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From: John McCarthy
Date: 3.25.02

1. I agree that human level AI will be developed and that it will revolutionize human society, though in more complicated ways than anyone has yet worked out.

2. I disagree with Kurzweil's putting a date on it. Fundamental conceptual advances are required to reach human level AI. Maybe we'll have it in five years, maybe it will take 500 years, although I doubt it will take that long.

3. I'm disappointed that Kurzweil makes these cheerleading predictions while himself not active in solving the technical problems. As a cheer leader he joins Hans Moravec and K. Eric Drexler.

4. By the way, Kurzweil is mistaken in claiming that progress is accelerating and that a "singularity" is being approached. As it happens, progress affecting human life was faster in the 19th century than in the 20th century. At the beginning of 19th century, it took an expedition, the Lewis and Clark expedition, to journey overland from the states to the Pacific coast; by 1869 there was a railroad across the country, the first railroad anywhere being in 1828. In 1815, the battle of New Orleans was fought 6 weeks after the war was over; the telegraph came in 1840 and the transatlantic cable by 1870. Anesthesia for operations came in the 1840s. The germ theory of infectious diseases was established in 1860. In the 1890s we got electric lights in the home, automobiles were being manufactured and also refrigerators. Shortly after the turn of the 20th century we got radio and the airplane.

The 20th century inventions were important but had somewhat lesser effects. There are mass air travel, antibiotics, the pill, TV, nuclear energy, the beginning of space travel, remote operation of equipment of all kinds, the computer, the personal computer, and the internet. It is much less stressful to do without the products of 20th century invention for a month than those of 19th century invention. There's no law of diminishing returns here; this is just how it worked out.

Merging biology with electronic computation will happen, but we can't yet say when it will affect daily life. Human level AI will also be revolutionary, but we don't know when.

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From: Forrest Sawyer
Date: 3.25.02

This latest missive struck a nerve, and I thought I'd pass the twinge along. Ray argues that "it is part of our destiny and part of the destiny of evolution to continue to progress ever faster, and to grow the power of intelligence exponentially." This is much closer to religious dogma than a statement of fact about the nature of evolution. We do tend to be anthropocentric when studying biological systems, and we do tend to extrapolate from past patterns to the future. But there is no reason to believe that, from a purely evolutionary standpoint, we are any more successful than viruses or bacteria. In fact, based on biomass and the likelihood of longterm survival, the opposite could easily be argued. The evolutionary jury is out on whether primate intelligence is in for the long run. Judging from the environmental impact of our staggeringly recent population surge, the odds are growing slimmer.

To suggest that it is our "destiny" to grow ever more intelligent, merging with machines along the way, is to fail to understand the fragility of our present position. It is not destiny but a series of decisions (or lack of them) that will shape the near future. We can also be sure that massive environmental perturbations will play a role along the way as well...a quick review of the iridium layer at the end of the Cretaceous can assure us of that.

It may make us feel better to believe we are destined for what we envision to be greatness, but the systems at work here are far too large and complex for us to control with such happy precision. The fact that we exist is hardly satisfactory evidence that nature loves intelligence, and it is not evidence that "progress" is inevitable. Progress is after all a relative term and, indeed, our progress has spelled disaster for most of the world's large animals and many ecosystems. A little humility in the face of the challenges before us might help us decide our next steps more carefully...and help us gain a clearer understanding of the biological systems of which we are a part