A technology expert with a history of predicting sea changes in the industry has made some startling new predictions in a new book.
Google’s Ray Kurzweil famously predicted the age of the iPhone and the fact that a computer would beat someone at chess by 1998.
In his new book, The Singularity Is Closer, Kurzweil predicts that humans will fully merge with AI, becoming immortal cyborgs, by 2045.
He also predicts that advances in AI will make it possible to resurrect loved ones and connect our brains to cloud technology, in what he calls the ‘fifth age’ of human intelligence.
Google’s Ray Kurzweil believes immortality is near (Getty)
Peculiar is the idea that artificial intelligence (AI) will eventually surpass human intelligence, fundamentally changing human existence.
Kurzweil writes: ‘Children born today will graduate from college when the Singularity occurs.
“Ultimately nanotechnology will enable these trends to culminate in the direct augmentation of our brains with layers of virtual neurons in the cloud.
“In this way we will join AI. These are the most exciting years in all of history.’
He says recent advances in AI such as ChatGPT show that his 2005 prediction in his first book The Singularity Is Near was correct and the “trajectory is clear”.
His most shocking predictions are below:
The dead will come back to life
Kurzweil believes AI technology holds the promise of ‘bringing back’ the dead – first in the form of simulations that replicate a person, then physically back to life.
Kurzweil’s efforts to ‘bring back’ his father – who died when Kurzweil was 22 – using AI began more than 10 years ago.
Kurzweil created a replicant of his father by feeding an artificial intelligence system with his father’s letters, essays and musical compositions.
He writes: “We are already creating through our digital activities extremely rich records of how we think about what we feel.
“And during this decade our technologies for recording, storing and organizing this information will advance rapidly.”
By the late 2020s, Kurzweil expects ‘highly realistic’ non-biological recreations of humans – and then living bodies.
He writes: ‘Eventually replicants could also be housed in cybernetically augmented biological bodies grown from the original person’s DNA.’
Kurzweil predicts that humans will transition into artificial bodies ‘more advanced than biology allows’ – and that by the 2040s, it will be possible to make a copy of a person.
People will become a million times smarter
Kurzeil says we’re about to enter the ‘fifth age’ of intelligence, where man merges with machine – brought on by the advent of human-level artificial intelligence and brain chips like Elon Musk’s Neuralink.
Kurzweil believes that in the years after 2029, human intelligence will be multiplied millions of times by human beings directly connected to machines.
Technologies such as brain-computer interfaces will pave the way for a new era
He writes: ‘A key capability in the 2030s will be connecting the upper reaches of our neocortices to the cloud, which will directly expand our thinking.
“That way, instead of AI being a competitor, it will become an extension of ourselves.”
Immortality begins in 2030
Humans will begin to reach ‘escape velocity’ for immortality by 2030, Kurzweil predicts.
This will be supported by major advances in healthcare.
He writes that by 2030, AI biosimulators will be doing clinical trials in hours rather than years—leading to new drugs and life-spanning treatments.
Supported technologies which he describes as the ‘fourth bridge’, where people can be ‘supported’ using technologies.
He writes: ‘The long-term goal is medical nanorobots. These will be made of diamond parts with onboard sensors, manipulators, computers, communicators and possibly power sources.
Life will become cheaper – and easier
Kurzweil believes the technology will revolutionize everyday life, with robots able to build skyscrapers at breakneck speed with the help of 3D printers that produce construction parts.
Other AI-driven breakthroughs will drive down the price of solar power, through advances in photovoltaics – lowering the price of energy.
Meanwhile, advances in robotic mining will lower the costs of mining raw materials.
He writes, ‘In the 2030s it will be relatively cheap to live at a level that is considered luxury today.
Fun where we ‘feel’ every thought
The human brain will be enhanced by ‘nanotechnology’, enabling new forms of entertainment, Kurzweil believes.
Kurzweil says that entertainment will eventually put ‘every thought in someone’s head into yours’.
He writes that the brain will be enhanced by ‘harmless nanoscale electrodes inserted into the brain through the bloodstream.’
He writes, ‘Freed from the confinement of our skulls and processed into a substrate millions of times faster than biological tissue, our minds will be empowered to grow exponentially, eventually expanding our intelligence millions of times.’