Machines Cleverer Than Man
According to a recently posted article on the BBC web site, “Machines will achieve human-level artificial intelligence by 2029. Humanity is on the brink of advances that will see nanobots implanted in people’s brains to make them more intelligent.”
The prediction comes from Ray Kurzweil, one of 18 influential thinkers chosen by the US National Academy of Engineering to identify the great technological challenges facing humanity in the 21st century. It’s a bizarre suggestion and I for one will refuse to snort nanobots, no matter who recommends it. Apart from anything else, if the nanobots have human-equivalent intelligence why wouldn’t they just plug themselves into your nervous system and then chew your brain to pieces as soon as they realized that they didn’t need that redundant meat computer that occupies your skull.
They could then enjoy themselves demonstrating their humanness by getting drunk, watching hours of advert-interrupted television and surfing the Internet for porn.
Suddenly I’m starting to feel sorry for the nanobots…
More Accurate Clocks
Luckily the nanobots will be able to experience even more accurate clocks. News broke yesterday that US physicists have constructed a clock so accurate it will neither gain nor lose even a second in more than 200 million years. No living being is likely to appreciate such accuracy, but you just know it’s the kind of thing that’s gonna appeal to nanobots, especially those who like to plan ahead.
Admittedly, I’m assuming that the nanobots will be able to keep a human body in good repair for those hundreds of millions of years or at least be able to migrate from one human body to another through a convenient mechanism (like the human sneeze for example).
HD DVD: Dead Very Dead
Sadly those nanobots are unlikely to ever experience an HD DVD, as Toshiba has given up the fight and filed the HD DVD in the attic with the 8 track tapes and Betamax videos. I called this a while ago (here, here and here), the last time excusing Gartner for its deficiency of spherical objects (100 percent probability). I could claim that I possessed incredible insight, but the truth is that even current nanobots have achieved the requisite intelligence to understand that when BlockBuster Video ceases to support your DVD format, it’s time to start writing the eulogy.
Who Would Jesus Bomb?
That was the question asked by a bumper sticker I saw yesterday. It made me think about the unexpected turnaround that has occurred in American politics in the past few months and which is (as yet) unremarked. The “Christian Right” has gone from being a potent political force to an irrelevancy. As a consequence, there will not be much debate about the teaching of intelligent design/evolution, stem cell research or gay marriage in the coming presidential election.
It may have happened because Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney represented very similar constituencies and they divided the Christian vote to some degree, while Giuliani’s campaign imploded and McCain, the Republican maverick came waltzing through. Or it may have happened because Ray Kurzweil was lying to us about the nanobots and, in fact, they are already as clever as we are and they have already been released among the American population.
The nanobots care nothing either way about evolution (it’s in our hands now), stem cell research (who needs it?) or gay marriage (whatever floats your processor), but they are burning teraflops over the big question:
Who Would Jesus Bomb?
