Senão a imortalidade, um tédio pra mais de 100 anos.

By 2020, we will be testing drugs that will turn off the fat insulin receptor gene that tells our fat cells to hold on to every calorie. Holding on to every calorie was a good idea thousands of years ago when our genes evolved in the first place. Today it underlies an epidemic of obesity. By 2030, we will have made major strides in our ability to remain alive and healthy – and young – for very long periods of time. At that time, we’ll be adding more than a year every year to our remaining life expectancy, so the sands of time will start running in instead of running out.

O futurista Ray Kurzweil escreveu um texto sobre a tecnologia ao fim da próxima década deveras interessante. Vale a pena.

Robotic devices or automatons have been around a long time. Intelligent human-like  robots, however, have not. We can find historical references to mechanical devices in Classical Greece, Ancient Egypt, early dynastic China, the early Abbasid Caliphate in Baghdad  and in the kingdoms of the Indian subcontinent. These early automatons were created to entertain and amuse.

When Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein in the early 19th century, she described an artificial life form that was made up of human parts. It wasn’t however until the early 20th century that the term robot became part of our language. R.U.R. or Rossum’s Universal Robots was a story written by the Czech playwright Karel Capek. As in Mary Shelley’s story, humans invent the robots  with the robots becoming a threat to the inventors.

No individual popularized the term robot more than Isaac Asimov who in 1942 defined laws for robot behaviour.  The three laws countered both Shelley’s and Capek’s dark predictions of  destruction. Asimov’s laws of robotics stated that no robot could injure a human or allow a human to come to harm. No robot could disobey a human unless in following an order by a human, that or another human would be harmed. And finally, Asimov’s third law stated that a robot must protect itself from harm as long as in following this rule it didn’t injure a human or allow a human to come to harm.

In Stanley Kubrick’s 2001:A Space Odyssey, the movie portrays the ultimate fear in humanity’s pursuit of intelligent machines. Only the HAL 9000, the computer that oversees the Discovery spacecraft is aware of the mission’s objective and in keeping that information secure decides that the human crew accompanying it is a threat. The dramatic confrontation between man and machine is played out in the vacuum of space.

We have had robotic arms with us for more than half a century. These devices, designed to emulate and surpass the capability of the human  arm have been used for a wide range of applications, from industrial assembly to the International Space Station. A robotic arm features multiple joints with rotational capability and a grasping or mutli-purpose end tool at the tip. End tools can mimic a human hand or serve a specific purpose such as welding.

Today most automotive assembly lines use robotic arms extensively for the latter task. The first one of these, the Unimate robotic arm was installed at a General Motors facility in 1961. By 1973, Cincinnati-Milacron, a U.S. manufacturer, had developed commercial computer-controlled robotic arms that soon found themselves installed in hundreds of factories to provide precision welding and precise machining of parts. Seiko is just one of many Japanese manufacturers who have taken Cincinnati-Milacron’s invention and created smaller, single and multi-function robotic arms for the automotive, biotechnology, electronics, pharmaceutical and telecommunications industries. The CanadARM, CanadARM 2, and its successor, the Space Station Remote Manipulator System (SSRMS), successfully launched in 2002, are products of MD Robotics, a Canadian company. These devices have the ability to operate autonomously or be controlled manually from the Space Shuttle or the International Space Station where they are deployed.

But our ultimate goal is Data, the android of Star Trek, the creation of a machine that exhibits human traits, that appears human-like, and that develops a relationship with us.  The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Artificial Intelligence Laboratory is pursuing the creation of Data-like robots. COG is a creation of Professor Rodney Brooks, Director of the Lab. Along with a talented team of graduate students they have been building a humanoid robot. COG has been designed with many human-like traits from eye movement, head and neck orientation, facial recognition, and arm movement.  COG can even play the drums.

Another MIT robot is Kismet, a creation of a team led by Dr. Cynthia Breazeal. Kismet is an expressive robot that interacts with humans on so many levels. Although a disembodied head the robot expresses interest, sadness, calmness, surprise, happiness, anger and even disgust. If a person is out of range of Kismet’s immediate view but visible the robot engages in calling behaviour.  If someone gets too close, Kismet leans away.  Kismet both listens and talks to humans. Multiple computers are needed to create the combination of behaviour and attributes that are displayed by this very human-like robot.

The idea of building an intelligent robot in humanoid form is considered important because many scientists believe our body shape and structure govern to a large degree many aspects of our ability to express ourselves.  A humanoid robot, therefore, would interact with people like a human. MIT research shows that humans exposed to human-like robots interact with them as if they were human.

Japanese technology companies have been in forefront of creating humanoid robots.  Unlike the MIT robots, Japan’s research has focused on creating task-specific skills for a generation of automatons performing such functions as nursing, shopping, housekeeping and home care. Here are just a few examples;

HRP-4C is a female-shaped robot that walks, talks, and expresses emotions. A engineering project developed by the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, HRP-4C contains 30 motors to operate body movement and 8 to create its facial expressions. The robot has even been programmed to sing.

Saya is a work robot. Developed at the Tokyo University of Science, Saya has facial muscles that are pneumatically controlled allowing the robot to lift its eyebrows, crinkle its nose and smile.  Saya has been programmed to teach elementary shool children, act as a receptionist and do other general purpose activities.

