Newsgroup: it.politica
Titolo: 2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal

2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal
By Lev Grossman Thursday, Feb. 10, 2011
 
On Feb. 15, 1965, a diffident but self-possessed high school student 
named Raymond Kurzweil appeared as a guest on a game show called I've 
Got a Secret. He was introduced by the host, Steve Allen, then he 
played a short musical composition on a piano. The idea was that 
Kurzweil was hiding an unusual fact and the panelists — they included a 
comedian and a former Miss America — had to guess what it was.
 
On the show (see the clip on YouTube), the beauty queen did a good job 
of grilling Kurzweil, but the comedian got the win: the music was 
composed by a computer. Kurzweil got $200. (Watch TIME's video 
"Singularity: How Scared Should We Be?")
 
Kurzweil then demonstrated the computer, which he built himself — a 
desk-size affair with loudly clacking relays, hooked up to a 
typewriter. The panelists were pretty blasé about it; they were more 
impressed by Kurzweil's age than by anything he'd actually done. They 
were ready to move on to Mrs. Chester Loney of Rough and Ready, Calif., 
whose secret was that she'd been President Lyndon Johnson's first-grade 
teacher.
 
But Kurzweil would spend much of the rest of his career working out 
what his demonstration meant. Creating a work of art is one of those 
activities we reserve for humans and humans only. It's an act of 
self-expression; you're not supposed to be able to do it if you don't 
have a self. To see creativity, the exclusive domain of humans, usurped 
by a computer built by a 17-year-old is to watch a line blur that 
cannot be unblurred, the line between organic intelligence and 
artificial intelligence.
 
That was Kurzweil's real secret, and back in 1965 nobody guessed it. 
Maybe not even him, not yet. But now, 46 years later, Kurzweil believes 
that we're approaching a moment when computers will become intelligent, 
and not just intelligent but more intelligent than humans. When that 
happens, humanity — our bodies, our minds, our civilization — will be 
completely and irreversibly transformed. He believes that this moment 
is not only inevitable but imminent. According to his calculations, the 
end of human civilization as we know it is about 35 years away. (See 
the best inventions of 2010.)
 
Computers are getting faster. Everybody knows that. Also, computers are 
getting faster faster — that is, the rate at which they're getting 
faster is increasing.
 
True? True.
 
So if computers are getting so much faster, so incredibly fast, there 
might conceivably come a moment when they are capable of something 
comparable to human intelligence. Artificial intelligence. All that 
horsepower could be put in the service of emulating whatever it is our 
brains are doing when they create consciousness — not just doing 
arithmetic very quickly or composing piano music but also driving cars, 
writing books, making ethical decisions, appreciating fancy paintings, 
making witty observations at cocktail parties.
 
If you can swallow that idea, and Kurzweil and a lot of other very 
smart people can, then all bets are off. From that point on, there's no 
reason to think computers would stop getting more powerful. They would 
keep on developing until they were far more intelligent than we are. 
Their rate of development would also continue to increase, because they 
would take over their own development from their slower-thinking human 
creators. Imagine a computer scientist that was itself a 
super-intelligent computer. It would work incredibly quickly. It could 
draw on huge amounts of data effortlessly. It wouldn't even take breaks 
to play Farmville. (See the best inventions of 2010.)
 
Probably. It's impossible to predict the behavior of these 
smarter-than-human intelligences with which (with whom?) we might one 
day share the planet, because if you could, you'd be as smart as they 
would be. But there are a lot of theories about it. Maybe we'll merge 
with them to become super-intelligent cyborgs, using computers to 
extend our intellectual abilities the same way that cars and planes 
extend our physical abilities. Maybe the artificial intelligences will 
help us treat the effects of old age and prolong our life spans 
indefinitely. Maybe we'll scan our consciousnesses into computers and 
live inside them as software, forever, virtually. Maybe the computers 
will turn on humanity and annihilate us. The one thing all these 
theories have in common is the transformation of our species into 
something that is no longer recognizable as such to humanity circa 
2011. This transformation has a name: the Singularity.
 
The difficult thing to keep sight of when you're talking about the 
Singularity is that even though it sounds like science fiction, it 
isn't, no more than a weather forecast is science fiction. It's not a 
fringe idea; it's a serious hypothesis about the future of life on 
Earth. There's an intellectual gag reflex that kicks in anytime you try 
to swallow an idea that involves super-intelligent immortal cyborgs, 
but suppress it if you can, because while the Singularity appears to 
be, on the face of it, preposterous, it's an idea that rewards sober, 
careful evaluation.
 
