In the brilliant essay The Law of Accelerating Returns Ray Kurzweil persuasively argues that exponentially improving technologies (e.g. Moore’s Law) will yield an upcoming Singularity, “a technological change so rapid and so profound that it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history.”
The elements of his argument include
Moore’s law was not the first, but the fifth paradigm to provide exponential growth of computing. Exponential growth continued through paradigm shifts from vacuum tubes to discrete transistors to integrated circuits. Exponential growth will continue after the silicon paradigm dies out.
The emergence of the Internet was predictable by examing the exponential trend data well before the early 90’s
By extending Moore’s Law we can observe that computer hardware computational capacity will
- Achieve one Human Brain capability for $1,000 in 2023.
- Achieve one Human Brain capability for one cent in 2037.
- Achieve one Human Race capability for $1,000 in 2049.
- Achieve one Human Race capability for one cent in 2059.
- We will be able to scan a living human brain with sufficient resolution by 2030 to download and reinstatiate the brain on that hardware. This hardware will then be “conscious”.
Read the The Law of Accelerating Returns immediately.