The Google expert who predicted smartphones once again looked into the future: We should be able to become immortal in 2030

Tech pioneer Ray Kurzweil believes that humans and machines will eventually unite. (Image: TED/YouTube)

There are quite a few tech visionaries in our time. Some of them are world-famous, like Bill Gates, others are less in the spotlight. One of these is Ray Kurzweil (although he is far from unknown).

Ray Kurzweil published a new book this summer: The Singularity is Nearer(in German:The next stage of evolution, release date November 28, 2024).

According to the Google expert, artificial intelligence will surpass human intelligence in 2045, which is commonly understood as a technological singularity.

In the context of the book, Kurzweil puts forward a few theses:

Technology will bring back the dead (digital and biological)
People are becoming a million times smarter
Immortality starts from 2030
Life becomes easier and cheaper
In entertainment we will “feel” content

Before we can elaborate on these new theses, one question must be answered: Who is Ray Kurzweil and why does he make such abstract statements?

Disclaimer:Even though some of the man's predictions have come true, Ray Kurzweil's new predictions should be treated with caution, as they are as ambitious as they are controversial. They read like science fiction - and until they possibly come true, they will remain so.

Who is Ray Kurzweil?

Ray Kurzweil was born in 1948 in Queens, New York, the son of Austrian emigrants. He is considered a pioneer of optical text recognition, speech recognition and the keyboard.

After his studies, Kurzweil invented the “Kurzweil Reading Machine,” which gave the visually impaired access to conventional text by converting printed material into acoustic signals.
This led to a friendship with musician Stevie Wonder. Working together, the two of them have thisKurzweil K250launched the first synthesizer that could play high-quality electronic sounds.
Kurzweil published the book in 1990The Age of Intelligent Machines(German: “The Age of Intelligent Machines”) and put forward some steep theses in connection with AI.
Kurzweil is an avowed transhumanist and one of the greatest representatives of transhumanism.

AI generated content

What is “transhumanism”?

Transhumanism is a philosophical and technological movement that aims to improve the human condition through the use of technology. These include genetic modifications, artificial intelligence and cybernetics.

Ray Kurzweil has been working as Director of Engineering at Google since 2012. Back in 2005, Bill Gates described the man as “fleading experts in the field of artificial intelligence« (CNN).

Kurzweil's predictions in the past

The tech expert has been making predictions about technical developments for many decades and has often hit the mark. Many of his predictions are based on Moore's Law, a law of computer technology.

This is Moore's Law:Moore's Law was established by Gordon Moore, the co-founder of Intel, in 1965. It states that the transistors on a microchip double about every two years, increasing the computing power of computers exponentially.

Here are some of Kurzweil's statements that have proven correct over time:

In the early 1990s, he predicted that in the future people would use smart weapon systems such as drones to be able to attack enemies from a distance and under their own control.
At the same time, Kurzweil said that voice systems will develop ever larger vocabularies, which has already happened with voice assistants such as Siri and Alexa.
Towards the end of the 1990s, the tech expert said that documents would often no longer exist on paper, but largely digitally.
Kurzweil claimed that the world chess champion in the 2000s would be a computer, which was already in 1997occurredis.
In 2009, Kurzweil predicted that PCs will come in different sizes, allowing them to fit into jewelry and look like thin books. In 2007 the iPhone appeared and confirmed his statement; 2023 were, which have arrived in reality today.

Even though, according to him, Kurzweil's predictions happen a whopping 86 percent of the timecorrectShould be, he has already been wrong several times.

As the voice recognition softwareDragon DictationPublished in 2009, Kurzweil was convinced that speech-to-text had arrived in the here and now. We still mostly type messages on our phones.
In 1999, Kurzweil saw self-driving cars driving on smart roads in 2009. Even in 2024, the vast majority of us will still take the steering wheel into our own hands.
In 2009, Kurzweil also predicted that phones would automatically translate different languages. That's not true, even though translations are easily possible on our smartphones using apps, just not as speech-to-speech.

If you want to see a list that shows most of the predictions, check out this oneReddit-Thread over.

Let's now look at some new predictions the tech expert made this year.

Briefly new predictions

As part of his new book, Ray Kurzweil has once again made all sorts of statements that sound hair-raising at first glance. You can read some of themDailyMail.

Technology will resurrect the dead

Kurzweil believes that AI can “bring back” the dead. First in the form of simulations, then even in physical form. He himself created a digital replica of his own father by feeding letters, essays and musical compositions to an AI.

In his current book he writes:

Through our digital activities, we are already creating enormously extensive records of how we think and what we feel. [...] And this decade will see our technologies for recording, storing and organizing this information rapidly evolving.

Clicks just like the episode “San Junipero” from the sci-fi seriesBlack Mirror, in which aging people upload their minds to a cloud and relive their youth.

Towards the end of the current decadeexpects entertainment »highly realistic«, non-biological replicas of humans. Furthermore, he believes that these replicants in »be housed in cybernetically enhanced biological bodies grown from the original person's DNA«.

From 2040, the transhumanist goes one step further. Then, says Kurzweil, humans will move on to artificial bodies that are more advanced than ours. Oh yes, and copying people should also be possible.

Immortality begins in 2030

Supposedly, health science will make such great leaps in the next few years that people will be able to suspend their own mortality. Kurzweil also attributes this to artificial intelligence.

By 2030, Kurzweil says biological AI simulators will conduct clinical trials in hours rather than years, leading to new drugs and longevity treatments. Nanobots are supposed to keep our bodies in good shape in the long term.

The long-term goal is medical nanorobots. These are made from diamond-shaped parts with built-in sensors, manipulators, computers, communicators and possibly energy sources.

People are becoming a million times smarter

As his first prediction suggests, the tech expert believes that humans and machines will eventually unite.

He calls it »the fifth epoch of intelligence« (fifth epoch of intelligence). This should be triggered by AI that operates on the same level as human intelligence (i.e. technical singularity) and brain chips - and these already exist: Neuralink.

But the chips alone aren't supposed to make us smarter.

A key skill in the 2030s will be connecting the upper reaches of our neocortices to the cloud, which will directly expand our thinking. In this way, AI will no longer be a competitor but an extension of ourselves.

Life becomes easier and cheaper

The progress of technologies should not only be reflected in abstract superlatives such as infinite life, but should also make our everyday lives easier.

Robots will build skyscrapers using 3D printers that create the parts.
Solar energy is expected to become significantly cheaper through breakthroughs in photovoltaics.
According to Kurzweil, successes in robotics would ensure that resources and raw materials can be mined more easily and efficiently.

According to the book's author, in the 2030s it will be relatively affordable to live at a level that is considered luxurious today.

In entertainment we will “feel” content

As health improves, Kurzweil foresees nanotechnology improving our brains to the point where the entertainment industry will find new ways to entertain us.

Kurzweil says that entertainment is ultimately »every thought from someone's head into yours« is transmitted.

He even says how this should be done:through harmless nanoscale electrodes that are inserted into the brain via the bloodstream.

The following quote from the book also goes back to the fusion of humans and machines and also applies to entertainment:

Freed from the grip of our skull and processed on a substrate a million times faster than biological tissue, our minds are enabled to grow exponentially and ultimately expand our intelligence millions of times.

If you want to hear Ray Kurzweil speak live, check out this panel from the 2018 Super Nova Conference in Antwerp, in which he reevaluates many of his previous predictions.