Read more: 
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2048299,00.html#ixzz1YRRtM1GI
 
 
 

 2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal
 
Ernesto, smettila di postare stronzate scientiste! Con queste cretinate
finisce che danneggi la tua parte politica. Sono più verosimili persino
le promesse di Bossi e Berlusconi rispetto ai deliri fantascientifici
di Kurzweil e quelli come lui. Nel 2001 avremmo già dovuto viaggiare
nello spazio con computer pensanti come HAL... e non è successo! Invece
oggi nel 2011 siamo a domandarci se nel 2045 ci nutriremo di cavallette.
 
Bye,
 
  *GB* 
 
 

Scriveva *GB* martedì, 20/09/2011:

Solo che Kurzweil non è uno stronzo ignorante e ladro come Berlusconi e 
Bossi, ma uno dei maggiori scienziati viventi, chiamato "il successore 
di thomas Edison" e quando usi il computer e fai girare l'hard disk 
pensa a Kurzweil, l'ha inventato lui.
 
La parola SCIENTISTA è usata solo da un CRETINISTA.
 
ernesto
-------------------------------------------------------
PS:
Raymond "Ray" Kurzweil (pronounced /ˈkɜrzwaɪl/ kurz-wyl; born February 
12, 1948) is an American author, inventor and futurist. He is involved 
in fields such as optical character recognition (OCR), text-to-speech 
synthesis, speech recognition technology, and electronic keyboard 
instruments. He is the author of several books on health, artificial 
intelligence (AI), transhumanism, the technological singularity, and 
futurism.
Kurzweil started Kurzweil Educational Systems in 1996 to develop new 
pattern-recognition-based computer technologies to help people with 
disabilities such as blindness, dyslexia and ADD in school. Products 
include the Kurzweil 1000 text-to-speech converter software program, 
which enables a computer to read electronic and scanned text aloud to 
blind or visually impaired users, and the Kurzweil 3000 program, which 
is a multifaceted electronic learning system that helps with reading, 
writing, and study skills.
Kurzweil has been called the successor and "rightful heir to Thomas 
Edison", and was also referred to by Forbes as "the ultimate thinking 
machine."[16][17]
 
Kurzweil has received many awards and honors, including:
 
    First place in the 1965 International Science Fair[4] for inventing 
the classical music synthesizing computer.
    The 1978 Grace Murray Hopper Award from the Association for 
Computing Machinery. The award is given annually to one "outstanding 
young computer professional" and is accompanied by a $35,000 prize.[18] 
Kurzweil won it for his invention of the Kurzweil Reading Machine.[19]
    The 1990 "Engineer of the Year" award from Design News.[20]
    The 1994 Dickson Prize in Science. One is awarded every year by 
Carnegie Mellon University to individuals who have "notably advanced 
the field of science." Both a medal and a $50,000 prize are presented 
to winners.[21]
    The 1998 "Inventor of the Year" award from the Massachusetts 
Institute of Technology.[22]
    The 1999 National Medal of Technology.[23] This is the highest 
award the President of the United States can bestow upon individuals 
and groups for pioneering new technologies, and the President dispenses 
the award at his discretion.[24] Bill Clinton presented Kurzweil with 
the National Medal of Technology during a White House ceremony in 
recognition of Kurzweil's development of computer-based technologies to 
help the disabled.
    The 2000 Telluride Tech Festival Award of Technology.[25] Two other 
individuals also received the same honor that year. The award is 
presented yearly to people who "exemplify the life, times and standard 
of contribution of Tesla, Westinghouse and Nunn."
    The 2001 Lemelson-MIT Prize for a lifetime of developing 
technologies to help the disabled and to enrich the arts.[26] Only one 
is meted out each year to highly successful, mid-career inventors. A 
$500,000 award accompanies the prize.[27]
    Kurzweil was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 
2002 for inventing the Kurzweil Reading Machine.[28] The organization 
"honors the women and men responsible for the great technological 
advances that make human, social and economic progress possible."[29] 
Fifteen other people were inducted into the Hall of Fame the same 
year.[30]
    The Arthur C. Clarke Lifetime Achievement Award on April 20, 2009 
for lifetime achievement as an inventor and futurist in computer-based 
technologies.[31]
    Kurzweil has received seventeen honorary doctorates between 1982 
and 2010.[citation needed]–
    In 2011, Kurzweil was named a Senior Fellow of the Design Futures 
Council.[32]
 
 

 La parola SCIENTISTA � usata solo da un CRETINISTA.
Ma anche da chi si � accorto che sono 40 anni che troppi scienziati
stanno facendo concorrenza a B & B nel contar balle alla gente.
Quando trarranno energia dalla fusione nucleare?
Quando lo sconfiggeranno per davvero il cancro?
E il diabete? Non sanno neanche cos'� che lo provoca.
Perch� sulla Luna non ci siamo pi� tornati?
E su Marte quando ci andiamo?
Ecc. ecc.
Bye,
  *GB*