pshropshire's Full Review: Ray Kurzweil - The Age of Spiritual Machines: When...
Twenty years ago, back in high school (Yes, the writer is old.) when we were reading the two great anti-utopian novels of the century, Brave New World and 1984, there was some discussion as to which place we would rather live. We sort of chose Brave New World because there was some happiness, even though it was kind of programmed in you. Where 1984 was just this relentless fascist state that got a kick out of that boot stomping your face forever.
If I had to choose between the futures outlined by both Hans Moravec and Ray Kurzweil in their dual books about the future and the ultimate transcendence of machine intelligence, then I’d have to say that Ray’s world is definitely the place I’d want to be.The Kurzweil world is full of really cool gadgets, revealing conversations with AIs and is a place where machines and man sort of emerge peacefully and beneficially into each other. We become Data and Data becomes us.
Where Hans gives us a pretty dark Survival of the Fittest kind of future, the kind envisioned in those Terminator films. But in the Moravec director’s cut, there will be no scrappy human resistance, no chance for a third film where humanity triumphs. Or as he states it: "Biological species almost never survive encounters with superior competitors." He constantly brings up Deep Blue’s trouncing of Kasparov as his metaphor for the future. Gary's shock and bewilderment will be our own.
In fact, if anything the Moravec vision resembles a film not yet made, namely Greg Bear’s "Blood Music". If you haven’t read the book, then let me explain: Cells that think like computers take over. It really isn’t much of a fight. They sort of take over everything and remake the Earth, and later on it’s hinted, the Stars, into a different kind of intelligence. It would not be unlike your table started to walk and it decided to merge you with it at the molecular level. You would no longer be you. You would simply be a part of your table’s collective consciousness, doing its dreams, following its dictates. No more lunch for you. That’s not what smart tables do.
While the Kurzweil view is that you will be assimilated--albeit pleasantly--or you will be left hopelessly behind. You decide. It's not really a matter of good or bad, that's just the way it is. Grow up, plug in your nan based neural implant or die.
The writers also go about their way of detailing the future a bit differently as well. And even though Moravec is a local boy, I'd say Kurzweil is a better writer. While they both outline the probable future of tech advancement, Kurzweil's vision of the future is broader, it has specific tastes and smells. It has sexbots, sensoriums, haptic responses, capable machine poetry, luddite terrorists and nanogens. K even uses a literary character who talks to us from the future--specifically 2009, 2019, 2029 and 2099--who gives us the average posthuman view of those times. K is no Paul Di Filippo, but he is effective.
The other thing I liked about the Kurzweil book is that it was very broad in laying out the many scientific advances that have already taken place. If you haven't been studying Wired for the last several years, then you can catch up right here. Nanotech, Picotech, nanotubes, quantum computing, optical computing, DNA computing, utility foglets, nano swarms…The future stuff is all here. Kurzweil, a prolific inventor in case you didn't know, even tells you how he's creating the future by patenting and building what sounds a whole lot like a phone based Universal Translator. I suppose he's confident about it because he's working with Microsoft and Bill Gates to build it.
There's also more humor in K's book. He quotes Woody Allen, the Unabomber and even Dogbert to make a point or two.
Moravec's view is much more, well, scientific. He's very methodical about laying out the past and future of primarily machine intelligence. He just says it's going to advance he doesn't specify whether it will be through assemblers or q-bits.
What's very disturbing is that Moravec has lived and worked through these changes. I find his future timeline very convincing because he's had his hands on how Progress has worked in the past so I believe him when he writes about what will be. He's even worked out a timeline for the evolution of robots. He also tries to do something that K doesn't wrestle with quite as much, but I imagine its something that an AI/robotics specialist would have to do, and that's wrestle with the nature of consciousness itself. What is self. Who defines Self. Can Robby the Robot declare itself sentient and so forth.
Both Moravec and K have some interesting ideas about the far future. Moravec flatly says that posthumans who wish to augment themselves with advanced robotics should be kicked off planet, where their new found egos and powers would have more room to stretch. Yet another similarity between his far future and the one Bear dreamed up in "Blood Music" is that these post human "things" or "Exes" as he calls them will grow to the size of planets, and be an unstoppable force. He imagines people would be like bacteria to them and that we would simply be the amusing players in some future recreation. He even thinks that this Truman show like reality might already be a reality.
Or to quote him:
"Most things that are experienced--this very moment, for instance, or your entire life--are far more likely to be a mind's musings than the physical processes they seem to be…There is no way to tell for sure…To a simulated entity, the simulation is reality and must be lived by its internal rules."
Meanwhile, back in K's version of 2099, people and machines have kind of merged. You don't really know where you starts and the machine ends. But it seems pleasant, compared to the pet show I will become in that Moravec future.
I don't know which one will be true. I guess it depends on whether you're a pessimist or an optimist.
Would you like to learn more, thus subtly paraphrasing the fascist mantra of Starship Troopers, then click onto www.threerivertechreview.com and www.majic12.com.
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