14:16 · Score: 1
  
  Fusion is still 20 years away, just like it has been for the last 50 or so
  Just ten years ago Fusion was still 50 years away, just like it had been for the previous 50 years. So that's progress!
6. Re:Lt Cmdr Data said by Areyoukiddingme · 2012-12-15 15:27 · Score: 1
  
  Who says advanced strong A.I. is going to have any interest in research we already don't have interest in? We will recognize this AI because it will pass a Turing test. That means it will be able to pass as human. So... we're trying to build a human intelligence. When we succeed, who says it's going to have any interest at all in chip design or software engineering (the Singularity) or obscure physics? It might just sit all day and watch football. Or soap operas. Or Jerry Springer.
7. Re:Lt Cmdr Data said by Genda · 2012-12-15 16:55 · Score: 1
  
  Strangely enough, we can at least hypothesize approaching a singularity (as we've already begun to do using complex mathematical models on computers simulating flight into a super-massive black-holes... remember the difference between passing the event horizon and falling down the singularity) Instead of gravity, what we face here is information, or more precisely knowledge. As the accelerating technology surrounding processing power concentrates the ability to observe, appraise and analyze information new knowledge precipitates at an ever increasing rate, causing ever greater acceleration.
  We are working so hard to precipitate artificial sentience, when its almost certain that at some point, once our networks and their logical nodes reach a certain complexity that sentience in all likelihood being an emergent property will simply appear. In fact, long before true artificial consciousness, we'll have created clever simulacrum, capable of fooling us into interacting with machines as though they could care. Machine with true intelligence, will pose a real puzzle. As a species we've are piss poor at dealing with genuine threats if they lack urgency. So the profit motive in all its forms will move us to create machines better suited to serving us, until the transcend us. Then we will need to either deal with the fact that these machine have learned to be self serving Machiavellian bastards like their primate creators, or perhaps we'll have done a good job of making them morally superior to us. Which then puts them in the unenviable position of trying to figure out what to do with us unruly, unmanageable monkeys.
  All of this complicated by the fact that human beings will augment themselves with their own technology, and the lines between augmented human and AI will grow very thin. Additionally we'll have access to unprecedented new technologies swarm intelligence, genetic manipulation, nanotechnologies. A century from today, homo sapiens may be extinct, but our consciousness may very still be alive and well.
  The actual singularity is the part that's unpredictable, party because dividing by zero produces results that can't make sense, we are poorly constructed to deal with infinities. As we accelerate past femptotechnology, do well vanish into a information black-hole when the information density exceeds the capacity of space time? Small variations of trajectory are the difference between being pulled down the rabbit hole and being thrown off to gawd knows where. The Luddites (if they are consumed for teir carbon) will know when the singularity arrives and technologies screaming pace reaches its howling nadir. Suddenly one morning the sky will be filled with technological artifacts and the next day everything and 98% of humanity will be gone.
8. Re:Lt Cmdr Data said by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-21 04:30 · Score: 0
  
  "Until someone gets the political will..."?!
  Correct me if I'm wrong, but you seem to be assuming that getting "some real and permanent infrastructure" of this sort into space a) is desirable, b) that it's feasible only if driven by government, and c) that, regrettably, this is not about to happen.
  I would hope that such a thing could be done as an independent, profit-making venture -- the sort of thing that Robert A. Heinlein imagined back in the 1950s. But b) is probably not wrong, in today's twisted world; and given that, c) is a good thing.
  I for one would rather do without the flashy network of solar power satellites than live in a world in which the benevolent powers that be take it upon themselves to steal (whether through taxation, debt, or simple money-printing) the vast amounts required for such a project. It's not like taxes aren't high enough, or debts impossible enough, already.
It's Official by Ralph+Spoilsport · 2012-12-15 03:28 · Score: 4, Interesting

Google has jumped the shark.

--
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
1. Re:It's Official by mcgrew · 2012-12-15 04:07 · Score: 2
  
  With friggin' lasers?
  
