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."
You just have to love Dr. John Malone. The guy's a certified genius but also a "what you see is what you get" straight-shooting kind of guy. His Ph.D. is from Johns Hopkins, BA is science from Yale, worth $2.3 billion (according to Forbes, but probably way low because they just couldn't find all of it). He ran TCI (America's largest Cable company) and sold it to ATT for $54 billion. He's the kind of person that you could just sit and listen to for hours. He's so logical, well informed and well spoken. In a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal here's a few nuggets from what he had to say... (I agree with him about Obama) WSJ: What are the biggest risks for Liberty right now? Mr. Malone: I think the biggest concern I have for the next year or two would be on the retail side, because of the consumer sentiment and the macro conditions. The concerns really tend to be much more macro: Is America going to make it, rather than are we going to make it?...
Comments