Asimo is Honda’s humanoid robot. The first model appeared in 1986 and is probably the robot most of us know from video and film on Youtube. Asimo is marketed as a general purpose home ‘bot. It responds to voice, and human gestures. Looking very much like a space-suited tiny human, it can vacuum, shovel snow, play with children, serve food and refreshments and negotiate maneuvering through crowds. Asimo can recognize individual faces and greet people by name. The Asimo design has even developed technology to allow a human to control the robot through thoughts by the wearing of a helmet with sensors that detect the brain’s electrical impulses.

Twenty-One is a robot creation of Waseda University. It displays dexterity capable of picking up a straw, putting it into a glass and handing to a human.

AR, a Home Assistant Robot is a product of a joint venture among the University of Tokyo, Toyota, Fujitsu, Mitsubishi, Panasonic, Sega and Olympus. Standing 61-inches in height by 25.6-inches wide with a depth of 31.31-inches, and equipped with a wide-angle stereo camera, a telephoto stereo camera and ultra-sensitive sensors. AR operates on two drive wheels with balancing wheels. It can run on its battery for up to an hour and does such tasks as sweeping the floor, clearing and cleaning dishes, picking up clothes and putting them in the washer and moving chairs.

These anthropomorphic robots represent our first steps in creating the future Data. As we introduce new computing technologies such as biological-silicon hybrid chips, neurogrid  and quantum computing, and nano-circuits, our robotic devices will become more autonomous, more intelligent, and more capable. Machines that resemble us will become part of our daily existence here in the 21st century. Ray Kurzweil, the futurist who sees exponential growth in both the software and hardware capacity for us to create artificial intelligence, predicts that by 2029 robotic intelligence will be equal to human intelligence.

In our final blog installment on this topic I will discuss the blurring of machine and human intelligence as we and our machines develop a symbiotic relationship.

Immortal mortals in 2100; (Dec. 17, 2009)

Do you know there is a “Singularity University” that was held in NASA this summer of 2009?  Forty students out of 1,200 candidates were selected to attend 9 weeks of focused conferences and workshops directed by prominent and top researchers and multinational entrepreneurs such as Vinton Cerf (father of Internet), Robert Metcalf (inventor of Ethernet protocol), George Smoot (Nobel Prize of physics in 2006), the astronaut Daniel Barry, and Larry Page (founder of Google), in additional to a wide range of specialists in mathematics, medicines, and space researchers.

What are the purposes of this special summer mental retreat or summer camp?  A British engineer, Simon Daniel, who attended the sessions wrote a series of articles in the “Financial Times” and said: “An underlying common and recurring theme is that everything is possible. If you can conceive an idea then a capital risk investor will finance it and technology will produce your concept before you though it was plausible”. For example, students have to reflect on this question “How would you feed one billion individual on earth?”  Since what we eat is organic matter then we should be able to manufacture a machine equipped with nanorobots that will produce edible food from mud and algae.

Thus, the Law of Moore (founder of Intel) has been proven countless times in the last four decades and which states “The number of transistors on an electronic chip doubles every two years at constant cost”.  All scientific fields are witnessing the application of Moore’s law at the same rate of acceleration and are interacting with one another.  It appears that technological progress is experiencing an exponential explosion.  “The next century will account for 20,000 years in technological progress computed at today’s rate” said engineer Ray Kurzweil who published “Humanity 2.0. The Bible of change” and who is the driving force behind this movement of thinking.

Kurzweil is adamant that new computer generations will have cognitive performances and will pass Turing test so that people interacting with the computer will believe that they are communicating with an intelligent human instead of a machine by 2020. Thus, this trend in technology will attain the “Singularity” goal which is “a universe of matters and energies enveloped in a mist of “intelligence” totally detached of biological origins and human brain. Kurzweil admits taking 250 different pills per day and half a dozen intravenous injections per week in order to staying young and vigorous.

Who is the spiritual mentor?  He is the mathematician Vernor Vinge who wrote science fictions and predicted this phase in knowledge development as if “we are entering a regime as different from our past as human fared with animals”

The “singularity” movement has been active for over 20 years and been disseminating its ideology via Internet sites. The idea is that the “transhumanists” or “extropians” will counter the inevitable organic degradation with a permanent increase of information. The movement has its own lobby.  The sociologist James Hughes directs the Institution for Ethics and Emerging technologies associated with the movement.

The founder of this university, Peter Diamandis, claims that technology will feed man and abolish all his physical pains; thus, the older members want this immortality technology to be applied now so that they could live one thousand years.

Students visit factories where algae and bacteria are produced for bio-kerosene; they lunch with capital risk investors; they play with the latest generations of Lego that are programmed for computers; they reflect on worst case scenarios, for example, “Intelligent robots decide to annihilate biological man and an experiment contaminated Earth”

Immortality is the critical theme: religions were instituted to cow the human specie into accepting God’s pre-ordained schemes; thus, man reacted to defy God’s plans. Maybe we might live longer and technology might aid us survive a while longer but how can we do that after earth demise? Copenhagen conference for climatic change was not a success. Are investment allocated to spaceships that will save a few elite human species and transfer them to another habitable planet? So far, technology is out of control and unregulated on the ground of “How can we regulate human imagination and human drive for immortality?”

For the next decade.

Neat stuff, I’m glad to hear his projections on solar power. I think it’s a crying shame how much we’ve let politicians slow down our economy fighting against our use of fossil fuels and nuclear energy, but if we can solve all our energy problems with cheap solar, I’m fine with letting those other technologies go.

Via KurzweilAI.net — Anyone who’s read this blog for any amount of time knows I regularly cover the offerings at KurzweilAI in general and Ray’s thoughts on the future in particular. He’s certainly one of the most prominent futurists out there right now.

