Lots of Processors Inside Everything
By Jessica Davis -- 10/5/2006
Electronic News
SANTA CLARA, CALIF. -- Moore’s Law is only one of many laws taking civilization down a path of exponential progress that will bring us to a place where computers can simulate the human brain by 2013 and create devices that will double human life expectancy by the 2020s.
That’s according to Ray Kurzweil, an inventor and author who delivered a futuristic keynote address at the ARM Developers Conference in Santa Clara Wednesday.
“We are moving towards an era when computers are not going to be discrete products,” he said. “They will make their way into our bodies and brains and replace biological neurons.” Kurzweil noted that the most recent generation of an FDA-approved embedded neuron allows for the download of new software.
“Applications such as cell phones, the Internet, are democratizing technologies that are making this world a better place,” Kurzweil said. He pointed out that the World Bank had recently noted that these technologies helped cut poverty rates in half in Asia over the last 10 years. According to that same report the World Bank forecasted that poverty would be cut by another 90 percent in those regions over next 10 years.
“You would think that you couldn’t predict where technology is headed,” Kurzweil said, “but these trends are very predictable. The overall result of the growth of information technology is remarkably predictable” even though individual projects are not predictable.
According to Kurzweil, information technology progresses exponentially, not linearly, and doubles every year. That same rate of progress also applies to biology, and can yield some amazing advances, he said. For example, scientists have figured out how to perform RNA interference, effectively switching off a particular gene. Kurzweil said that some scientists have identified the fat gene in animals and switched it off, creating creatures that can eat as much as they want without creating fat stores.
“They are rushing to bring this to the human market,” Kurzweil said, adding that it should be here in five to 10 years.
Kurzweil offered several examples of previous instances of exponential growth. He pointed out that it took 50 years for a quarter of the population to adopt the telephone in the United States. But that rate of change has been accelerating as new technologies are introduced. For example, “five or six years ago no one used search engines,” he said.
Kurzweil postulated that technology’s exponential progression marks the natural next step of biological evolution’s exponential progression.
Countering critics who say that every paradigm, including exponential progression, eventually hits a wall, Kurzweil admitted that was true. However, “as we get close to that wall, there is research pressure for the next paradigm.”
Kurzweil pointed out that Intel said it can continue with Moore’s Law until 2022 at 4 nanometer process technology. “But that won’t be the end of exponential growth in computing. It will be time for the ‘Sixth Paradigm’ in computing.” Earlier paradigms were vacuum tubes, transistors and integrated circuits. The new paradigm will be 3D, according to Kurzweil.
“When I postulated that in my last book on the subject it was a radical notion,” he said. “It’s now a mainstream view. Intel has 3D circuits now... They expect to have these circuits working in the teen years, well before Moore’s Law runs out of steam.”
Computing will be able to simulate the human brain by 2013, and will be able to do it for just $1,000 by 2020, Kurzweil said.
Indeed, he said, ARM is doubling the number of its processors sold every four years, he said. When price/performance reaches new levels new applications explode on the horizon.
“This is going to be very important and very liberating in my view,” he said. “The new paradigm is to treat biology as information technology and use information technology to reprogram it. We can turn genes off and create new enzymes.”
Kurzweil offered several examples of how scientists are already making such breakthroughs, such as an artificial red blood cell that would, if you replaced all your existing red blood cells with the artificial ones, allow you to run a 15 minute sprint without taking a breath or sit on the bottom of the pool for four hours.
Ultimately, this kind of technology will continue the exponential increases in average life expectancies for humans. Kurzweil said that the life expectancy for Cro Magnon man was just 18 years, and ancient Egyptians could only expect to live 25 years. By 1400 in Europe that had grown to 30 and by 1800 in Europe – just 200 years ago -- it was 37. In 1900 in the United States it was 48 and just 100 years later in 2002 it is 78 in the United States.
For those of us who can last another 15 years, Kurzweil predicted that we will get an extra year for each remaining year of life expectancy.
Kurzweil's most recent book is called, "The Singularity is Near. When Humans Transcend Biology"
An interesting read.