Technology future is bright

Technology advocate and innovator Ray Kurzweil discussed the law of accelerating returns with Houston Chronicle science writer Eric Berger before his speech at the University of Houston on Wednesday. During the interview, Kurzweil said the future, or the overall impact of information technology, can be predicted because we know it doubles in power every year. "We multiply the price performance, the capacity, and the bandwidth of all these different technologies by a factor of a billion in the next 25 years--if you look at how influential these are already--you can imagine what it's going to be like when they're a billion times stronger, and how profoundly it's going to impact our lives," he said. Kurzweil expects human intelligence to be mastered, as several hundred more brain regions will be modeled and simulated in the next 20 years. He does not view the emergence of artificial intelligence in our world as machines taking over, but as an extension of human civilization. "This is already a human-machine civilization. Our machines are part of our world, and they already extend our intelligence," Kurzweil said. "Every time you use a search engine you're expanding human intelligence, and very little science can be done today without computers. And as computers become more intelligent and more powerful, we're expanding our horizons. In my mind, that's really what it means to be human." Kurzweil also elaborated on his vision for health and longevity, which he discusses in his book, "The Singularity Is Near."