Raymond Kurzweil is an American computer scientist, author, inventor, and futurist. He is involved in fields such as optical character recognition (OCR), text-to-speech synthesis, speech recognition technology and electronic keyboard instruments. He has written books on health technology, artificial intelligence (AI), transhumanism, the technological singularity, and futurism. Kurzweil is a public advocate for the futurist and transhumanist movements and gives public talks to share his optimistic outlook on life extension technologies and the future of nanotechnology, robotics, and biotechnology.
The technological singularity—or simply the singularity—is a hypothetical future point in time at which technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible, resulting in unforeseeable consequences for human civilization. According to the most popular version of the singularity hypothesis, I. J. Good's intelligence explosion model, an upgradable intelligent agent will eventually enter a positive feedback loop of self-improvement cycles, each new and more intelligent generation appearing more and more rapidly, causing a rapid increase ("explosion") in intelligence which ultimately results in a powerful superintelligence that qualitatively far surpasses all human intelligence.
Mind uploading is a speculative process of whole brain emulation in which a brain scan is used to completely emulate the mental state of the individual in a digital computer. The computer would then run a simulation of the brain's information processing, such that it would respond in essentially the same way as the original brain and experience having a sentient conscious mind.
Friendly artificial intelligence is hypothetical artificial general intelligence (AGI) that would have a positive (benign) effect on humanity or at least align with human interests or contribute to fostering the improvement of the human species. It is a part of the ethics of artificial intelligence and is closely related to machine ethics. While machine ethics is concerned with how an artificially intelligent agent should behave, friendly artificial intelligence research is focused on how to practically bring about this behavior and ensuring it is adequately constrained.
Singularitarianism is a movement defined by the belief that a technological singularity—the creation of superintelligence—will likely happen in the medium future, and that deliberate action ought to be taken to ensure that the singularity benefits humans.
Artificial general intelligence (AGI) is a type of artificial intelligence (AI) that can perform as well or better than humans on a wide range of cognitive tasks. This is in contrast to narrow AI, which is designed for specific tasks. AGI is considered one of various definitions of strong AI.
A superintelligence is a hypothetical agent that possesses intelligence far surpassing that of the brightest and most gifted human minds. "Superintelligence" may also refer to a property of problem-solving systems whether or not these high-level intellectual competencies are embodied in agents that act in the world. A superintelligence may or may not be created by an intelligence explosion and associated with a technological singularity.
The Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI), formerly the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence (SIAI), is a non-profit research institute focused since 2005 on identifying and managing potential existential risks from artificial general intelligence. MIRI's work has focused on a friendly AI approach to system design and on predicting the rate of technology development.
The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology is a 2005 non-fiction book about artificial intelligence and the future of humanity by inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil.
An AI takeover is a scenario in which artificial intelligence (AI) becomes the dominant form of intelligence on Earth, as computer programs or robots effectively take control of the planet away from the human species. Possible scenarios include replacement of the entire human workforce due to automation, takeover by a superintelligent AI, and the popular notion of a robot uprising. Stories of AI takeovers are popular throughout science fiction. Some public figures, such as Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk, have advocated research into precautionary measures to ensure future superintelligent machines remain under human control.
Bill Hibbard is a scientist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison Space Science and Engineering Center working on visualization and machine intelligence. He is principal author of the Vis5D, Cave5D, and VisAD open-source visualization systems. Vis5D was the first system to produce fully interactive animated 3D displays of time-dynamic volumetric data sets and the first open-source 3D visualization system.
In futures studies and the history of technology, accelerating change is the observed exponential nature of the rate of technological change in recent history, which may suggest faster and more profound change in the future and may or may not be accompanied by equally profound social and cultural change.
Emerging technologies are technologies whose development, practical applications, or both are still largely unrealized. These technologies are generally new but also include older technologies finding new applications. Emerging technologies are often perceived as capable of changing the status quo.
Intelligence amplification (IA) refers to the effective use of information technology in augmenting human intelligence. The idea was first proposed in the 1950s and 1960s by cybernetics and early computer pioneers.
Richard Patrick Dooling is an American novelist and screenwriter. He is best known for his novel White Man's Grave, a finalist for the 1994 National Book Award for Fiction, and for co-producing and co-writing the 2004 ABC miniseries Stephen King's Kingdom Hospital.
The Future of Humanity Institute (FHI) was an interdisciplinary research centre at the University of Oxford investigating big-picture questions about humanity and its prospects. It was founded in 2005 as part of the Faculty of Philosophy and the Oxford Martin School. Its director was philosopher Nick Bostrom, and its research staff included futurist Anders Sandberg and Giving What We Can founder Toby Ord.
Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era is a 2013 non-fiction book by the American author James Barrat. The book discusses the potential benefits and possible risks of human-level or super-human artificial intelligence. Those supposed risks include extermination of the human race.
Murray Patrick Shanahan is a professor of Cognitive Robotics at Imperial College London, in the Department of Computing, and a senior scientist at DeepMind. He researches artificial intelligence, robotics, and cognitive science.
Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence is a 2017 non-fiction book by Swedish-American cosmologist Max Tegmark. Life 3.0 discusses artificial intelligence (AI) and its impact on the future of life on Earth and beyond. The book discusses a variety of societal implications, what can be done to maximize the chances of a positive outcome, and potential futures for humanity, technology and combinations thereof.
Some scholars believe that advances in artificial intelligence, or AI, will eventually lead to a semi-apocalyptic post-scarcity and post-work economy where intelligent machines can outperform humans in almost every, if not every, domain. The questions of what such a world might look like, and whether specific scenarios constitute utopias or dystopias, are the subject of active debate.
