Ray Kurzweil: Technological Singularity, Immortality, Bringing Back the Dead

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Ray Kurzweil: Biological and non-biological intelligence and thinking will merge

Prepare to evolve as Ray Kurzweil takes us for a fast ride into the future where both reality and human thinking change! A series of 3 interviews with Ray Kurzweil covers the singularity, his immortality cocktail, and bringing back the dead. He begins with a discussion of the already existing impact of technology in our daily lives, both externally and internally, both outside and inside our bodies. This integration of humans and technology will continue, at an increasing rate, to ultimately merge "man and machine".

Human reality itself will change through the implementation and integration of both augmented reality and virtual reality into our everyday, objective reality. The stream of information we receive through our consciousness via our senses that is processed by our brain will literally be enhanced and expanded by technology.

Not only will our reality change but humans will have two sets of intelligence and thinking: biological and non-biological. The non-biological intelligence and thinking is technology interfacing with our bodies and especially our brains.

First the non-biological intelligence has and will continue more and more to augment our biological intelligence. Next the non-biological intelligence will increase our biological intelligence until finally completely merging into a transhuman, transbiological intelligence. Further, first the non-biological intelligence will be backed up, just like any software. Kurzweil believes ultimately the non-biological intelligence will be able to model and back up the biological intelligence - "us humans". Of course, at that point you could generate the merged transbiological intelligence in another reality such as a virtual reality. An immortality, a continuity of consciousness, could then be achieved for a transhuman.

Futurist Ray Kurzweil on Singularity Author, inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil talks with economics correspondent Paul Solman about what Kurzweil has dubbed 'the singularity': the melding of man and machine to the point where one can't tell the difference between the two.


Watch Futurist Ray Kurzweil on Singularity on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.

Ray Kurweil's Immortality Cocktail The second of our interview outtakes with inventor/author/futurist Ray Kurzweil. In our broadcast story, Kurzweil explained that his recipe to combat aging entails taking 150 pills a day. You can find more details at a supplements business he runs, rayandterry.com, which features, we were excited to see, items like "healthy chocolates."

Watch Ray Kurweil's Immortality Cocktail on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.

Ray Kurzweil on Bringing Back the Dead This outtake with Mr. Immortality: does Kurzweil believe that an avatar of his dead father -- created with artificial intelligence and a lifetime's worth of data and mementos -- is, well, his actual father, the guy who died when Ray was 22? We asked him how that quest influenced his goal of "immortality today."

Watch Ray Kurzweil on Bringing Back the Dead on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.

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