The mainstream media is paying attention. I imagine over the next decade that the singularity meme will become a generally recognized concept in every household.

Back when I first learned about Transhumanism and the Singularity ten years ago there were VERY FEW web pages dedicated to the subject. I was lucky to have found them at all. Pretty soon you won’t be able to pick up a magazine or newspaper that isn’t mentioning it in someway or another.

I am glad that Ray Kurzweil is getting his due from the mainstream media. He has done more than anyone to contribute to the understanding of the Singularity concept. Hopefully more voices will rise into the mainstream media. It needs to be understood that the Singularity isn’t just one man’s idea but rather a fluid and dynamic concept that many people are debating, clarifying, preparing for, guiding, and actively pursuing.

Reverse-engineering the human brain so we can simulate it using computers may be just two decades away, says Ray Kurzweil, artificial intelligence expert and author of the best-selling book The Singularity is Near.

It would be the first step toward creating machines that are more powerful than the human brain. These supercomputers could be networked into a cloud computing architecture to amplify their processing capabilities. Meanwhile, algorithms that power them could get more intelligent. Together these could create the ultimate machine that can help us handle the challenges of the future, says Kurzweil.

This point where machines surpass human intelligence has been called the “singularity.” It’s a term that Kurzweil helped popularize through his book.

“The singular criticism of the singularity is that brain is too complicated, too magical and there’s something about its properties we can’t emulate,” Kurzweil told attendees at the Singularity Summit over the weekend. “But the exponential growth in technology is being applied to reverse-engineer the brain, arguably the most important project in history.”

For nearly a decade, neuroscientists, computer engineers and psychologists have been working to simulate the human brain so they can ultimately create a computing architecture based on how the mind works. more>>>

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 8th, 2010 at 1:24 pm and is filed under Accelerating Change, Singularity Commentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.