Ray Kurzweil: How to create a Mind
Ich hab’ das neue Buch von Kurzweil bereits auf meinem neuen Kindle Paperwhite (dazu später mehr), aber ich hab’s noch nicht gelesen. Im Buch geht’s um künstliche Gehirne und AI, typischer Kurzweil-Kram, zum Glück ohne den “Live Forever”-Unsinn (glaube ich zumindest, wie gesagt: Ich hab’s noch nicht gelesen). Im Google-Talk oben erzählt er eine Stunde lang ein bisschen was dazu, Swen hat noch einen weiteren Podcast mit ihm, Snip von der Website zum Buch:
In How to Create a Mind, Kurzweil presents a provocative exploration of the most important project in human-machine civilization—reverse engineering the brain to understand precisely how it works and using that knowledge to create even more intelligent machines. Kurzweil discusses how the brain functions, how the mind emerges from the brain, and the implications of vastly increasing the powers of our intelligence in addressing the world’s problems. He thoughtfully examines emotional and moral intelligence and the origins of consciousness and envisions the radical possibilities of our merging with the intelligent technology we are creating.
Amazon-Partnerlink: How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed
The Singularity Movie
Youtube Direktray, via MeFi
Meine Portion Techno-Utopismus für heute: The Singularity is near, ‘ne Doku basierend auf Ray Kurzweils Buch, kommt am 20. Juli auf DVD.
The Singularity is Near, A True Story about the Future, based on Ray Kurzweil’s New York Times bestseller, intertwines a fast-paced A-line documentary with a B-line narrative story.
The A-line documentary features Ray Kurzweil interacting with a panoply of thinkers on the impact of exponentially expanding technologies on the nature of human life in the next half century. These ideas are illustrated with cutting-edge graphics and special effects.
The intertwined B-line is a Pinocchio story of Ramona (played by Pauley Perrette), a superhero avatar created by Ray. As the adventure unfolds, Ramona becomes more and more independent, hires Alan Dershowitz (who plays himself) to press for her legal rights, and is coached by Tony Robbins (who also plays himself) to discover the true meaning of what it means it be human.
Singularity-Doku online: Transcendent Man
(Youtube Direktplaylist, via Martin)
Vor zwei Tagen hatte ich erst den Trailer gebloggt, schon hat jemand die Kurzweil-Doku „Transcendent Man“ bei Youtube hochgeladen.
The compelling feature-length documentary film, by director Barry Ptolemy, chronicles the life and controversial ideas of luminary Ray Kurzweil. For more than three decades, inventor, futures, and New York Times best-selling author Ray Kurzweil has been one of the most respected and provocative advocates of the role of technology in our future.
In Transcendent Man, Ptolemy follows Kurzweil around the globe as he presents the daring arguments from his best-selling book, The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology. Kurzweil predicts that with the ever-accelerating rate of technological change, humanity is fast approaching an era in which our intelligence will become increasingly non-biological and millions of times more powerful.
Ray Kurzweil-Doku: Transcendent Man

(Youtube Direktsingularity, via )
Die Doku „Transcendent Man“ über Ray Kurzweil kommt morgen als Download auf iTunes und im Mai als DVD, ob hierzulande weiß ich nicht, aber ich weiß, dass ich die Doku grade frisch auf Isohunt gesehen habe, knickknack es online bereits einen Fake gibt. Nicht ziehen!
Motherboard hat jedenfalls noch ein kleines Interview mit dem Regisseur Barry Ptolemy: Q+A: Director of “Transcendent Man,” a Documentary on the Singularity. Dass Lügner und Kriegstreiber Colin Powell darin auftaucht, finde ich zwar nicht so prickelnd, die Pfeiffe wird aber durch Kevin Kelly und Stevie Wonder wieder ausgeglichen, so einigermaßen zumindest.
The compelling feature-length documentary film, by director Barry Ptolemy, chronicles the life and controversial ideas of luminary Ray Kurzweil. For more than three decades, inventor, futures, and New York Times best-selling author Ray Kurzweil has been one of the most respected and provocative advocates of the role of technology in our future.
