In William McNeill’s World History, he makes an interesting point about evolution in general. He states that “when cultural evolution took over primacy from biological evolution, history in its strict and proper sense began.”
I noticed a parallel between his comment and Ray Kurzweil’s idea of the singularity, the point at which technology causes or becomes the next stage in human evolution. It is a point at which machine (artificial) intelligence overtakes human intelligence, allowing for unprecedented advances in human brain power and longevity. While it’s easy to argue that technology has allowed great leaps in these areas already, Kurzweil’s belief is that this will be a change so drastic as to make previous technological and biological evolutionary steps pale by comparison.
For more on Kurzweil’s thoughts, check out www.kurzweilai.net.
[Note: Kurzweil has his detractors, many of whom think we are still a long way from workable AI. Jeff Hawkins thinks we're going down the wrong path; see Linking Brains, Computers in the WSJ for additional opinions. 7/15/08]
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