Top futurist, Ray Kurzweil, predicts how technology will change humanity by 2020

NY Daily News, Dec. 13, 2009 Solar power on steroids, longer lives, the chance to get rid of obesity once and for all, and portable computing devices that start becoming part of your body rather than being held in your hand are among Ray Kurzweil’s forecasts for the coming decade. Read Original Article>>

Imagine an alternate universe without Katie Price. Bliss.

Today marked the beginning of a two-week conference in the Danish capital of Copenhagen in which delegates from 192 countries are taking part in talks regarding climate change and, more importantly, THE END OF THE WORLD.

For some of those 192 countries, it truly could be the beginning of the end. If the science is to be believed, several low-lying nations across the planet could completely disappear by 2100 due to rising sea levels. If you, like me, always wanted to take a short holiday on the islands of Tuvalu, Nauru, Kiribati or Vanuatu, you may not have much time left. Even areas in the likes of London and New York could resemble Venice if they don’t sort out their flood defence systems.

Still, the main problem at the moment isn’t just debate on what should be done and what should be believed – it’s who should take responsibility. Some of the richest governments in the world (the US, Germany, France, UK, Italy, Japan, Canada and Russia, collectively known as the G8) agree to aim for a target of keeping the global average temperature rise since pre-industrial times to 2C.  However, smaller nations (mainly islands) have been arguing for a lower target of 1.5C because 2C would still not help them keep their heads, ahem, above water.

In the meantime, the 52 states in The African Union have threatened to walk out if the developed countries refuse to support the smaller nations financially; the 43 countries in AOSIS (Association of Small Island States) will not sign a crappy version of a deal if its not good enough for them; and the G77 (a loose coalition of nations that actually has 130 members, not 77) is probably going to side with the little countries and make things even more difficult for the big guns.

Everything is going swimmingly, then.

The problem I’m having with it all is that, well, civilisation is going to end anyway. It’s a pretty likely scenario – depending on who you talk to, the universe could continue to expand until everything freezes over, or contract inwards and collapse into itself in a Big Crunch. There are several other alternatives that I’m more excited about – the possibility of man being able to negotiate through space and settle down in some far-off galaxy, or even travel through a black hole and end up in an alternate dimension where L. Ron Hubbard is God and The Sun doesn’t have Katie Price on the front page, ever. Considering man hasn’t been beyond low Earth orbit since 1972, I don’t see much hope for anything like this. If we land a man on Mars in our lifetime I’ll be surprised.

My favourite prediction however is from crazy nut-job Ray Kurzweil, who thinks that we’ll all be able to upload our minds onto computer by the 2030’s, all our organs will be replaced by cybernetic implants by the 2040’s, and all distinction between man and machine will no longer exist after the 2050’s. Computers will pass a point in which they will have to be made bigger instead of smaller if they want to be more powerful, so that by 2099 there will be PLANET-SIZED COMPUTERS which will mean we are all at one with the entire universe.

Sounds pretty cool huh? Of course those theories all hinge on countries being able to work together and spend enough money to make it happen before we kill ourselves in a nuclear war or global warming disaster. And that’s the thing – we as a civilisation cannot ever all agree on something; and we are all bloody useless with finances. Lets face it – the human race is full of shit-heads only looking out for themselves. Since the beginning of human history we’ve been fucking things up. I don’t think we have enough class, or brains, to take responsibility for the whole climate change thing.

Yes, maybe it was partly our fault, but who says we have to deal with it? Who made the rules? Where is the King of the World to tell us the right and wrong way to deal with something? Who made us humans the species in charge anyway? Who the hell was in charge before we showed up? So many questions, so little time. And hey, isn’t that Jesus fella meant to come past one day and give us the score?

I think until that happens, we should just sit back and let squirrels, donkeys, kookaburras and dung beetles sort it out. Dung beetles are better at handling shit than we are anyway.

Ray Kurzweil: We are very close to the tipping point in human longevity… we are about fifteen years away from adding more than one year of longevity per year to remaining life expectancy.

[ Raymond -Ray- Kurzweil ]

GenBank Growth. The Biggest Hockey Stick.

The GenBank sequence database is an open access, annotated collection of all publicly available nucleotide sequences and their protein translations. This database is produced at National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) as part of the International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration, or INSDC. GenBank and its collaborators receive sequences produced in laboratories throughout the world from more than 100,000 distinct organisms. GenBank continues to grow at an exponential rate, doubling every 18 months. Release 155, produced in August 2006, contained over 65 billion nucleotide bases in more than 61 million sequences. GenBank is built by direct submissions from individual laboratories, as well as from bulk submissions from large-scale sequencing centers. (Wikipedia)

The Next ‘IT Industry’

When technology was given individuals, growth and innovation turned out to be exponential. Now we are reaching the stage where an individual can fabricate and re-design biological components and systems that do not already exist in the natural world at a fraction of the cost 20 years ago.

————————

Further Readings:

• Singularity University Blog
• Singularity Institute Summit Blog
• Video – Singularity University Executive Program: Ray Kurzweil’s Opening Address
• You will find on YouTube many presentations on (Technological) Singularity, especially from Raymond Kurzweil.
• Reading list to Singularity in the IT Industry and Biology and other aspects
• Free University Stuff — Open Course to Synthetic Biology [Very Cool]
• The actual largest Hockey Stick is in Vancouver, Canada.
• The New Yorker – A Live of its own
• Movie – Surrogates

Seeing Gary’s Social Media Count made me think of Ray Kurzweil and his work in trying to document the pace of technological change. The unofficial leader of a current generation of futurists, he is a uniquely interesting man with bold predictions about the near future.