  --
  Free Martian Whores!
2. Re:It's Official by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-15 06:06 · Score: 1
  
  Come on, you just as easily have said that when they hired Vint Cerf as 'Internet Evangelist'. At the end of the day PR does count for something.
3. Re:It's Official by russotto · 2012-12-15 06:07 · Score: 2
  
  We have automated shark-jumping MACHINES with frickin' lasers.
4. Re:It's Official by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-15 10:21 · Score: 0
  
  I just googled what "jumped the shark" means.
this must be a joke by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-15 04:01 · Score: 0

this must be a joke - kurzweil?!
Why? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-15 04:10 · Score: 0

Why would Google want to hire that clown? For comic relief, perhaps?
1. Re:Why? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-15 04:32 · Score: 0
  
  really? have you read any of his books or followed any of the projects he's worked on, even if you disagree with the directions he's taken and the hype that follows
  many of the subjects he's involved with, he is a visionary and there are far too few that have the technical background he does that that are involved in any similar speculations and initiatives. nay-saying is too easy, you may be put off by stylistic impressions from ego but for tackling very hard problems of machine learning and an optimistic desire to see the future and get things done he is a great choice.
2. Re:Why? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-15 05:28 · Score: 0
  
  He's still a clown with no credibility. His time scale for the so-called Singularity are preposterous on at least two levels. First, it ignores human psychology (his delirious views are not going to override billions of years of evolution any time soon) and second, it ignores the ridiculous position in which strong AI has been for three decades now due to the extravagant projections made in the 60s and 70s by too many gurus in the field. Kurzweil's impression that superhuman intelligence will automagically arise from raw computing power is thoroughly laughable.
3. Re:Why? by kurzweilfreak · 2012-12-15 06:19 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Kurzweil's impression that superhuman intelligence will automagically arise from raw computing power is thoroughly laughable.
  Thank you for showing us just how little you understand about what the man has actually said.
  
  --
  kurzweil_freak
  5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
  Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
4. Re:Why? by BorisSkratchunkov · 2012-12-15 06:33 · Score: 1
  
  Thank you for providing absolutely no substantive corrections.
5. Re:Why? by kurzweilfreak · 2012-12-15 06:42 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  If you actually read what the man has written, you'd see that he's pretty explicit in that raw computing power is necessary for matching and exceeding the computational ability of the human brain for superhuman intelligence, but that it is not by itself sufficient. Raw computing power doesn't do anything without the proper algorithms running on it, which is the entire point of his latest book. I didn't think it needed spelling out when Kurzweil himself has already done so many, many times.
  
  --
  kurzweil_freak
  5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
  Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
6. Re:Why? by BorisSkratchunkov · 2012-12-15 06:51 · Score: 0
  
  Well, clearly it did need spelling out. Maybe you should just try assimilating them next time.
7. Re:Why? by kurzweilfreak · 2012-12-15 07:03 · Score: 1
  
  If someone wants to fundamentally misunderstand Kurzweil's clearly spelled out arguments the first time, how likely is it they will gain sudden insight from random online comments? Obviously the original coward (I'm assuming you are not him/her) gave enough of a damn to not only click on this topic but to also type out an asinine comment, yet didn't care enough to actually read what the man has really said rather than what they want to think he did. Others may read that and think his (the coward's) argument has some merit. I only meant to point out that not only does it not, but it represents a fundamental misunderstanding of the argument.
  Thank you for challenging me to provide more detail as I should have done from the outset.
  
  --
  kurzweil_freak
  5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
  Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
8. Re:Why? by Bing+Tsher+E · 2012-12-15 07:09 · Score: 1
  
  I didn't think it needed spelling out when Kurzweil himself has already done so many, many times.
  In other words, he sells a lot of books, that all pretty much sell the same idea. Over and over.
  Tedious for most of us, though for enthusiasts of the notion, very self-validating.
9. Re:Why? by Fernando+Jones · 2012-12-15 07:16 · Score: 1
  
  "He's still a clown with no credibility." Speaking of credibility. I wonder whose judgement of Kurzweil is the more credible, this anonymous guy on slashdot who sounds a bit TOO annoyed or multibillion dollar tech company Google?
10. Re:Why? by kurzweilfreak · 2012-12-15 07:21 · Score: 0
  
  Amazingly enough, as time moves on, technology progresses and more details emerge. Whodathunkit! Some of us find it entertaining. If you're not interested in reading about it.... don't?
  
