> Ray Kurzweil [...] has predicted that artificial intelligence will herald a new era of hybrid humans capable of ageing in reverse within the next five years.
I'm sorry, what? Is this saying what I think it is?
> Dr Kurzweil updates his previous predictions and elaborates on how he believes AI technology can transform humans biologically.
Yeah no. We won't be "aging in reverse" thanks to ChatGPT. And this prediction is supported with a graph of CPU speeds over time? Has the whole world gone mad?
People have been in search for immortality since the dawn of humanity. Kurzweil's claim - made by extrapolating graphs using trends - will be appended to the list in no longer than 30 years.
It's not even a cool one like the fountain of youth or prostrating himself to the gods. Waiting on the inevitability of modernism in a post-post-modern age is depressingly archaic.
Kurzweil's predictions always seem to be: "Miraculous advances will arrive just in time for me to live forever."
So the world might not be mad, but I suspect a 66-year-old is grappling with one inevitability, while some other folks are grappling with the inevitability that stock prices can't always go up.
From other posts on the hacker news front page, will AI complete the ipv4 to ipv6 transition this year?
If not, I think it's still a while before we hit the singularity, because it's going to have to be good at solving problems like 4=>6 before it could hope to be a singularity event
You can refer to his bio on Wikipedia [1], but the question itself seems a bit off, as it assumes that someone needs to have accomplished something specific to be worth listening to. While I’m not talking about Kurzweil in particular, the truth is, you don’t necessarily need a list of achievements to say something valid or correct. For instance, Isaac Newton made groundbreaking discoveries, yet also devoted significant time to alchemy [2].
The thing is I know of Kurtzweil from the time he worked on synthesizers. His AI stuff and singularity stuff always felt like gimmicks to me even back then.
He has a long track record of making concrete and timed predictions. So you can look at the predictions Kurtzweil made 25 years ago in _The Age of Spirtual Machines_ and 20 years ago in _The Singularity is Near_, and use the hit rate of those predictions to establish credibility (or lack thereof).
But you'd need to read the books yourself and do your own evaluation. Kurzweil's own scoring of those past predictions has been so generous that it borders on fraudulent.
I read The Singularity is Near a few months ago. He makes a lot of predictions with great confidence and accuracy. Some of which are now in the past and others have basically zero chance of becoming true. His entire "AI will herald in a new era of nanobots" is pure speculation.
He now makes new predictions for the future with similar confidence.
Ray Kurzweil lives in an alternate reality. He's like one of those "the rapture is near" preachers types who keep moving the date for the rapture. Any moment now I expect him to start handing out Kool-Aid during one of his talks. I wouldn't recommend drinking that.
I’m going to put a memo on the calendar for 2029, will then email Dr Kurzweil cause I want my best years back… Seriously I can’t believe the madness that’s going on and seems it’s getting worst day by day
That was released in June 2024. The Joe Rogan interview happened 7 months ago.
Also, this is mostly an article about tweets. There is no content of any worth.