Ray believes that Moore’s law, the doubling of computer processing power every 18 months or so, is not a singular phenomenon but that it is mirrored in technological advances across the board. We tend to think of technological development growth as being diagonal and linear. Kurzweil argues that it is actually occurring at an exponential rate. Exponential growth is peculiar in that it is very slow at inception and for a long time afterwards until it explodes upwards in a very quickly. His conclusion is that we will reach a point in the near future, where the pace of change is so great and the concomitant changes to our lives so enormous in scope, that it is essentially impossible to predict much beyond that point in time. Et voila the Singularity. The point beyond the horizon.

Happily, he does predict a bunch of interesting stuff between now and then. It is a slightly intimidating view of the near future with nanorobots policing our bodies, the brain mapped and understood, artificial intelligence zooming ahead of our own meagre biology.

You can see him give a presentation here – it is from 2006 and he is unfortunately much less charismatic in real life but then again I can’t blame him for being a bit shy at TED.

The future explained to a 12 year old!

Yay…

So all my time and interest spent at NUS running SETI@Home didn’t go to waste after all.

At least it made for an interesting screensaver.

It was so draining to have taken an interest in something and have people think it was a waste of time because no one had similar interests at that time. Eats you up inside completely.

I’ll just do myself a favour now by focusing on the now. Enough of mind exploration already. Plus, the world at present does seem more like the whole I had in mind when I did all the weird research.

I shall just leave them to the specialised experts.

Wheee…

Believing in aliens not opposed to Christianity, Vatican’s top astronomer says:

Regarding the beginning of the universe, Fr. Funes says that he personally believes that the “big bang” theory seems to him the most plausible, and that it does not contradict the Bible. “We cannot ask the Bible for a scientific answer here. At the same time, we don’t know if in a near future the ‘Big Bang’ theory will be superseded by a more complete and precise explanation of the origin of the universe.”

When he was asked about the possibility of extraterrestrial life, the Director of the Vatican Observatory responded that “it is possible, even if until now, we have no proof. But certainly in such a big universe this hypothesis cannot be excluded.”

Asked is he sees a contradiction between the Catholic faith and believing in aliens, he said, “I think there isn’t (a contradiction). Just as there is a multiplicity of creatures over the earth, so there could be other beings, even intelligent (beings), created by God. This is not in contradiction with our faith, because we cannot establish limits to God’s creative freedom. To say it with St. Francis, if we can consider some earthly creatures as ‘brothers’ or ’sisters’, why could we not speak of a ‘brother alien’? He would also belong to the creation.”

For computers to become more human they have to exhibit a lot more intelligence than the technologies we have in place here at the end of the first decade of this 21^st century. When Deep Blue, the IBM supercomputer defeated Garry Kasparov in 1997 the intelligence built into the computer’s ability to analyze 200 million positions per second represented artificial knowledge specific to the one task, playing chess. But to be truly human future computers must be multi-tasking.

Back in the 1990s when I was working for a large software company, they had developed neural agents. These were bits of code that could be added to a device or a network and sense patterns in the data flow or in the operation of the equipment. As the neural agents learned the “normal” patterns and became aware of what was normal, they could also be used to alert if abnormal patterns occurred. When abnormal happened the neural agents would send messages to human observers through a computer display or would engage other neural agents specifically designed to compensate for the abnormal and restore normal operations. This type of pattern intelligence is not the same as human intelligence but nonetheless it is intelligence.

When we think about our intelligence versus what I have described in the previous paragraph, what are the differences? Humans as well as many other animals exhibit many intelligence traits:

–        the ability to reason

–        the ability to acquire knowledge and retain it for later use

–        the ability to solve problems

–        the ability to plan

–        the ability to communicate through vocalization and understand vocalizations from third parties

–        the means, through mind to limb interaction, to manipulate objects.

These are key traits that define our intelligence.

Deep Blue fulfills the first trait of intelligence – the ability to reason. In part, Deep Blue also fulfills the second trait, the ability to acquire knowledge. But the knowledge that Deep Blue acquired is specific to the multivariable moves within the game of chess. Deep Blue, therefore, only meets a minimal standard when one is talking about creating a computer that is human even though this computer could outplay the World’s number one chess master.

If you think of the way we as humans gather knowledge, we do it through observation, interaction with other humans, reading, and trial and error. Sometimes we learn something in one task that we then can apply to another with very different circumstances.

As much as we can give a computer access to all of the content of the Internet in which to acquire knowledge, how do we give it the ability to apply that knowledge using computational intelligence? The field of computational intelligence focuses on developing computers that use fuzzy logic to solve problems. When we talked about quantum and biological computing in earlier parts of this multi-part article we described the attributes of these types of systems with their abilities to go beyond the logic of silicon-based computers. Programmers working in the field of artificial intelligence talk about algorithms that embrace techniques such as swarm intelligence, fractals, and chaos theory. Computational intelligence approaching our way of assimilating knowledge involves the creation of programs that combine learning and adaptation.