In Transcendent Man, Ptolemy follows Kurzweil around the globe as he presents the daring arguments from his best-selling book, The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology. Kurzweil predicts that with the ever-accelerating rate of technological change, humanity is fast approaching an era in which our intelligence will become increasingly non-biological and millions of times more powerful. This will be the dawning of a new civilization enabling us to transcend our biological limitations. In Kurzweil’s post-biological world, boundaries blur between human and machine, real and virtual. Human aging and illness are reversed, world hunger and poverty are solved, and we cure death.
Ptolemy explores the social and philosophical implications of these changes and the potential threats they pose to human civilization in dialogues with world leader Colin Powell; technologists Hugo deGaris, Peter Diamandis, Kevin Warwick, and Dean Kamen; journalist Kevin Kelly; actor William Shatner; and musician Stevie Wonder. Kurzweil maintains a radically optimistic view of the future, while acknowledging new dangers. Award-winning American composer Philip Glass contributes original theme music that mirrors the depth and intensity of the film.
Nerd Fight! Ray Kurzweil vs PZ Myers
Ray Kurzweil ist Verfechter der Singularität und sagt vorraus, dass wir innerhalb von 10 Jahren das Gehirn digital nachbauen werden. PZ Myers ist Biologe und hat neulich bei Gizmodo einen Artikel mit der Headline „Ray Kurzweil Does Not Understand the Brain“ gepostet. Das hier ist Kurzweils Antwort: Ray Kurzweil Responds to “Ray Kurzweil does not understand the brain”. (via Reddit)
Doku: Robot Sapiens Online
(Youtube Direktrobot, Danke Marco!)
Die Doku „Robot Sapiens“ über die ich neulich gebloggt hatte, ist jetzt bei Youtube hochgeladen worden. Ich hatte das Ding ja ebenfalls verpasst und hole die Doku jetzt erstmal nach. Oben der erste Clip, nach dem Klick alle weiteren Teile.
Vision oder bald Wirklichkeit? Im Jahr 2030 steht die Menschheit am Beginn einer neuen Epoche. Dank fortgeschrittener Computertechnik verschwimmt die Grenze zwischen Mensch und Maschine. Gehirne werden mit Silikonchips aufgerüstet und Intelligenz ist keine rein biologische Frage mehr. Sie kann mit Hilfe von Technik erweitert werden. Demnächst sollen die Menschen in der Lage sein, das im Gehirn gespeicherte Wissen auf eine Festplatte herunterzuladen und so – ungeachtet der Sterblichkeit – für die Nachwelt zu erhalten. Die Dokumentation zeigt die Visionen des Erfinders und Zukunftsforschers Ray Kurzweil.
TV-Tipp: Robot Sapiens
Heute morgen um 11 Uhr läuft auf Arte die Doku „Robot Sapiens“ über Ray Kurzweil, Singularität, Transhumanismus und so Zeugs. Ich bin ja dank Jetlag grade schon wieder im Gutenacht-Modus und werde bis 11 wohl nicht mehr durchhalten… wenn die Doku aber auf Arte+7 auftaucht, trage ich das hier nach und schau mir das auch an.
Vision oder bald Wirklichkeit? Im Jahr 2030 steht die Menschheit am Beginn einer neuen Epoche. Dank fortgeschrittener Computertechnik verschwimmt die Grenze zwischen Mensch und Maschine. Gehirne werden mit Silikonchips aufgerüstet und Intelligenz ist keine rein biologische Frage mehr. Sie kann mit Hilfe von Technik erweitert werden. Demnächst sollen die Menschen in der Lage sein, das im Gehirn gespeicherte Wissen auf eine Festplatte herunterzuladen und so – ungeachtet der Sterblichkeit – für die Nachwelt zu erhalten. Die Dokumentation zeigt die Visionen des Erfinders und Zukunftsforschers Ray Kurzweil.
Robot Sapiens – Vision oder bald Wirklichkeit? Im Jahr 2030 steht die Menschheit am Beginn einer neuen Epoche… (via Doktor)
Interview mit Ray Kurzweil ohne vintage Antigravitations-Unterwäsche

Das Bild hat eigentlich nichts mit dem Interview mit Ray Kurzweil zu tun, außer, dass es passt. Zumindest in meinem verknoteten Gehirn, aber wenn die Singularität und vintage Antigravitations-Unterwäsche nicht zusammenpassen, dann passt gar nix zusammen. Jedenfalls: Die Vice hat ein schönes Interview mit dem Futuristen Ray Kurzweil. Es geht natürlich um die Singularität, Nanobots, Shapeshifting und ewiges Leben, und sowas. Antigravitations-Unterwäsche kommt nicht vor, die gibt’s nur hier.
