The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology

by Ray Kurzweil

Okay, but keep in mind that while the trends predicted by the law of accelerating returns are remarkably smooth, that doesn’t mean we can readily predict which competitors will prevail. MOLLY 2004: Right, that’s why I’m spreading my bets.

nascent

nanotube

application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs)

Most of the complexity of a human neuron is devoted to maintaining its life-support functions, not its information-processing capabilities. Ultimately, we will be able to port our mental processes to a more suitable computational substrate. Then our minds won’t have to stay so small.

immutable.

fission

Going Back in Time. Another intriguing—and highly speculative—possibility is to

send a computational process back in time through a “wormhole” in space-time. Theoretical physicist Todd Brun of the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton has analyzed the possibility of computing using what he calls a “closed timelike curve” (CTC).

According to Brun, CTCs could “send information (such as the result of calculations) into their own past light cones.”76 Brun does not provide a design for such a device but establishes that such a system is consistent with the laws of physics. His time-traveling computer also does not create the “grandfather paradox,” often cited in discussions of time travel. This well-known paradox points out that if person A goes back in time, he could kill his grandfather, causing A not to exist, resulting in h...

stochastic

dendrite,

The ability of neurons to perform multiplication is important because it allows the behavior of one network of neurons in the brain to be modulated (influenced) by the result of computations of another network. Experiments using electrophysiological measurements on monkeys provide evidence that the rate of signaling by neurons in the visual cortex when processing an image is increased or decreased by whether or not the monkey is paying attention to a particular area of that image.

Human fMRI studies have also shown that paying attention to a particular area of an image increases the responsiveness of the neurons processing that image in a cortical region called V5, which is responsible for motion detection.

As described earlier nanobots are robots that will be the size of human blood cells (seven to eight microns) or even smaller.44

analogous

insula,

Although chemistry is theoretically based on physics and could be derived entirely from physics,

synapses

neuromodulators,

dendrites,

The cortex is responsible for perception, planning, decision making and most of what we regard as conscious thinking.

parity.

Another key distinguishing feature is that emotionally charged situations appear to be handled by special cells called spindle cells, which are found only in humans and some great apes. These neural cells are large, with long neural filaments called apical dendrites that connect extensive signals from many other brain regions. This type of “deep” interconnectedness, in which certain neurons provide connections across numerous regions, is a feature that occurs increasingly as we go up the evolutionary ladder.

It is not surprising that the spindle cells, involved as they are in handling emotion and moral judgment, would have this form of deep interconnectedness, given the complexity of our emotional reactions.

What is startling, however, is how few spindle cells there are in this tiny region: only about 80,000 in the human brain (about 45,000 in the right hemi...

This disparity appears to account for the percepti...

intelligence is the province of the right brain, although the dis...

discernible

ubiquitin,

My own story is instructive. More than twenty years ago I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. The conventional treatment made my condition worse, so I approached this health challenge from my perspective as an inventor. I immersed myself in the scientific literature and came up with a unique program that successfully reversed my diabetes. In 1993 I wrote a health book (The 10% Solution for a Healthy Life) about this experience, and I continue today to be free of any indication or complication of this disease.13

In addition, when I was twenty-two, my father died of heart disease at the age of fifty-eight, and I have inherited his genes predisposing me to this illness. Twenty years ago, despite following the public guidelines of the American Heart Association, my cholesterol was in the high 200s (it should be well below180), my HDL (high-density lipoprotein, the “good” cholesterol) below 30 (it should be above 50), and my homocysteine (a measure of the health of a biochemical process called methylation) was an unhealthy 11 (it should be below 7.5). By following a longevity program that Grossman and I developed, my current cholesterol level is 130, my HDL is 55, my homocysteine is 6.2, my C-reactive protein (a measure of inflammation in the body) is a very healthy 0.01, and all of my other indexes (for heart disease, diabetes, and other conditions) are at ideal levels.14

I take 250 supplements (pills) a day and receive a half-dozen intravenous therapies each week (basically nutritional supplements delivered directly into my bloodstream, thereby bypassing my GI tract).

Grossman.17

Biotechnology will provide the means to actually change your genes:

not just designer babies will be feasible but designer baby boomers. We’ll also be able to rejuvenate all of your body’s tissues and organs by transforming your skin cells into youthful versions of every other cell type. Already, new drug development is precisely targeting key steps in the process of atherosclerosis (the cause of heart disease), cancerous tumor formation, and the metabolic processes

inexorable

Demonstrating that we can reverse the aging process in an animal that shares 99 percent of our genes will profoundly challenge the common wisdom that aging and death are inevitable.

Today we are learning the precise biochemical pathways that underlie both disease and aging processes and are able to design drugs to carry out precise missions at the molecular level.

Celera Genomics,

In animal studies this has safely reversed pulmonary hypertension, a fatal and presently incurable disease. Based

(telomerase)

“suicide genes”

proclivity

octahedrons

DNA

RNA)

The same properties that enable nanoparticles and nanolayers to deliver highly targeted beneficial results can also lead to unforeseen reactions, particularly with biological systems such as our food supply and our own bodies.

computer displays using nanotube-based field-emission displays(FEDs) will provide superior display specifications while eliminating the heavy metals and other toxic materials used in conventional displays. Bimetallic

The net effect of these nanomedical interventions will be the continuing arrest of all biological aging, along with the reduction of current biological age to whatever new biological age is deemed desirable by the patient, severing forever the link between calendar time and biological health. Such interventions may become commonplace several decades from today. Using annual checkups and cleanouts, and some occasional major repairs, your biological age could be restored once a year to the more or less constant physiological age that you select. You might still eventually die of accidental causes, but you’ll live at least ten times longer than you do now. —ROBERT A. FREITAS