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Kurzweil: Brains Will Extend to the Cloud


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Ray Kurzweil

ABC News

Inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil says human brains will one day extend into the cloud, and it will be possible to selectively erase pieces of memory while keeping other parts.

He also believes that eventually people will be able to learn new things no matter how old they are. "You can learn new material at any age, but there is a limited capacity," Kurzweil says. "That's one of the things we will overcome by basically expanding the brain into the cloud."

He says these advances will come from new natural language processing technology. However, to work like the human brain, artificial intelligence (AI) tools need to be built hierarchically, like a brain, Kurzweil says. Although he acknowledges that AI has the ability to be misused in the wrong hands, he says "if it turns on you, you need to get even smarter AI."

Kurzweil also notes that the way the virus threat has been mitigated provides a blueprint for checking AI misuse. "I think we could take comfort with how we've done with software viruses," he says. "We have an evolving technological immune system that's kept up with [increasingly sophisticated viruses], more or less."

From Computerworld
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