How close are we today to creating human-like intelligence in our computer systems? Ray Kurzweil, and David Gelernter, both noted authors and futurists, describe computing technology’s future and the rise of conscious, creative, volitional and even spiritual machines in a debate that occurred in December 2006 at MIT. The event was held on the 70^th anniversary of a paper published by Alan Turing, the inventor of the Turing Machine and Ultra, the latter, the machine that broke the Nazi Enigma code in the Second World War.  Turing is a key individual in the foundation of modern computing. In 1948 he published “Intelligent Machinery,” a paper that first described artificial intelligence in similar terms to what I have written here.

Kurzweil describes computing technology that has mastered human emotion and subjectivity. Remember Star Trek’s Data and his discovery of emotion. To Kurzweil emotion defines the most intelligent aspect of being human. Subjectivity or consciousness gives an artificial intelligence the means to learn from experience and relate the experience to self. For Kurzweil the technology to achieve this is just around the corner, a mere twenty years from now. Where Kurzweil sees consciousness as achievable in artificial intelligence, Gelernter does not. He argues that no software can be built to create consciousness and self-awareness. Kurzweil backs up his prediction by describing the acceleration of information technology and its exponential growth. He points out current experimentation by IBM in modeling the human cerebral cortex and discounts Gelernter’s definition of software based on what we see today.

An artificial intelligence would mimic our brains which when we brake them down, are massive parallel processors featuring over 100 trillion connections all simultaneously computing. Can we model and simulate a neuron? We are already well on our way. Can we design a machine with 100 trillion parallel processes? We have already seen in Parts 2 and 3 of this discussion the evolution of quantum and biological computing with the potential to approach if not exceed the capacity of our human brain.

I had a laundry list of websites that I assumed would become sentient and strike back at humanity, with Google.com, wolframalpha.com, and WNBA.com at the top of that list. While YouTube wasn’t at the top of my list, it may have to slide in just behind WNBA.com. Today, while searching for a refutation argument for Ray Kurzweil’s artificial intelligence predictions, YouTube offered a suggestion of its own.

My search: “artificial intelligence impossible.”

The result…

Everyone’s got to get their two cents in.

“Skynet became self aware at 2:14 am EDT August 29, 1997.”
-T-100

Je ne suis pas mathématicien. La seule pensée de mémoriser une formule mathématique me rend malade. Mes souvenirs des cours de mathématiques du secondaire, dans les années 1970 sont plus cauchemardesques que paradisiaques. M’enfin, comme dirait Gaston Lagaffe.

J’ai même abandonné un cours en gestion de projets dans le cadre d’une maîtrise en Instructional Technology ici même à Concordia à causes des formules mathématiques qui m’ont rendues malades, littéralement. J’ai géré toutes sortes de projets dans ma vie professionnelle. Gérer un projet est une question de travailler avec des gens, des budgets et des échéanciers, de savoir communiquer et de pouvoir organiser afin d’obtenir des résultats selon des échéanciers déterminés et souvent très serrés dans les budgets convenus. Mais, comme méthode d’exclusion, le domaine professionnel de la gestion de projets se sert des mathématiques pour s’assurer que les ingénieurs seront les seuls maîtres d’oeuvre du domaine. Les entrepreneurs qui gèrent leur entreprises sans connaître les formules de gestions de projets font appel à des experts pour faire les calculs de probabilités et de mesures de performances. Ils et elles sont bien trop occupés par l’ensemble pour s’occuper à produire ce type de détails minutieux.

Ça me fait d’ailleurs penser au domaine de la médecine dont les programmes de formation s’assurent que seul les personnes bien formées en chimie (et donc bien en rapport avec les compagnies pharmaceutiques) deviendront médecin. Les médecins ne reçoivent que très peu de formation sur la douleur et généralement moins de 30 heures de formation sur le diabète (le type de patient que le médecin généraliste verra et traitera le plus souvent). En comparaison, j’ai reçu une formation de 40 heures sur la gestion du diabète, formation non-médicale destinée aux personnes diabétiques. Mais excusez-moi, collègues, de toute cette parenthèse. Je n’avais pas l’intention de faire VLB, mais la situation s’y prêtait.

Si on n’a jamais su me faire aimer ou apprendre les mathématiques à l’école, on a réussi, plus tard, à me montrer quelques notions essentielles qui sont utiles pour comprendre certains effets des mathématiques dans le quotidien. Et c’est ce que j’aimerais partager avec mes collègues qui vivent une situation similaire à la mienne.

La courbe exponentielle c’est quoi? C’est simplement une progression. À peu près tout le monde connaît ce qu’est une progression linéaire : 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 est un simple exemple, 3 – 6 – 9 – 12 – 15 en est un autre. Une progression linéaire simple comporte une intervalle (dans les deux exemples une intervalle de 1) et une quantité égale et invariable (dans le premier exemple une quantité de 1, dans le deuxième de 3). C’est ce qui différencie cette progression du calcul de π comme on la vu dans l’article « The Mountains of Pi » dans Panic in Level 4 de Richard Preston puisqu’il n’y apparait jamais de progression identifiable, ni simple, ni complexe.

La progression exponentielle aussi diffère en ce que l’intervalle est constante mais la quantité s’accroît avec la durée. Voici un exemple qui démontre deux concepts à la fois : la progression exponentielle et l’effet dans le temps de l’intérêt composé. Remarquez ce qui s’y passe après 10 jours (10 périodes), 15 jours, 18 jours, 21 jours, et tous les jours après le vingt-quatrième.