In the year 2050, if Ray Kurzweil is right, nanoscopic robots will be zooming throughout our capillaries, transforming us into nonbiological humans. We will be able to absorb and retain the entirety of the universe’s knowledge, eat as much as we want without gaining weight, shape-shift into just about any physical form imaginable, live free from disease, and die at the time of our choosing. All of this will be thrust on us by something that Kurzweil calls the Singularity, a theorized point in time in the not-so-distant future when machines become vastly superior to humans in every way, aka the emergence of true artificial intelligence. Computers will be able to improve their own source codes and hardware in ways we puny humans could never conceive. This will result in a paradigm shift that sees mankind coalescing with its own creations: man and machine, merging into one.
These grand-scale premonitions are largely based on Kurzweil’s law of accelerating returns, which states that the development of technology has been increasing exponentially since the beginning of time. That concept isn’t really compelling to anyone but science nerds until you focus on the “knee” of this exponential curve—the point where the perpetual doubling of technological growth skyrockets and negates the linear models of progress that people like economists have relied on for so long. Kurzweil says we’re just about to start rounding this bend and that the rate of progress will be so great it will “appear to rupture the fabric of human history.” In other words, we will trump nature and take control of our own evolution. In your face, God.
RAY KURZWEIL – That Singularity Guy (via MeFi, Bild aus Punch’s Almanack for 1879, via TYWKIWDBI))
„The Singularity of Ray Kurzweil“ – vierteiliges Video-Interview mit Ray Kurzweil
Hier ein vierteiliges Video-Interview von VBS mit Ray Kurzweil über die Singularität (Wikipedia: „In der Futurologie bezeichnet der Begriff Technologische Singularität den Zeitpunkt, ab dem Maschinen sich mittels künstlicher Intelligenz selbst verbessern können und so den technischen Fortschritt massiv beschleunigen.“) Snip von VBS:
“The Singularity of Ray Kurzweil” – Teil 1
“The Singularity of Ray Kurzweil” – Teil 2
“The Singularity of Ray Kurzweil” – Teil 3
“The Singularity of Ray Kurzweil” – Teil 4
Today on VBS, Ray Kurzweil tells us about his vision of the Singuarlity—a point around 2045 when computers will acquire full-blown artificial intelligence and technology will infuse itself with biology. His theories have all sorts of supporters, detractors, and critics, but do you even remember what life was like before three-year-olds had cell phones and you actually had to remember facts instead of relying on the internet? That was only 10 years ago. If Kurzweil is right, we’ll have supercomputers more powerful than every human brain on the planet combined within a few decades.
Despite being perceived as an extreme optimist, Kurzweil is the first to admit that this technology could very quickly bring an end to the world as we know it. Stuff like gray goo is a concern, but a biological terrorist attack could happen tomorrow that is based on the very same type of technology he touts as the harbingers of the unimaginable future. He believes we’ll exist in a permanent virtual/”real”-reality hybrid. It makes us think about future people spending all day auto-mastubrating to polygons with the genital equivalent of the Power Glove. But we’re sick like that, and if Ray is right unenlightened pigs like us won’t be around in 40 years. Everyone will be hyper-intelligent, shapeshifting nonbiological humans who can live forever. It’s a bummer, a blessing, and a mind-fuck all at the same time. That’s about as much as we can explain on our own. Unless you’re really religious or dumb, watch on to have your brain melted.
(via Polkarobot)
Ray Kurzweil über Transport und Reisen der Zukunft
Ray Kurzweil ist Futuruloge und Spinner, der zum Beispiel über ewiges Leben dank Nanotechnologie nachdenkt. Schon super, wenn man beruflich herumspinnen kann. Das Good Magazine hat ein Interview mit ihm über Transport der Zukunft und darin geht es nicht um Flying Cars (dafür aber um „flying vehicles that use nanoengineered microwings“, is ja auch was).
GOOD: How will technological advances change transportation in the 21st century?
