Computers Will Be Smarter Than Ray Kurzweil In 15 Years

Oh, man, I gotta say it. For me, what is the most maddening thing about human beings? There are many to choose from, but Crazy Thing #1 for me is the fact that there's some nutcase running around, he's batshit crazy, he's not getting the medication he desperately needs, etc. BUT this total wacko is well-respected, people take him seriously, clueless mainstream media-types write articles about him, he's got a good-paying, high-prestige job, blah blah blah.

In short, humans are staring crazy right in face, and they don't have the psychological wherewithal to recognize it! They're not competent enough to see it!

I see this incompetence over and over again. Well, that's Flatland for you.

Technology evangelist and delusional optimist Ray Kurzweil is an excellent case in point. Let's look at The Guardian's Are the robots about to rise? Google's new director of engineering thinks so...

It's hard to know where to start with Ray Kurzweil. With the fact that he takes 150 pills a day and is intravenously injected on a weekly basis with a dizzying list of vitamins, dietary supplements, and substances that sound about as scientifically effective as face cream: coenzyme Q10, phosphatidycholine, glutathione?

With the fact that he believes that he has a good chance of living for ever? He just has to stay alive "long enough" to be around for when the great life-extending technologies kick in (he's 66 and he believes that "some of the baby-boomers will make it through").

Or with the fact that he's predicted that in 15 years' time, computers are going to trump people. That they will be smarter than we are. Not just better at doing sums than us and knowing what the best route is to Basildon. They already do that. But that they will be able to understand what we say, learn from experience, crack jokes, tell stories, flirt. Ray Kurzweil believes that, by 2029, computers will be able to do all the things that humans do. Only better.

Jesus Fucking Christ! Ray thinks he's gonna beat the Grim Reaper! He's gonna live forever! Why is The Guardian writing articles about this nut job?

But then everyone's allowed their theories. It's just that Kurzweil's theories have a habit of coming true. And, while he's been a successful technologist and entrepreneur and invented devices that have changed our world – the first flatbed scanner, the first computer program that could recognise a typeface, the first text-to-speech synthesizer and dozens more – and has been an important and influential advocate of artificial intelligence and what it will mean, he has also always been a lone voice in, if not quite a wilderness, then in something other than the mainstream.

It's a Big Leap from inventing the first flatbed scanner to taking 150 pills every day to keep yourself alive until "great life-extending technologies kick in." To wait for human immortality by 2045 (video below).

I mean, dontcha think? It's a Pretty Big Leap, is it not? You DO see what I mean, right?

And what's Ray up to now?

And now? Now, he works at Google. Ray Kurzweil who believes that we can live for ever and that computers will gain what looks like a lot like consciousness in a little over a decade is now Google's director of engineering. The announcement of this, last year, was extraordinary enough. To people who work with tech or who are interested in tech and who are familiar with the idea that Kurzweil has popularised of "the singularity" – the moment in the future when men and machines will supposedly converge – and know him as either a brilliant maverick and visionary futurist, or a narcissistic crackpot obsessed with longevity, this was headline news in itself.

I don't know which point strains credibility more — 1) the fact that Ray has a great job at Google or 2) the fact that The Guardian used the word "consciousness" in the same paragraph with the word "singularity," that astonishing moment in the future when "when men and machines will ... converge."

However, we must give credit where credit is due — the reporter did manage to sneak the undoubtedly accurate phrase "narcissistic crackpot" into that same paragraph. Apparently, that's not an identifiable human category at Google.

Ray is widely praised by clueless humans everywhere.

Bill Gates calls him "the best person I know at predicting the future of artificial intelligence". He's received 19 honorary doctorates, and he's been widely recognised as a genius.

But he's the sort of genius, it turns out, who's not very good at boiling a kettle.

He's too fucking addled to boil water to make instant coffee.

He offers me a cup of coffee and when I accept he heads into the kitchen to make it, filling a kettle with water, putting a teaspoon of instant coffee into a cup, and then moments later, pouring the unboiled water on top of it. He stirs the undissolving lumps and I wonder whether to say anything but instead let him add almond milk – not eating dairy is just one of his multiple dietary rules – and politely say thank you as he hands it to me. It is, by quite some way, the worst cup of coffee I have ever tasted.

Clearly, Crazy Ray is the archetypal distracted genius who can't tie his own shoes. That's because he's way too busy being delusional about thinking about the future.

Kurzweil is a ... member of the Global Future 2045 International Congress. Backed by some pretty deep pockets, the organization seeks to merge man with computer avatar by that year. Kurzweil has announced that by then, we’ll all be downloading our brains into robots.

If you haven’t seen this video laying out their timeline for our robotic future, it’s sobering...

It certainly IS sobering to observe over and over again that humans can't recognize wacko bullshit when it's right there in front of them.

Ray believes computers will "trump people" in 15 years. Well, if humans generally are as dense as Ray Kurzweil, then computers are smarter than people right now.

But let's be accurate — Ray is a narcissistic crackpot, so when he says computers will be smarter than people in 15 years, what Ray really means is that computers will be smarter than Ray in 15 years.

And if, in 15 years, some robot can boil a cup of water and make instant coffee, Ray's prediction will come true.

That's why I don't leave the house much anymore