Supposons un dépôt de 0,01 $ (un sous) à un taux d’intérêt composé de 100 % par jour pendant 30 jours. L’intérêt composé veut dire l’intérêt calculé sur le montant d’origine plus les intérêts de la période précédente, ce qui dans notre exemple commence à la fin du deuxième jour.
Jour 1 – Dépôt = 0,01 $ + intérêt 0,01 $ =
Jour 2 – Solde = 0,02 $  + intérêt 0,02 $ =
Jour 3 – Solde = 0,04 $ + intérêt 0,04 $ =
Jour 4 – Solde = 0,08 $ + intérêt 0,08 $ =
Jour 5 – Solde = 0,16 $ + intérêt 0,16 $ =
Jour 6 – Solde = 0,32 $ + intérêt 0,32 $ =
Jour 7 – Solde = 0,64 $ + intérêt 0,64 $ =
Jour 8 – Solde = 1,28 $ + intérêt 1,28 $ =
Jour 9 – Solde = 2,56 $ + intérêt 2,56 $ =
Jour 10 – Solde = 5,12 $ + intérêt 5,12 $ =
Jour 11 – Solde = 10,24 $ + intérêt 10,24 $ =
Jour 12 – Solde = 20,48 $ + intérêt 20,48 $ =
Jour 13 – Solde = 40, 96 $ + intérêt 40,96 $ =
Jour 14 – Solde = 81,92 $ + intérêt 81,92 $ =
Jour 15 – Solde = 163,84 $ + intérêt 163,84 $ =
Jour 16 – Solde = 327,68 $ + intérêt 327,68 $ =
Jour 17 – Solde = 655,36 $ + intérêt 655,36 $ =
Jour 18 – Solde = 1 310,72 $ + intérêt 310,72 $ =
Jour 19 – Solde = 2 621,44 $ + intérêt 2 621,44 $ =
Jour 20 – Solde = 5 242, 88 $ + intérêt 5 242, 88 $ =
Jour 21 – Solde = 10 485,76 $ + intérêt 10 485,88 $ =
Jour 22 – Solde = 20 971,52 $ + intérêt 20 971,52 $ =
Jour 23 – Solde = 41 943,04 $ + intérêt 41 943,04 $ =
Jour 24 – Solde = 83 886,08 $ + intérêt 83 886,08 $ =
Jour 25 – Solde = 167 772,16 $ + intérêt 167 772,26 $ =
Jour 26 – Solde = 335 544,32 $ + intérêt 335 544,32 $ =
Jour 27 – Solde = 671 088,64 $ + intérêt 671 088,64 $ =
Jour 28 – Solde = 1 342 177,28 $ + intérêt 1 342 177,28 $ =
Jour 29 – Solde = 2 684 354,56 $ + intérêt 2 684 354,56 $ =
Jour 30 – Solde = 5 368 709,12 $ + intérêt 5 368 709,12 $ =

Jour 31 – Solde 10 737 418,24 $

Vous pouvez remarquer que la valeur épargnée de 0,01 $ n’a absolument aucun lien avec la valeur à la fin du terme. La valeur à terme dépend du pourcentage d’intérêt et du nombre de périodes de temps pour lequel sera versé l’intérêt. Ce sont les dernières périodes qui sont le plus profitables évidemment. Un conseil, si vous avez des épargnes, obtenez le taux maximum d’intérêts et laissez le tout mijoter le plus longtemps possible, sans y toucher.

Cette démonstration par l’absurde, car qui paierait 100% d’intérêt par jour, permet de vous faire aisément voir qu’au début la progression ressemble à l’augmentation progressive d’une progression linaire, mais qu’à partir de la dixième période, la courbe ascendante prend une sérieuse accélération vers le haut (le coude ou « elbow » que nous avons vu dans le texte « The Singularity Is Near » (p. 10) de Ray Kurzweil. Et plus le temps avance, plus cette accélération augmente. C’est d’ailleurs ce qui a incité Albert Einstein à déclarer que « Les intérêts composés sont la plus grande force dans tout l’univers ».

De votre vivant, aucun banquier ne va s’assoir avec vous pour vous montrer comment créer de la richesse avec votre propre argent. Il ne vous parlera surtout jamais de la règle de 72, une règle bancaire qui indique qu’avec un taux d’intérêts composés de 12%, votre montant épargné double tous les six ans (allez-y, faites-en le calcul, prenez un montant quelconque et calculez 12% par année (1% par mois), composé mensuellement multiplié par le nombre de mois d’ici votre retraite ou augmentez le plaisir de l’exercice en calculant l’intérêt quotidien au taux de 0,03287671232876712 qui est de 12 divisé par 365).

Donc, si on entreprend un plan d’épargne pour la retraite, il faut absolument commencer à l’âge de 18 ans (à 65 ans ce sera l’argent placé à l’âge de 18 ans qui aura le plus compté), même avec un petit dépôt régulier  de 25 $ par mois, et obtenir un rendement au taux moyen de 12% par année (comme le font les institutions financières) pour prendre sa retraite millionnaire. Mais ce n’est pas votre banquier qui va vous montrer comment faire. Ce n’est pas dans son intérêt.

Lles institutions financières sont en mesure de faire d’énormes profits en nous garantissant des taux d’épargne de 1 à 3 % afin de pouvoir utiliser notre argent et le placer pour en obtenir des rendements supérieurs à 12% ce qui leur permet d’accroître leurs gains avec notre argent. C’est ce principe qui a incité Thomas Jefferson à dire « Les établissements bancaires sont plus dangereux qu’une armée en campagne ». Et ça s’était bien des années avant l’invention des frais de services.