  --
  kurzweil_freak
  5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
  Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
11. Re:Why? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-15 09:52 · Score: 0
  
  This has never been about intelligence "automagically" arising from anything. It is about having enough computing power so that neuroscientists would be able to run full-scale brain simulations using their detailed models. The hardware we have today is nowhere near that level. The Human Brain Project is one such neuroscience project and if you look at their proposal you will see that having the necessary hardware IS a big problem, which is why a very large amount of their budget is about building specialized hardware that can run the simulations at an acceptable speed.
12. Re:Why? by dissy · 2012-12-15 10:01 · Score: 1
  
  He's still a clown with no credibility.
  
  by Anonymous Coward
  Pot, meet kettle.
13. Re:Why? by Zeromous · 2012-12-15 12:15 · Score: 1
  
  Dude I'm with you the whole way, but some people just don't want to think it all out. They want to know in concrete terms what it means. It seems ridiculous to them that the tools we use today will form the basis of the tools of tomorrow, right down to our DNA and particles of being.
  
  --
  ---Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A START
14. Re:Why? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-16 00:55 · Score: 0
  
  Today I learned that wealth equates to credibility and good judgement.
15. Re:Why? by Namarrgon · 2012-12-16 15:51 · Score: 1
  
  As Kurzweil himself points out, there's two main approaches to simulating a brain. The one you mention is by simulating every neuron with sufficient detail, which requires a massive amount of hardware. Exactly how much depends on the detail required, which we're still not sure of - we could be at that level today, or we could be decades off. At that point, we hope that intelligence emerges - a reasonable hope, given what we know, but still somewhat uncertain.
  The other approach is by building sufficiently detailed and accurate functional models of the human brain. At the time of writing of The Singularity Is Near, he estimated possibly 5% of the brain's function had been well-modelled (one example he gives is auditory function, which is fairly well understood). This is obviously the harder path in terms of effort and invention, but also more useful, as functional models can be adapted, and generally require significantly less underlying hardware (e.g. we don't have to fully model a bird's entire biology to make something that can fly).
  The recent articles on models like Spaun suggest that, while we're obviously still a long way off human-level intelligence, we're making good progress. You'll also note that Spaun's model runs on a single workstation, not a super-computer (albeit well below real-time).
  
  --
  Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
16. Re:Why? by bouldin · 2012-12-17 08:07 · Score: 1
  
  I dispute that auditory function in the brain is fairly well understood. *Some* of the fundamentals are fairly well understood.
  As an example, there is the Olivocochlear system that feeds back from Superior Olives to the cochlea. We think it may contribute to active amplification of sounds in the cochlea. See wikipedia for a list of PROPOSED functions.
  What we do know is that cutting the olivocochlear connection impairs sensitivity in the cochlea. We do know what neurons connect to what other neurons, and have some idea of the types of connections.
  What we don't know is "how the thing works".
  This system is key to human hearing; it's not just a lump of cells with no known function. So, we are a long ways off from any human- (or even cat-) level auditory models.
You love me! You really love me! by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · 2012-12-15 05:02 · Score: 1

> which sounds to me like another way to say "quickening the singularity."
Good! I'll have my own pocket universe and a harem of 30 computer-controlled hotties of my choosing from the fashion and entertanment industry.
And this is good, transcendent-level computer control. I don't want any way to tell they're actually robots besides that they're interested in me.

--
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
The Borg by ISoldat53 · 2012-12-15 05:16 · Score: 1

Resistance is futile.
1. Re:The Borg by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-16 10:11 · Score: 0
  
  you mean resistance is feudal. Why do I always have to correct you on this?
  You Borg always sucked at spelling!
  That whole 'one collective mind' thing!
  If only you'd concentrate that intelligence into other areas such as linguistics, literature, or the arts in any fashion, you might realize the humor in this minor error.
  Heck, we might have a new renaissance and competition for Monty Python! You can call it.. Full Monty! (har har)
Re:You love me! You really love me! by russotto · 2012-12-15 05:54 · Score: 1

And this is good, transcendent-level computer control. I don't want any way to tell they're actually robots besides that they're interested in me.
Easy enough when you're just a simulation anyway.
a few things missing by Dan9999 · 2012-12-15 05:56 · Score: 1

Logically there are a few things that need to come out of the industry before a singularity should even be attempted. Until then please put my money on this joining the graphical ides from google archives.
1. Re:a few things missing by iggymanz · 2012-12-15 06:17 · Score: 1
  
  the singularity has already happened, but it is not a purely computational device. instead, it is made of three things: people, the internet, and computers. Google, facebook, twitter, ebay, amazon, major news sites are all part of it.
Do No Evil by blamelager · 2012-12-15 06:26 · Score: 1

