14 DAY TRIAL // The computers will become more intelligent than the human beings within the next 20 years, if the computer industry keeps up with the actual progress. Scientific futurologists claim that the next 50 years will bring 32 times more technical progress than the entire 20th century.
One of the most important achievements of the next 20 years will be artificial intelligence that will reach the human capacities. American computer guru Ray Kurzweil claims that the machines will rapidly become more intelligent than humans. The apocalyptic scenarios are out of discussion, and Dr. Kurzweil claims that their intelligence will be put to work in order to solve some of the most challenging problems of the 21st century.
Kurzweil is one of the computing pioneers that could be called a technology prophet. He is deeply related to multiple fields of computing, such as optical character recognition, optical storage and automatic speech recognition. The future he described is made of machines that are able to learn how to communicate, teach and replicate among themselves.
"The paradigm shift rate is now doubling every decade, so the next half century will see 32 times more technical progress than the last half century. Computation, communication, biological technologies - for example, DNA sequencing - brain scanning, knowledge of the human brain, and human knowledge in general are all accelerating at an ever-faster pace, generally doubling price-performance, capacity and bandwidth every year," Kurzweil claimed.
While modern computing is based on two-dimensional chips built out of silicon. However, researcher are looking for viable alternatives that would allow them to achieve chips using biological molecules, as they are able to get miniaturized way beyond the metal-based processors.
"Three-dimensional, molecular computing will provide the hardware for human-level 'strong artificial intelligence' by the 2020s. The more important software insights will be gained in part from the reverse engineering of the human brain, a process well under way. Already, two dozen regions of the human brain have been modelled and simulated," he said. It is true that the human brain cannot be compared to a, say, storage server, because it can not match the machine in memory speed and capacity, but it has the unique abilities of associating and interconnected pieces of information, to perform estimations and plan.
"Once non-biological intelligence matches the range and subtlety of human intelligence, it will necessarily soar past it because of the continuing acceleration of information-based technologies, as well as the ability of machines to instantly share their knowledge," Dr Kurzweil said.