Tech expert who famously predicted the iPhone makes concerning forecasts for coming years
An expert who has made some mind-blowing tech predictions in the past has now revealed his forecasts for the future and it’s pretty concerning.
Ray Kurzweil is an American computer scientist and Google engineer who has made some unbelievable predictions over the years, including an incredible foresight into the iPhone era and also predicting that a computer would be able to beat someone at chess.
In his new book, The Singularity is Nearer, Kurzweil has now shared his own beliefs on what the advances of AI technology will look like in the coming decades.
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The future could look very different if he’s right, with people fully merging themselves with AI to live forever as immortal cyborgs - which is something that Kurzweil believes will become a reality by 2045.
The tech expert has also revealed that he thinks it will become possible to bring people back from the dead by connecting our brains to cloud technology.
This is something that the tech expert has been trying to achieve for himself, as he’s spent the last decade attempting to resurrect his own dad, who died when he was 22-years-old.
Giving AI technology copies of his dad’s letters, essays and musical compositions, Kurzweil hopes he will be able to replicate him one day.
He said: “We are already creating through our digital activities enormously rich records of how we think of what we feel.
“And during this decade our technologies for recording, storing and organizing this information will advance rapidly.”
Our own intelligence will multiply millions of times over, according to the engineer, after our brains become directly connected to a machine.
Kurzweil said: “A key capability in the 2030s will be to connect the upper ranges of our neocortices to the cloud which will directly extend our thinking.
“In this way, rather than AI being a competitor it will become an extension of ourselves.”
And these new advances in technology could mean a cheaper and easier life for us. Kurzweil has said that robots could one day build skyscrapers by using 3D printers.
He added: “In the 2030s it will be relatively inexpensive to live at a level that is considered luxurious today.”
His predictions map out a very different world to the one we’re living in now and some people took to Reddit to share their thoughts on Kurzweil’s forecasts.
One user said: “He’s very inspiring to talk to but he’s always been incredibly optimistic and gives predictions on many things. I would say he’s more of a visionary than accurate in predictions.”
A second wrote: “He's around 80% accurate, which isn't bad at all for predicting the future. He's usually off by a few years but you do have to remember why and how he made his predictions in the first place.”
And a third added: “I think Kurzweil is often overly optimistic. On the other hand, I think people often place the human mind on a metaphysical pedestal and make grand claims without proof.
“I don't think there is anything magical about it. It's a complex system. I think we are generally on the right track with things like neural networks.”
Only time will tell if he’s on the money with these latest predictions.