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September 29, 2005
CNET on the Singularity
Declan McCullagh of CNET News, presents an excellent overview on client Ray Kurzweil's latest thoughts and new book. Entitled Ray Kurzweil deciphers a brave new world, how can you not want to read on.
Thankfully, they use a fabulous visual rather than the distorted one of him flying amidst fruits and vegetables. Media all too often love sensationalism.
In reference to the Singularity, he remarks that until recently, "its only been the province of science fiction authors such as Vernor Vinge and Ken MacLeod."
Declan is a great writer......I love his descriptions throughout......for example, "to appreciate the dizzying scope of Kurzweil's predictions, read the book. But the condensed version goes like this: Thanks to Moore's Law and other exponential growth rates, by 2030 a $1 computer will be as powerful as the human brain. Information technology's exponential curve will fuel advances in biology, robotics, nanotechnology and artificial intelligence--with world-shattering results including radical life extension and practically omniscient and omnipotent abilities for humans who elect self-augmentation."
With great flow and ease, he goes on, and includes a Q&A. He also asks questions around exponential growth as it relates to the stock market, which many at the recent Telecosm event, were also curious about.
Responds Ray, "It's the power and adoption of information technologies that moves exponentially. The stock market includes many businesses with old business models...You do have long-term exponential growth of the stock market. The measures we find are highly predictable, surprisingly so. But there are business cycles."
Rather than understand broader trends and what we can learn from it, and more importantly how we can prepare for it, people want specific predictions, one which will change their life positively forever......
Also from the article, another great point: "it's not a theory of the overall dynamics of the stock market, which have a lot of psychological aspects, some overly pessimistic and some overly optimistic."
Tag: Ray Kurzweil, Tag: Singularity
September 29, 2005 in Client Media Kudos, In the News, On Technology | Permalink
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Comments
Actually I felt this particular interview was biased by Declan.. he consistently attempts to spin it in a dystopic direction (even the article title does this). He has a history of this in regards to the Singularity, and I would suggest avoiding him and requesting a more objective reporter in the future for interviews regarding this subject.
Posted by: Anonymous | Sep 29, 2005 10:03:15 PM
I have to disagree with Anonymous. Declan didn't come across in this piece as "biased" towards dystopian rhetoric - I think he was mirroring the relatively common reaction most of the general public has to AI in general and the Singularity in particular.
In discussing the book as I've been reading it with people who are somewhat well-versed in AI, nanotechnology, and computing power trends and with "jes plain folks" whose experience with the Singularity is restricted to particularly dystopic visions like The Matrix and Terminator movies, the concerns he was asking Ray about are pretty prevalent.
C|Net is not a technical journal - it's a mass media online property targeting readers with very diverse backgrounds and degrees of technical sophistication. Rather than being too concerned with the politics of the Singularity, there's ample reason to celebrate the great coverage Ray's book is enjoying (due in no small part to Renee's great efforts) and the discussions it will precipitate.
Posted by: Marc Orchant | Sep 30, 2005 9:53:10 AM
Marc, I fully grok what you're saying... any coverage of the book ideas is generally good news... yet I just get a little peeved when Ray goes to a lot of effort to correct those common assumptions and objections you mention, but we still end up with something like the title of the article, which if translated into plain English: "Ray Kurzweil's imagined future is a dystopic world". At least that's how I read it.
I'm sure Declan thought that was a fun, cute, and fitting title for the article, but to me it is very one-sided. And that side falls towards an anti-technology viewpoint that to me is not the perspective I want or expect to find at CNET which advertises itself as covering technology news. I would have preferred simple tech discussion - dragging Declan's personally political assumptions into the mix is not what I'm at CNET looking for.
Posted by: Anonymous | Sep 30, 2005 11:06:38 AM
