From: Max More (max@maxmore.com)
Date: Fri Jan 22 1999 - 11:18:59 MST
At 08:45 AM 1/22/99 -0800, Mike wrote:
>On Wednesday I saw Ray Kurzweil give a short talk promoting "The
>Age of Spiritual Machines" at Stacey's in downtown San Francisco.
>He spoke of the usual stuff (superintelligences, uploading, nanotech)
>and made a few interesting claims/points.
>
>* He graphed the speed of computing devices from 1900 to present, and
> claimed that computing speed is not only increasing exponentially,
> but that the rate at which computing speed is increasing is
> increasing exponentially (the graph on a log scale curves upwards).
Hans Moravec has been making the same point in recent years. I haven't seen
his new book, but a couple of years ago he showed me a graph from the book
in progress clearly making this point. The acceleration is acclerating.
Tighten your safety belts!
>* He talked about how exponential advances seem small at first, then
> explode.
Yes, in his book, Kurzweil makes this point very strongly.
>Q: I understand that computers will be smart and can ape human artists,
> but will they ever be creative? Will they ever create radical
> new movements and art, like Picasso and de Kooning?
>A: Much of human creativity involves drawing connections between
> previously unconnected elements/ideas. Computers will be able
> to do this quite well. There are already some examples.
>
>I forgot the examples.
His book has plenty of excellent examples. He gives a URL for downloading
his own poetry-writing program (RKCP) that does a fine job of emulating
various styles. You can get that from www.kurzweiltech.com Here's a great
Haiku that his software came up with:
Crazy moon child
Hide from your coffin
To spite your doom.
> I still haven't looked at "The Age of
>Spiritual Machines", and probably won't (my backlog is way too big),
>but based on the talk I saw I'd recommend the book to someone
>unfamiliar with but interested in the subject.
I finished the book a couple of days ago and highly recommend it. It is not
a comprehensive overview of all things transhumanist, but does an excellent
job from the computational aspect.
Onward!
Max
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Max More, Ph.D.
<max@maxmore.com> or <more@extropy.org>
http://www.maxmore.com
Philosophical issues of technology
President, Extropy Institute:
exi-info@extropy.org, http://www.extropy.org
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