Re: 2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal

[Jeff Larson <jeff.larson@sailpoint.com>]

> I just feel the proof is in the pudding. If machines

> (given their current architecture) could be made to think, 

> we'd see thinking machines by now.

I'm also a skeptic.  Oh, I suppose I could believe in the theoretical

possibility of The Singularity, but not Kurzweil's timeline.

2045...that's 34 years away.  Coincidentally that's about how long

I've been seriously involved with computers and we are not closer in

any meaningful way to machines "thinking" now than we were 34 years

ago.  And please don't bore me with parlor tricks like Watson and

language translation.  It isn't about processor speed, memory size, or

fact databases.

So, in the next 34 years human programmers are going to become so

freaking awesome that they'll finally know how to create those

self-programming systems they've been promising me since the 80's so I

can retire and spend my days in a virtual reality pod with Felicia

Day?  Bring it on!  I'll probably be dead before then, but surely

there will be significant demonstrable milestones every ten years?

Along the way if you could make Windows not suck that would be great

too.

I know there are some extremely smart people engaged in artificial

intelligence research and I wish them well.  For a time I worked at a

relatively prestigious research consortium and the thing that impressed

me most about the AI researchers was their ability to convince people

to throw money at them.  Time will tell.

But hey, we've got Angry Birds now so at least I can die happy.

Jeff