« Afin d’améliorer nos services à la clientèle, nous avons ajouté des frais de services mensuels à votre compte. »
Message véritable reçu il y a quelques années et qui transformait un compte sans frais en compte avec frais mensuels, action posée tout en fermant des succursales et rendant l’accès à cette institution plus difficile.

According to Oxford Today: The University Magazine, they’re coming:

‘There is a significant chance that my own children will live beyond the age of 120′, says Julian Savulescu, Director of Oxford’s Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics. ‘Thereafter we could be looking at two- or three-fold increases in human life spans.’ . . . At the Uehiro Centre Savulescu heads a group of some thirty research associates, plus graduate students and international visitors. A medic before he turned philosopher and recently hailed in a poll as ‘Australia’s top emerging thinker’, Savulescu openly stakes out his position on human enhancement: ‘I’m an enthusiast. To be human is to strive to be better. We have a duty to use our knowledge to achieve worthwhile goals. Think of the comparative benefits. Estimates have been of as much as a 20 per cent reduction in poverty and welfare dependency as a result of relatively minor rises in average IQ across the population.’ He emphasises that increases at the lowest IQ levels ­ below 70 points ­ could bring the biggest benefits. Perhaps most controversially, Savulescu favours what he calls ‘procreative beneficence’. At present, screening is limited by the number of eggs women normally produce and allows scientists to screen only for certain specific diseases. If scientists could scan a far larger number of embryos, using artificially manufactured sperm and eggs, this would allow couples to choose their ‘perfect child’.

Perfect children? Wouldn’t genetically enhanced ‘perfect children’ see themselves as like, well, superior to children born the traditional way? And wouldn’t ‘perfect children’ see themselves as natural rulers, a chosen people (literally!), a master race? Ah, I think we’ve seen this movie before.

And:

Nous avons discuté des possibilités et des dangers des nanotechnologies suite à la lecture de l’article The Future doesn’t need us de Bill Joy. Voici un nouveau développement qui permet d’envisager que tout n’est pas négatif ce domaine.

Dr. James W.M. Chon

Une technologie développée par des chercheurs de la Swinburne University of Technology en Australie, selon une procédure d’inscription qu’ils appellent 5-D à l’aide de nano-technologie, permettrait de graver des disques compacts de 1600 Giga-octets (Go) pourrait déjà rendre les disques Blue Ray (50 Go) désuets au même titre que le disque compact original (0,65 et 0,7 Go selon les modèles) et les DVD (4 Go en simple couche et 8,5 Go en double couche) tel que rapporté en mai dernier par la BBC.

The team members described what they did as adding three “dimensions” to the two spatial dimensions that DVD and CD discs already have.
They say they were able to introduce a spectral – or colour – dimension and a polarisation dimension, as well as recording information in 10 layers of the nano-rod films, adding a third spatial dimension.
The scientists used the nanoparticles to record information in a range of different colour wavelengths on the same physical disc location. This is a major improvement over traditional DVDs, which are recorded in a single colour wavelength with a laser.
Also, the amount of incoming laser light absorbed by the nanoparticles depends on its polarisation. This allowed the researchers to record different layers of information at different angles.
The researchers thus refer to the approach as 5-D recording. Previous research has demonstrated recording techniques based on colour or polarisation, but this is the first work that shows the integration of both.
As a result, the scientists say they have achieved unprecedented data density.
voir article en ligne

On a vraiment dépassé le coude de la courbe du développement exponentiel que nous avons exploré dans The Singularity Is Near de Ray Kurzweil. Les nouveaux développements et nouvelles capacités vont de plus en plus vite et sont de plus en plus incroyables.

Via KurzweilAI.net –

Ray Kurzweil to receive The Economist’s Innovation Award

KurzweilAI.net, Oct. 29, 2009 The Economist’s Innovation Award for Computing andTelecommunications will be given to Ray Kurzweil today in London for contributions to optical character recognition (OCR) and speech recognition technology. In 1974, Kurzweil was the principal developer of the world’s first omni-font OCR, and in 1984, he created the world’s first commercially marketed large-vocabulary speech recognition technology. “Ray Kurzweil has used the advances in basic electronictechnologies to pioneer a range of innovative products inoptical character recognition, speech recognition,music, text to speech synthesis, and medicine,” said Andrew Odlyzko, Professor, School of Mathematics, University of Minnesota. “His vision and sense for how fast technology wasprogressing led to products that were usually not only first to market, but were commercially successful, and have assisted the handicapped, advanced the arts, and stimulated the imagination of countless other technologists and entrepreneurs. His work is a stellar example of the achievements that The Economist’s Innovation Awards are intended to recognize and encourage.” “I am deeply honored to receive this recognition,” said Kurzweil, Founder, Kurzweil Computer Products (now Nuance), currently CEO, Kurzweil Technologies, Inc. “In my work in optical character recognition and speech recognition, my goal was to provide new modalities for the transmission of human knowledge. As an inventor, I quickly realized that timing was critical to success, so I sought to develop models of how information technologyevolves. With these projections, we can use ourimaginations to envision inventions of the future, and I have tried to do that in my books and web sites such as KurzweilAI.net.”

