Computers, says Kurzweil, are beginning to master human language with techniques similar to neocortex. In five to 10 years, he says, “search engines will be based on combinations of words and links but will actually read the billions of pages on the web for understanding.”

Kurzweil predicts that in 20 years nanobots will enter the brain through capillaries to connect us to a synthetic neocortex in the cloud. The future human, says Kurzweil, will be a biological and nonbiological hybrid. And this time, “We won’t be limited by the fixed architecture of the enclosure. We will expand without limits.” […]

Ray Kurzweil at TED 2014 event. (credit: TED and Bret Hartman)