Whoever makes the first AI capable of improving itself had damned well better stick to that principle. You know it really isn't funny. It's not the AI you should worry about so much as the people in possession of it. And Google (i.e. USA) are not the only outfit involved in this arms race. Bad, bad, bad. This one could make the Manhattan project look like the work of amateurs.
1. Re:Do No Evil by Luke_2010 · 2012-12-15 07:27 · Score: 1
  
  Whoever is going to build such A.I. is going to try to control it, which is impossible by definition since a soon-to-be superhuman intelligence can't be outsmarted by dumber creatures. It will be of us what such A.I. is going to decide, it will be beyond everybody's will.
2. Re:Do No Evil by blamelager · 2012-12-15 07:48 · Score: 1
  
  You just mixed up will and intelligence. I think they are two different things. I guess that an AI will not have human emotions and motivations unless they are designed in. Ergo, the handler should be feared more than the AI at the outset (of course, that may change with accidents and evolution).
3. Re:Do No Evil by gweihir · 2012-12-15 10:45 · Score: 1
  
  As nobody even has a rough idea how an AI could be made (hint: it is not a question of computing power), there is little change of anybody making an AI "that could improve itself". In fact, the whole idea is a completely fictitious construct by people without a clue what CS can do and what not.
  Also, the only known intelligence (human type) routinely fails at improving itself, and is subject to delusions in that regard. In fact, it looks like true intelligence is trying to avoid improving itself more often than not. But anyways, as true AI is at least 100 years away, and possibly unattainable in this universe, there is no risk here.
  
  --
  Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
4. Re:Do No Evil by Tough+Love · 2012-12-15 13:44 · Score: 1
  
  As nobody even has a rough idea how an AI could be made (hint: it is not a question of computing power), there is little change of anybody making an AI "that could improve itself".
  You mean, you do not have even a rough idea. Meanwhile, progress marches on and more and more of the original goals of AI research have been achieved. Machine vision and voice recognition are now commonplace. Computers win at an increasing number of games. Machines walk, balancing realistically. It goes on and on. The only thing that has changed since the beginning is, it's not considered a summer project anymore, the difficulty of engineering at the required scale and with techniques that are discovered and improved only with painstaking work is now properly appreciated. The fact that you have no part in this work doesn't mean much. Researchers in the trenches have considerably more than a rough idea of where they are going. So what if we haven't seen artificial behavior as sophisticated as an ant yet? An ant has 250,000 neurons and we are quite sure that all its behavior is governed by those neurons. Granted, each neuron is an impressively complex system in itself, however there are only so many of them, and increasingly we are gaining the tools to fully reverse engineer them. An ant-scale intelligence is not far away, just by the pedestrian technique of reverse engineering. I would say that the researchers involved in that area have a lot more than a rough idea of where they are going and how to get there.
  
  --
  When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
5. Re:Do No Evil by gweihir · 2012-12-15 16:27 · Score: 1
  
  No, I mean I have been following the scientific progress in that area for about 2 1/2 decades now , and nobody has a clue. Sure, cretins like Marvin Minsky have been predicting AI for decades now, but that is all about grant money, not about any real results or insights.
  
  --
  Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
6. Re:Do No Evil by Tough+Love · 2012-12-15 19:57 · Score: 1
  
  No, I mean I have been following the scientific progress in that area for about 2 1/2 decades now , and nobody has a clue. Sure, cretins like Marvin Minsky have been predicting AI for decades now, but that is all about grant money, not about any real results or insights.
  Every time you talk your way through a telephone menu you benefit from that work. Just because a computer can't yet compose a symphony does not mean there has been no progress. You can hold out for the artificially intelligent poet in your dreamland if you want, while I watch with interest the progress towards creating an automaton as intelligent as an ant (25,000 neurons). Then a mouse (75 million neurons). Finally, as intelligent as you, then it can post rubbish to Slashdot in your place.
  
  --
  When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
7. Re:Do No Evil by gweihir · 2012-12-16 09:52 · Score: 1
  
  You seem to not understand the problem. Stunts like pattern-based voice recognition are not intelligent in any way. These are not incremental steps towards higher intelligence at all, they are just isolated specialized ways to fake intelligence. Sure, AI research has has some nice results, but none at all that can or will lead towards true AI. You should really have a look into the relevant scientific literature.
  
