Here’s what futurist Ray Kurzweil thinks life will be like in the next 20 years
November 18, 2012
With companies like Google creating self-driving cars and augmented-reality glasses, futurist Ray Kurzweil’s predictions are starting to sound much more realistic.
Kurzweil, cofounder of Singularity University, became famous for creating the first text-to-speech software. Forbes called him “the ultimate thinking machine.”
With technology advancing at an increasingly rapid rate, and researchers making serious headway into discovering the mysteries of the brain, it seems as if we’ll all be reconstituted as a computer someday.
Here’s a summary of what our future will be like, Kurzweil said in a speech at the Demo conference in Silicon Valley this past week:
- Our brains will extend to the cloud, which will allow us to learn new things at any age.
- We will be able to selectively erase pieces of our memory.
- We’ll be in augmented reality at all times.
- By 2029, machines will be able to match the intelligence of humans, and they’ll be able to make us laugh and cry.
- Around the 2030s, tiny “nanobots” able to repair and preserve our organs will keep us healthier and smarter.
- 3D printing will be even more common than it is today, with public 3D printing stations for people to print out clothes, toys, and anything else.
- Within 25 years, computers will be the size of a blood cell and we’ll be able to connect it to the brain without the need for surgery.
- Society will reach a state of “technological singularity” in 2045 where technology enables superhuman machine intelligences to emerge and people and machines become deeply integrated.