Ray Kurzweil's new book "The Singularity Is Near." was published today. At the Gilder/Forbes Telecosm Conference tonight we had the privilege of hearing Kurzweil outline many of the key concepts from his book and from his work generally on artificial Intelligence. To me the most profound of Kurzweil's many fascinating observations was the idea that despite his assertions that; technology acceleration will result in the emergence of "forms of nonbiolobical intelligence superior to human intelligence" and, that "most of the intelligence of our civilization will ultimately be nonbiological", "the intelligence that will emerge will continue to represent the human civilization, which is already a human-machine civilization."
I subscribe to e-mails from The White House (like the one below) to keep track of what they are actually saying. Normally their e-mails are recitations of the President's talking points and don't add anything meaningful. However, this time David Simas was soliciting input to prove their case that the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare") is actually working. So, since I involuntarily have new health coverage as of January 1 (that's what The White House was asking for) I decided to submit my own "story." Here's what I submitted: I am retired. I pay for Medicare but I don't rely on it for quality health care. I have new coverage as of January 1st which I was forced to purchase privately as an individual. I believe I was driven to this largely by one of the unintended consequences of Obamacare which is that large employers will now more easily drop retiree group medical plans (to pay for other costs of Obamacare) citing Obamacare as the backstop for t...
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