While the idea of immortality has crossed the minds of several individuals and specialists before, a former Google engineer has made a bold claim that humans may reach immortality in eight years.
According to the Daily Mail, the former Google engineer, Ray Kurzweil, spoke to the Adagio YouTube channel and brought up robotics, genetics, and nanotechnology expansions. Kurzweil specifically thinks that these advancements will lead to the development of nanobots that can reverse age.
Nanobots
These nanobots are minute robots that have a width of around 50 to 100 millimeters. According to Interesting Engineering, they can execute clinical medicine tasks. They have been utilized as cell-specific delivery channels, cell imaging materials, and DNA probes.
With these nanobots being potentially able to make cellular-level body repairs and foster immunity against aging and disease, Kurzweil considers nanobots the future of medicine.
He also thinks that humans may be able to digitally upload their consciousness and reach immortality. He notes that humanity will be able to overcome aging and disease.
According to IFL Science, nanobots have already been used to deliver drug payloads into brain tumors. However, without any major advancements in the coming years, it may be hard to see how these could be the key to immortality in eight years.
Nevertheless, there have been significant advances in brain-computer interfaces. For one, with developments such as the brain chip of Elon Musk's Neuralink, monkeys were able to play pong with their minds.
There may still be a long way to go before reaching the point predicted by Kurzweil. The precision of his predictions must stand the test of time. The good thing is that there is still time to prepare for and reach it.
Predictions of the Future
While this may come across as peculiar to some, Kurzweil is actually known to have made predictions that came true. The Daily Record reports that, back in 1990, Kurzweil predicted that computers would beat humans in a game of chess by the year 2000. He also predicted that smartphones would become embedded in daily life.
Kurzweil also predicted in 1999 that by 2023 there will be a $1,000 laptop that has the storage capacity and computing power of the human brain.
One of his most famous predictions involves reaching the singularity by 2045. The former Google engineer, who identifies as a futurist, even wrote a whole book about it. According to his notions, singularity refers to the point where machine intelligence would be as good as or even better than human intelligence.
Given AI's growing and pervasive capacities, this is a possibility that is not easy to dismiss.
Kurzweil thinks that machines will enhance human intelligence and that linking them to the neocortex could enable smarter thinking. Unlike several others who are full of fear about the matter, Kurzweil thinks that implanting computers in the brain will make things better for humans.
He notes that rather than envisioning machines taking over humans he believes that there will be a "human-machine synthesis" that can improve humanity.
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