Ray Kurzweil: For starters, we will replace a lot of transportation with the ability to meet each other in virtual reality. I give about a third of my speeches around the world using a virtual-communication system that allows me to appear at a venue in three dimensions and in real time. My image is three-dimensional, life-sized, and fully realistic. As I move around, the audience sees their local background behind me.
kurzweil lec Going Down The Rabbit HoleUltimately, virtual reality will be extremely realistic and incorporate all of the senses. If we go out to around 2030, we will be able to send someone an information file (as an email attachment, for example) and they will “print” it out in three dimensions to create virtually any three-dimensional object, such as a computer, a solar panel, a module to build housing, food, or clothing. This will replace most of the transportation needed to ship products.
Weiter unten sagt er dann etwas verdammt richtiges über Green Tech, Hybrid-Autos und das Verhältnis der Gegenwart zur Zukunft.
G: Wow. Well, in the near term, President Obama is talking about converting the federal fleet to hybrid cars and spending $8 billion on high-speed rail. Given the radical changes you envision, does this focus on hybrid cars and high-speed trains seem shortsighted to you?
RK: It’s not shortsighted. These are constructive steps and bring us closer to a world of clean energy. Twenty years from now we will be able to get all of the energy we need from very inexpensive nanoengineered solar panels and store the energy in small, decentralized nanoengineered fuel cells. Solar power is, in fact, doubling every two years and has been for 20 years, and we are only eight doublings away from it meeting 100 percent of the world’s energy needs. And we have 10,000 times more sunlight than we need to do this. But we cannot simply implement a circa-2029 infrastructure today. We should use today’s technology aggressively to meet challenges such as clean energy.
Trailer zur kommenden Doku über Ray Kurzweil: Transcendent Man
(Youtube Direktkurzweil, via Doktorsblog)
Hier der Trailer zur Doku über den Futuristen Ray Kurzweil. Darin treten neben Kurzweil selbst auch Captain Kirk, Herbie Hancock, Alvin Toffler, Stevie Wonder und Quincy Jones auf. Kurzweil ist wahrscheinlich der bekannteste aller Techno-Utopisten und seine Ideen kann ich eigentlich auch unterschreiben, er denkt, dass Computer in 20 Jahren den Turing Test bestehen und ein Bewusstsein entwickeln werden und die Menschheit noch zu seinen Lebzeiten den Tod überwinden wird. (Vorher auf Nerdcore: Who wants to live forever)
Snip von IMDB:
“Transcendent Man” introduces the life and ideas of Ray Kurzweil, an inventor since the age of five and the most pre-eminent futurist in the world. Exploring many of the ideas and predictions in his New York Times Best-Seller, The Singularity is Near, the film focuses mostly on Kurzweil’s world-wide speaking tour, as he describes a fast-approaching, radically different future in which we have merged with our computer creations, will overcome our mortality to live indefinitely, and will be billions of times more intelligent.
Heavily criticized for being too optimistic about what the future will bring and how it will affect our lives, Ray challenges his detractors even further by publicly stating for the first time his goal of using future technologies to bring back his late father. Through twenty major cities and four continents, Ray Kurzweil leads the filmmakers and the audience on a quest to reveal not only our humanity, but ultimately, our destiny.

In How to Create a Mind, Kurzweil presents a provocative exploration of the most important project in human-machine civilization—reverse engineering the brain to understand precisely how it works and using that knowledge to create even more intelligent machines. Kurzweil discusses how the brain functions, how the mind emerges from the brain, and the implications of vastly increasing the powers of our intelligence in addressing the world’s problems. He thoughtfully examines emotional and moral intelligence and the origins of consciousness and envisions the radical possibilities of our merging with the intelligent technology we are creating.
The Singularity is Near, A True Story about the Future, based on Ray Kurzweil’s New York Times bestseller, intertwines a fast-paced A-line documentary with a B-line narrative story.
The compelling feature-length documentary film, by director Barry Ptolemy, chronicles the life and controversial ideas of luminary Ray Kurzweil. For more than three decades, inventor, futures, and New York Times best-selling author Ray Kurzweil has been one of the most respected and provocative advocates of the role of technology in our future.
“Transcendent Man” introduces the life and ideas of Ray Kurzweil, an inventor since the age of five and the most pre-eminent futurist in the world. Exploring many of the ideas and predictions in his New York Times Best-Seller, The Singularity is Near, the film focuses mostly on Kurzweil’s world-wide speaking tour, as he describes a fast-approaching, radically different future in which we have merged with our computer creations, will overcome our mortality to live indefinitely, and will be billions of times more intelligent. 

