Is Ray Kurzweil's prediction of future reliable in The Age of Spirtual Machines?

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Is Ray Kurzweil’s prediction of future reliable?

MGT 290

Next generation Internet

May 28, 2003


After I finished reading The Age of Spritual Machines, by Ray Kurzweil, I couldn’t stop thinking if Kurzweil’s prediction of the future is true, what the hell am I doing right now, studying, working, and trying to succeed in this life.  If we are all to live in a world of virtual reality, without the need of our physical body, why do I bother working out and exercising?  If a computer program can be a better lover and lifelong partner than a real human being, then what’s the point of marrying someone?  What is the point of having a family?  There were so many questions, that it was simply mind-boggling.  I had to calm myself down, and first see if his predictions really are reliable, because if it isn’t, then there’s really no point in worrying about it.  But, if it is reliable, well then, I will think about that then.  So is he reliable?  Let’s examine.

Ray Kurzweil is a scientist most famous for writing the The Age of Artificial Intelligence in the late 80’s.  He predicted many things back then, and surprisingly many of them came true, according to him.  I haven’t actually read the book, so I can’t be sure that he’s telling the truth, but I will give him the benefit of the doubt here, as if he were making stuff up, then I’m sure a lot of people would have raised that, and his credibility would have been shot down.  Knowing prominent people such as Bill Gates are endorsing his book, gives a lot of credibility to Kurzweil.  But were these predictions truly insightful predictions that only he could make?  Let’s see.  

He predicted that a computer will defeat a Chess champion around 1998, and he was darn close as computer beat him by 1997.  It’s amazing that he predicted he was only off by one year, but I think anyone would have guessed that this was just a matter of time.  There are only set number of moves in chess, and if you have a computer foresee all the moves ahead, then it will win.  If a computer got powerful enough, then it will beat a human chess player, and it did.  Perhaps I wouldn’t have predicted this, but this was a very reasonable prediction, that many could have made easily without his insightful knowledge on law of exponential growth.  

Another prediction he made is that value of commodities will decline, and new wealth will be created in the knowledge content or rather information, leading to economic growth and prosperity.  This is certainly true now with the internet, and the information the internet collects from us, is probably most valuable, and will continue to be so, as long as the internet grows.  However, was this something a 12 year old could have predicted?  Well, perhaps not, but with the number of Intellectual properties increasing, and perhaps with prior knowledge that an internet boom will occur, I think many would have predicted this.  Another thing we also have to look at is that the price of real estate, a commodity that is certainly not a knowledge content or information, has skyrocketed and is still rising.  Whether this will continue or not, is anybody’s guess, but if it does, this will put a little damper on Kurzweil’s prediction that value of commodities will keep declining.

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He also predicted that a worldwide information network linking almost all organizations and tens of millions of individuals will emerge.  He was dead-on right on this one.  In 1995 the internet was privatized and the World wide web was born, and the rest is history.  Again, if you were someone working in the NSF, or were part of ARPANET, then you could easily have made this prediction.  But again, we have to give him some props were getting this right.

He predicted that the vast majority of commercial music will be created on computer-based synthesizers.  This is also very true, ...

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