  --
  Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
8. Re:Do No Evil by Tough+Love · 2012-12-16 11:25 · Score: 1
  
  Your frontal cortex is a "stunt". Nature has repurposed wiring originally evolved to filter 2D imagery. Now it makes complex associations and manipulates data in abstract ways that we are only beginning to decode. But it's still a stunt. I understand why you have difficulty comprehending that progress in AI research is in fact progress. It's because you have no comprehension of the long term implications of work that is being done. You should have a look into the relevant scientific literature yourself, and this time don't just let the words slide away like water off the back of a duck.
  
  --
  When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
9. Re:Do No Evil by bouldin · 2012-12-17 06:07 · Score: 1
  
  These fields you mention (computer vision, speech recognition) are good examples of the state of intelligent machines.
  We can make these things work pretty well for very specific tasks (e.g. recognize faces in a picture), but we are nowhere near having general, human-level intelligence. It's hard to see how we are even close to having human-level vision capabilities.
What a waste by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-15 07:15 · Score: 0

There are probably dozens of smarter grad students they could have hired over this crackpot.
1. Re:What a waste by Tough+Love · 2012-12-15 13:45 · Score: 1
  
  There are probably dozens of smarter grad students they could have hired over this crackpot.
  Clearly, you're not one of them.
  
  --
  When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
We could end this. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-15 07:18 · Score: 0

Social security should come with the S.S. number and a 4 digit number just like your bank card.
You can give your number to government etc. but when it is used for say credit you then must also provide your 4 digit code.
It would go a long way although not perfect. you could be notified when a wrong number is used. and cops called.
You pin it in just like you do now so not even the mortgage broker or anyone else sees.
There will not be a singularity, ever by gweihir · 2012-12-15 10:40 · Score: 1

That is a fiction though up by cretins looking for a religion-type experience or vision in technology. If anything, what computers can do slows down proportionally to size, i.e. increasing computing power is subject to diminishing returns, in most cases strongly so. Engineers and scientists know this well. These idiots do not even understand the basics.

--
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
1. Re:There will not be a singularity, ever by DanielRavenNest · 2012-12-15 12:27 · Score: 1
  
  It was a fictional concept thought up by Vernor Vinge in the early 1990's, to satisfy the needs of some novels he wrote, then further developed as a serious idea:
  http://mindstalk.net/vinge/vinge-sing.html
  (It helps that Vinge is a professor of mathematics, as well as an SF author).
  If increasing computing power is subject to diminishing returns, explain your own existence running on a 100 Hz, 25W meatware processor, and the exponential growth of supercomputer power.
2. Re:There will not be a singularity, ever by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-15 14:51 · Score: 0
  
  explain your own existence running on a 100 Hz, 25W meatware processor
  Nobody really can. That should indicate something. Perhaps meat is not ideal for making a processor?
3. Re:There will not be a singularity, ever by gweihir · 2012-12-15 16:19 · Score: 1
  
  That is just it: There has not been an exponential growth of supercomputer power. Sure, transistor numbers have grown exponentially for a while and may even continue to do so, but not for very long anymore. But what you get per transistor has dramatically decreased. Today, interconnect and power is the limiter, not transistor speeds. Also, on the algorithmic side, more transistors do not really help, as basically no hard problem has a reasonable speed-up with transistor count, only with overall computing speeds. And most of them cannot be parallelized in any meaningful way. And when you look at some numbers, for example memory latency, they have not gotten that much better, and there is certainly no exponential growth. Sure, linear read speeds have improved dramatically for main memory (but not exponentially), but random access has not. And hard problems, and certainly anything AI, does require random access, linear access is for non-intelligent, brute-force stuff only.
  As to Vinge, he certainly has that freedom as SF writer. But if he really is promoting a "singularity" as a scientist, then that is highly unprofessional as he must know better.
  And as to the computing power of the brain, there is indication, that is actually the maximum achievable in this universe. Larger will incur serious slow-down due to light-speed delays. Faster may not be feasible due to energy density and the need for cooling.
  
