Nicholas West | Activist Post
There are a lot of outrageous claims being made within the halls of neuroscience and artificial intelligence. Whether exaggerations, wishful thinking, the dreams of the egocentric and megalomaniacal to be immortal, or just drumming up funding for a never-ending round of “scientific investigation,” the year 2045 seems to always be cited as a target date.
Ray Kurzweil popularized the notion of The Singularity – the threshold when computing power would match or exceed the human brain and human biological systems – in his 2006 book The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology. In that book, and subsequent articles, he theorized that 2045 would be the far end of when we could expect full integration of human and machine that would create immortality.
So far there have been indications that we are indeed proceeding in this direction. Beyond the gadgets we all use to augment our intelligence, each day seems to offer a new medical development that reads more like science fiction than reality. Just the other day there was an article in The Seattle Times that a new type of flexible brain implant could enable the paralyzed to walk again. We have robotic prostheses, humanoid robots, artificial human skin, and a range of nanotechnology applications used in medicine and the military that are quickly redefining life and nature itself. In fact, it’s been proclaimed by scientists that the era of cyborgs has begun.
Here are just a few of the articles that have sounded outlandish to those unfamiliar with the advancements being made which put into context what some factions of science are reaching for … by 2045.
While immortality is often laughed off as manifestly impossible and/or never to be desired, the quest for immortality has been with the human race since its inception; anyone who maintains their health or has a medical procedure in order to extend their own life, or those whose faith incorporates a “life everlasting” engages in this pursuit. Now that recent advances make it a near-term likelihood, however, the ethical debates are ramping up.