Kurzweil was Right again
Sam Ghandchi
http://www.ghandchi.com/1199-kurzweil-right-english.htm
بازهم حق با کرزوایل بود
http://www.ghandchi.com/1199-kurzweil-right.htm
 

On July 24, 2012, Ray Kurzweil in a comment on my article entitled "Two Paths Beyond Singularity," wrote: "I agree that hardware alone is not sufficient but my key point is that we are making exponential gains in mastering the software of life and intelligence as well. I disagree that biological intelligence will be better than nonbiological intelligence at anything come the 2030s" (1).

Now four years later, I have come to the conclusion that Ray was right and I was wrong. In the above article, I had written that "biological entities are much more capable than non-biological intelligent tools in their self-learning of the external world (and using) Kant’s terminology, the former is better at *synthetic* truth whereas the latter is better at *analytic* truth." The recent announcement of scientists of IBM Research in Zurich shows that I was wrong (2).

In other words, as Kurzweil had put it at that time, the "key point is that we are making exponential gains" with nonbiological intelligence, whereas for biological processes including biological intelligence, we are limited by barrier of speed of biological life itself that even modifying the genes by gene therapy, GMO or other methods will not be able to make up for the fundamental slow gains of biological processes as compared to exponential gains of nonbiological artificial intelligence.

Sensors of internet of things enabled by the artificial neurons noted by the IBM scientists could beat any human or biological intelligence in self-learning the external world and discovering what Kant called *synthetic* truth, not to mention that they will bypass us for what Kant called *analytic* truth which we have already reached with our current computers-- orders of magnitude beyond any biological intelligence.

Hoping for a democratic and secular futurist republic in Iran,

Sam Ghandchi, Editor/Publisher
IRANSCOPE
http://www.ghandchi.com
http://www.iranscope.com
August 5, 2016

Footnotes:

1. Two Paths beyond Singularity
http://www.ghandchi.com/701-TwoPathsBeyondSingularityEng.htm
دو راه در فراسوی نقطه انفصالی
http://www.ghandchi.com/711-TwoPathsBeyondSingularity.htm

2. IBM scientists emulate neurons with phase-change technology
http://www.kurzweilai.net/ibm-scientists-emulate-neurons-with-phase-change-technology

Related

Singularity Topics with Kurzweil's Comments
http://www.ghandchi.com/900-singularity-kurzweil-eng.htm
مباحث سینگولاریته با کامنت های کورزویل
http://www.ghandchi.com/900-singularity-kurzweil.htm

Many Paths Beyond Singularity as Proposed by Kurzweil
http://www.ghandchi.com/1681-many-paths-beyond-singularity.htm
چندین راه در فراسوی سینگولاریته طرح شده کرزوایل
http://www.ghandchi.com/1681-many-paths-beyond-singularity.htm 
 

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