In the Year 9595: SINGULARITY IS NOT NEAR

Machine or Robots; call it what you like will not achieve self awareness because to be self aware is to be soulful. I believe it is futile to build machines to immolate humans but why build anything of that sort when you can enhance humanity by merging humans with machine (Human + machine = immortality) not merging machine with humans (machine + Humans = AI). 

In the Year 9595: Scientific American:

Watson is the IBM computer built by David Ferrucci and his team of 25 research scientists tasked with designing an artificial-intelligence (AI) system that can rival human champions at the game of Jeopardy. After beating the greatest Jeopardychampions, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, in February 2011, the computer is now being employed in more practical tasks such as answering diagnostic medical questions.

I have a question: Does Watson know that it won Jeopardy?

So I put the line of inquiry to none other than Ferrucci at a recent conference. His answer surprised me: “Yes, Watson knows it won Jeopardy.” I was skeptical: How can that be, since such self-awareness is not yet possible in computers? “Because I told it that it won,” he replied with a wry smile.

Of course. You could even program Watson to vocalize a Howard Dean–like victory scream, but that is still a far cry from its feeling triumphant. That level of self-awareness in computers, and the time when it might be achieved, was a common theme at the Singularity Summit held in New York City on the weekend of October 15–16, 2011. There hundreds of singularitarians gathered to be apprised of our progress toward the date of 2045, set by visionary computer scientist Ray Kurzweil as being when computer intelligence will exceed that of all humanity by one billion times, humans will realize immortality, and technological change will be so rapid and profound that we will witness an intellectual event horizon beyond which, like its astronomical black hole namesake, life is not the same.

My prediction for the Singularity: we are 10 years away ... and always will be.

FULL ARTICLE:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=in-the-year-9595&WT.mc_id=SA_CAT_EVO_20120103

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