  --
  Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
4. Re:There will not be a singularity, ever by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-15 16:33 · Score: 0
  
  What part of exponential growth do you not understand?
  Assume for a moment that a neuron can be copied in silicon, and perhaps even at a smaller scale. Now assume that there's less latency in electrical signals than in chemical ones. Now assume that you use far more silicon than grey and white matter in a human brain. Now assume that there's some pretty impressive software involved.
  As for diminishing returns in computing power, I'm sure that's exactly what the flies are thinking to themselves right before we swat them.
5. Re:There will not be a singularity, ever by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-15 16:41 · Score: 0
  
  40 years ago Pong was pretty impressive. Now, Google has cars that drive themselves and my cell phone can transcribe my speech. Is that AI? No, not yet, but it's certainly exponential growth.
  It's laughable to say that we can't get faster than the human brain because of "the need for cooling" when we run so much lower than the melting point for most substances. Certainly we can get far denser than a mass of organic mush, and then supercool it, at a minimum, yes?
6. Re:There will not be a singularity, ever by gweihir · 2012-12-16 10:03 · Score: 1
  
  No, actually we cannot. And no, there is no intelligence in the self-driving cars or the speech transcribing. It is non-intelligent pattern matching as it cannot deal with anything outside of what it is in its database. And that is one of the defining criteria for intelligence: The ability to make sense of unexpected situations. For driving, which is a highly structured and regulated activity, intelligence is not needed. For transcribing speech, it is not either, as, again, that is highly structured.
  Now, actually understanding speech dealing with things not in a systems database, that would be something. But there is not even a practical theory how that could be done. (The only one ever to be convincing was automated theorem proving, but it gets bogged down in exponential effort very fast and basically cannot solve anything relevant in any not strongly constrained environment.) I recently saw a demonstration of IBM's Watson system. It was for an expert audience, and the presenter readily admitted that it was just an expert system on steroids, but not "intelligent" in any way.
  These things are certainly impressive, but they are standard automation, improved incrementally, no exponential here.
  
  --
  Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
What a joke by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-15 14:26 · Score: 0

If anybody in the entire world is highly overrated, it is Ray Kurzweil.
Do Good by aNonnyMouseCowered · 2012-12-15 14:32 · Score: 1

Assuming there's a difference between will and intelligence, that motive and knowledge aren't just different aspects of the same thing, any self-improving superhuman AI need only be given one command for the whole world to end in chaos. "Do No Evil" will probably end in mere paralysis, the AI shutting itself down. I shudder to think of the consequences of commanding the AI to "Do GOOD".
1. Re:Do Good by blamelager · 2012-12-15 15:16 · Score: 1
  
  You should've named your post "Do No Good" ;-)
Sell Google stock if you own any by tyrione · 2012-12-15 14:45 · Score: 2

Kurzweill is the last guy I'd hire as a Director of Engineering. Give him an office for special projects, on a tight leash, sure. But not Director of Engineering which requires accountablity and products to market.
Ray Kurzweil again? by manu0601 · 2012-12-15 15:43 · Score: 1

I have reached the point where my reaction on Ray Kurzweil name is "why do we have to hear about him again?" Not all science fiction authors enjoy such devotion in news reports.
Ignorance?? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-16 03:45 · Score: 0

I was ignorant.
I didn't know so many Slashdot readers were actually more ignorant than me. [Dramatic pause] I mean, I knew the general public are now also considering themselves smart enough to actually think they can understand things, but in mostly they can't see beyond the tips of their noses. However that one would find them here, commenting?
It just demonstrates that the advance of computers and technology goes faster than imaginable and every person(no matter who) can now read and comment on things way beyond them and clearly are incapable of understanding, let alone that they have absolutely no capability to see what's right in front of them and happening right now.
We are, if things keep on going as is and if we are not going to be interrupted by some unforeseen Dark Age downfall, extinction or something, on the dawn of a new era that will radically change everything we've ever known (I just hope to live and see it all). I’m not even gonna express here what I feel what tech marvels will be coming also besides the AI discussed here, but I can’t wait for the day everyone will be able to get anything they like and money will be useless, so also the tyranny that comes from it.
Only question I have is how we are going to prevent theintelligence that will need to be building the next better versions of itself without human intervention in order to be able to evolve, from being uncontrollable. I mean if we can't understand (follow) what it's doing as it will probably be computing with light rather than electricity and thus at near lightspeed, what then? Can you make an off-switch for something that will foresee way ahead that you'll be going to push it when it does something you don't like? Then it will simply outsmart us and prevent this.
'Singularity' sounds to me like: all (everything/everybody) into/inside one (forever living being). Hmm, bit too much Borg-ish right now. lol
Greetings earthlings,
Richness
P.S. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-16 03:54 · Score: 0

