Monday, February 18, 2008

21 Years From Now

Ray Kurzweil recently said,
We will have both the hardware and the software to achieve human level artificial intelligence [...] by 2029.

Ever the optimist, Kurzweil apparently believes horsepower & libraries are the things holding back AI. I would argue that the tools are relatively inconsequential; ideas and techniques are what matter. The Wright Brothers combined decades-old equipment & materials in a radical new way to build the world's first airplane. My intuition is that the code expressing human-level AI will be elegantly efficient and small enough to run on current systems. Unfortunately, innovation doesn't easily lend itself to predictions and prognosticators.

By the way, 2029 is the year John Connor sent Kyle Reese back in time to stop the Terminator. Coincidence?

(via Slashdot)

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