2
POPS Scientists: Humans and machines will merge in future The end result would be a new form of "posthuman" life with beings that possess qualities and skills so exceedingly advanced they no longer can be classified simply as humans. Bostrom declined to predict an exact time frame when this revolutionary biotechnological metamorphosis might occur. "Maybe it will take eight years or 200 years," he said. "It is very hard to predict."
23
POPSThe Singularity Frankenstein Singularity defender George Dvorsky is spot-on when he calls for the singularity-aware to “frame the issue as a scientific endeavor and pitch the various scenarios as hypotheses” and in that “we need to keep the language within the scientific vernacular”. And that’s exactly what’s NOT happening.
3
POPSThe Future is now - Dr. Kurzweil's Predictions Dr. Kurzweil is so confident in these curves that he has made a $10,000 bet with Mitch Kapor, the creator of Lotus software. By 2029, Dr. Kurzweil wagers, a computer will pass the Turing Test by carrying on a conversation that is indistinguishable from a human's.
1
POPSdangerous? I think this is way beyond any monster science fiction world possible to conceive. How did humanity get so far astray?
27
POPSCan the Singularity Save Us From Ourselves? Persons who believe firmly in the inevitability of The Singularity might be surprised to learn that the default human society is the closed society, resistant to change. Most of them have never known anything but open societies, born of western civilization’s restless urge to expand intellectual horizons. They live in an exceptional time, in an exceptional society, yet somehow believe it to be the human default. That type of blindness comes from forgetting to study history.
6
POPSThe Singularity The technological singularity is a hypothesized point in the future variously characterized by the technological creation of self-improving intelligence, unprecedentedly rapid technological progress, or some combination of the two. Below clips about the book and a film "The Singularity is Near".
13
POPSVirtuality and reality 'to merge' "In virtual worlds we do real romance, real learning, real business. Virtual reality is real reality." He added: "Games are the cutting edge of what is happening - we are going to spend more of our time in virtual reality environments. "Fully emergent games is really where we want to go. We will do most of our learning through these massively parallel interactions." "Play is how we principally learn and principally create," he said.
5
POPSArtificial General Intelligence: Barking up the wrong tree? The question is: could Kurzweil and Goertzel's Aritifical General Intelligence genuinely surpass the human brain? Or is ti simply mimicing it? Their solution still relies on computation, but there is no evidence that the human brain makes any such calculations to arrive at its conclusions. If so, what needs to be done in order to develop a computer system that works the same way as the human brain? And what about the mother of all conundrums: free will. Goertzel pretends it doesn't exist at all, but how could we motivate even a self-aware computer to do things on its own initiative?
2
POPSTimes rehashes sim story The Times reported this story several years ago, but the topic (with the emergence of Second Life and Ray Kurzweil's predictions for the Singularity), seems even more relevant today. Perhaps the only question is whether we are already in the Matrix, or are destined for it.
7
POPSTransvision 2007 explores transhuman frontiers Speakers will address how emerging technologies give our societies the ability to solve grand challenges facing humanity, including energy, global health, pollution, and the ethics of human enhancement, with three days of intensive briefings by some of the most influential futurists, innovators, scientists, and celebrities from the U.S. and around the globe.
1
Pops
Newest Clips
Latest Comments
Most Pops
Print
Save
Turn on live update