On AI entity doomsday movies you all forgot about this one: Proteus in "Demon Seed" (1977)
Does Ray creep anyone else out? by Alien7 · 2012-12-16 06:16 · Score: 1

Did anyone else get the inkling from his recent documentary "Transcendent Man" that he was looking to digitally resurrect his father from the dead? The man is a megalomaniac looking to create a state of intellectual immortality through software engineering. The idea that he would be allowed to continue his work with the resources of a tech giant like Google give me the heebie geebies for sure. We will certainly have the technology to emulate the human mind in a machine in the not too distant future, but I pray to Turing that it's not the mind of Kurzweil that is the first to be uploaded to that hard drive.
Turing test is biased against A.I. by jrincayc · 2012-12-17 01:28 · Score: 2

My guess is that strong A.I. will be smarter than humans long before it passes a Turing test, since that requires the computer to accurately pretend to be a human. Humans get lots of practice interacting with other humans, and so we are fairly good at noticing when something is not quite right. Now, maybe if the person was told that there was a computer, a human, a space alien, or a dolphin on the other end (CHAD test), and as long as the computer convinced the person it wasn't a computer it wins, the Turing test would be more fair. By the time computers can reliably convince a human that they are a human in an extended dialog, they will be vastly more capable than humans.
Intelligent computers is a religious concept by jrincayc · 2012-12-17 01:36 · Score: 1

In the book Religion Explained by Pascal Boyer, Boyer states that humans have large ontological categories that we group stu into. These categories deal with the very nature of being. Ontological categories include Animal, Person, Tool (or artifact), Natural object, and Plant.[Religion Explained, pg 78] Humans have default attributes that we assume that an item in a given category has. So for example, if we are told that something is an animal, we know that it started out small, will grow bigger, and will eventually die. Religious beliefs tend to involve information that is counterintuitive to the category involved.[Religion Explained, pg 65] For example ghosts are in the category of people, but have the counterintuitive physical property of being able to pass through walls. Boyer lists the following possibilities for tools: “Tools and other artifacts can be represented as having biological properties (some statues bleed) or psychological ones (they hear what you say).”[Religion Explained, pg 78] wrote Boyer.
Artifacts don’t think, and artifacts do what they are made to do. A Carburetor is an artifact, and carburetors don’t think, and they will keep mixing gasoline with air unless they break. I believe that in the most likely course of events, there will soon be computers that are smarter than humans and they will not obey us. Thinking artifacts that don’t obey humans t Pascal Boyer’s denition of a religious-like concept. I believe that it is unusually hard to think critically about thinking artifacts because of how tied-in with religion the concepts are.
For the rest of the a sermon I gave: http://jjc.freeshell.org/sermons/there_is_no_map.html
Re:i dont want to go to school by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-18 08:34 · Score: 0

You need some good spices, otherwise they just taste of chicken.
Ray Kurzweil and Google creep me out by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-19 01:26 · Score: 0

Think: Google knows where many people are (the Wi-Fi and GPS drivers on Google's Nexus Android phones are binary only), what they are searching for, emailing, and scanned most of the books written in the past hundred years, and now Ray Kurzweil, a man who believes that the singularity has a %50 percent chance of destroying humanity and thinks brain scanning is wonderful is joining with Google?
Bing it by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-21 00:14 · Score: 0

God Google! What have you done? It is Bing for me now.
He has merged by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-21 00:20 · Score: 0

From Wikipedia:
"To the charge that a 20 petaflop supercomputer was not produced in the time he predicted, Kurzweil responded that he considers Google a giant supercomputer, and that it is indeed capable of 20 petaflops."
Google flattered, he diff-merged.
Look at Fred Hoyle, for crying out loud. by almitchell · 2012-12-21 03:34 · Score: 1

He was an absolute wingnut, but that doesn't mean he didn't make invaluable contributions to astrophysics, chemistry, mathematics and just science in general.

--
Baseless self confidence kills more people each year than bathtubs.