Google's chief futurologist and engineering director claims that internal computers that augment both health and intelligence are only 20 years away.
In a video interview with the Wall Street Journal, Ray Kurzweil paints a potentially scary picture of the future of technology and one that will have certain people glancing over their shoulder looking for the Terminator.
Kurzweil believes that computer miniaturization is running at such a rapid pace that by 2035, computers will be on a par with blood cells in terms of size, and as such, millions of tiny devices will be pumping through our bodies.
"So we'll have millions and billions of blood-cell-size computers in our bloodstream by the 2030s, keeping us healthy, augmenting our immune systems. They will also be going into the brain and putting the neocortex into the cloud."
To highlight that his words aren't those of a madman, he also talks at length about the fact that to an extent, this is already happening:
"Some people have them in their brains, like Parkinson's patients. A Parkinson's patient can actually download new software to the computer connected into their brain... It's [the computer] pea size so it requires minimally invasive surgery."
And when our brains are all online and uploading to the cloud, we will be able to access their combined computing and intelligence power.
"In 2035, I see somebody approaching me and I want to impress them and I want to think of something clever... I'll be able to access additional neocortex and think of something clever," he explains.
All of this internalized computing and crowd-sourcing intelligence will lead to the singularity, that point in time when computers become more intelligent than humans, something that Kurzweil is looking forward to, as he views artificially intelligent machines as nothing more than new tools for expanding human intelligence even further.
He's even prepared to set a date for it. According to Kurzweil, the singularity will arrive in 2045.
In a video interview with the Wall Street Journal, Ray Kurzweil paints a potentially scary picture of the future of technology and one that will have certain people glancing over their shoulder looking for the Terminator.
Kurzweil believes that computer miniaturization is running at such a rapid pace that by 2035, computers will be on a par with blood cells in terms of size, and as such, millions of tiny devices will be pumping through our bodies.
"So we'll have millions and billions of blood-cell-size computers in our bloodstream by the 2030s, keeping us healthy, augmenting our immune systems. They will also be going into the brain and putting the neocortex into the cloud."
To highlight that his words aren't those of a madman, he also talks at length about the fact that to an extent, this is already happening:
"Some people have them in their brains, like Parkinson's patients. A Parkinson's patient can actually download new software to the computer connected into their brain... It's [the computer] pea size so it requires minimally invasive surgery."
And when our brains are all online and uploading to the cloud, we will be able to access their combined computing and intelligence power.
"In 2035, I see somebody approaching me and I want to impress them and I want to think of something clever... I'll be able to access additional neocortex and think of something clever," he explains.
All of this internalized computing and crowd-sourcing intelligence will lead to the singularity, that point in time when computers become more intelligent than humans, something that Kurzweil is looking forward to, as he views artificially intelligent machines as nothing more than new tools for expanding human intelligence even further.
He's even prepared to set a date for it. According to Kurzweil, the singularity will arrive in 2045.