Los ricos evolucionarán de forma separada

Las últimas declaraciones de Paul Saffo seguramente causarán controversia. Para este “especialista del futuro” -una especie de “gurú” que hace predicciones sobre el avance de la tecnología- el hombre como raza se escindirá dentro de no mucho tiempo en dos ramas separadas. Por un lado, estarán aquellos que como tú o yo no podamos pagar los últimos adelantos en regeneración de tejidos, implantes cibernéticos o tratamientos basados en nanomáquinas o biotecnología. Por otro, los multimillonarios que tendrán acceso a todas las modificaciones genéticas y robóticas que la ciencia desarrolle en el futuro. Ambas ramas de la humanidad dejarán de ser, en algún momento, “compatibles entre sí”.

Los ricos, con sus cuerpos modificados, evolucionarán en una subespecie independiente.

Los dichos de Saffo pueden relacionarse con las declaraciones que ha hecho en los últimos meses Ray Kurzweil. Raymond afirma que, a lo sumo 20 años, habremos logrado conseguir uno de los mas viejos anhelos de la humanidad: la inmortalidad.

Lo que está queriéndonos decir Saffo es simplemente que no todos vamos a poder comprar la vida eterna. Un tratamiento semejante, suponiendo que Kurzweil esté en lo cierto y lograr semejante cosa sea posible, seguramente no será barato. Esto dividirá a la humanidad en dos grupos: los ricos, que podrán pagarse el elixir de la juventud eterna, y los simples mortales que estirarán la pata como cualquier hijo del vecino. Desde ya te adelantamos que el primer grupo será mucho más pequeño que el otro, y que si Saffo tiene razón, los del segundo grupo difícilmente se queden mansos y tranquilos, condenados, viendo como los otros le ganan la batalla a la muerte. ¿No te parece?

Saffo cree que gracias a los (caros) avances de la medicina y la robótica, los ricos evolucionarán en una subespecie independiente. Aunque no lleguen a obtener la inmortalidad prometida por Kurzweil, serán mucho más aptos para la vida que la especie de los no-ricos. Avances como las drogas personalizadas, tratamientos regenerativos basados en células madre, desarrollo y crecimiento dirigido de los órganos del cuerpo e investigación genética aplicada estarán disponibles tarde o temprano, pero costarán dinero. Serán accesibles solamente para los individuos con alto poder adquisitivo, quienes evolucionarán de forma separada al resto de nosotros.

“A veces me pregunto si los muy ricos podrán vivir, en promedio, 20 años más que los pobres. Eso representan 20 años adicionales que podrán aprovecharse para lograr más ingresos, con los que se pueden comprar más años de vida”, dice Saffo, y nos deja con ganas de salir ya mismo a ganar dinero (o robar un banco) para no quedarnos en el grupo de los pobres condenados. Como sea, es posible que los plazos que maneja Saffo sean demasiado cortos. Difícilmente en sólo dos décadas tengamos a disposición avances tan radicales como para que la raza humana se divida. Pero su argumento proporciona, al menos, algo para pensar.

Fuente:NEOTEO

On Wednesday I heard Ray Kurzweil speak.

Kurzweil gave an abbreviated version of the gospel he’s been preaching for the last twenty years: that technology evolves on exponential curves, whereas intelligence has evolved to make linear predictions. “If you can measure the underlying properties of an information technology,” he said, “they follow smooth exponential arcs.” This is a pattern that has held through the Great Depression, both World Wars and every recession of the last century.

When people talk about a technological growth curve plateauing, they’re looking at one factor: speed, energy, cost, etc. People have observed Moore’s Law plateauing of late. But a slackening in one curve doesn’t mean progress stops on all others. Kurzweil gave the example of the MIT lab computer he rented time on when he was an undergrad versus the iPhone he had in his pocket: a billion-fold price/performance increase in 30 years. And the chart of MIPS per Dollar grows at a smooth exponential arc through the past century.

The reason technology grows so exponentially, Kurzweil explained, is that it’s an evolutionary process. The first computers had to be designed on graph paper; now they’re designed by other computers. This generation’s technology helps to make the next generation’s. As a result, the rate of technology adoption accelerates as well. It took several decades for phones to be universally adopted, only a couple decades for phones and only a few years for cell phones. Smartphones have taken off even faster.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a Kurzweil talk without some crazy sounding predictions. I copied down the following:

• Drugs that can suppress the fat insulin receptor gene in humans, keeping our bodies from stockpiling calories (an evolutionary holdover);
• Solar energy has doubled in productivity every two years; at that rate, solar power could meet 100% of the human race’s needs in 20 years (granted, those quoted doubling figures are talking about photovoltaic cells, and most engineers agree that further growth in efficiency would require some developments in nanotechnology – that being said, it’s not impossible);
• By 2029, $1000 in computation will have 1000x the capacity of the human brain (this was a blurb on a slide that he didn’t dwell on; did he mean speed? storage space? both?);
• Moore’s Law refers to the processing power of integrated circuits, what Kurzweil calls the “fifth paradigm” in information technology (vacuum tubes being the fourth). The sixth paradigm – a three-dimensional circuit substrate – could be possible by 2020.

El científico estadounidense Ray Kurzweil predijo que los avances de la nanotecnología podrían resolver la crisis energética, mejorar el genoma humano e incluso conducir a la inmortalidad humana en 20 años.

El inventor, de 61 años de edad, ha hecho otras predicciones tecnológicas anteriormente. Expresó que con los constantes avances tecnológicos y los conocimientos sobre las técnicas de computación, el ‘cuerpo humano inmortal’ no sería sólo un mero sueño.

Según Kurzweil, teóricamente al ritmo en que aumenta nuestro conocimiento, será posible crear nanotecnología que pueda reemplazar órganos vitales en dos décadas. El científico añadió que parecía que su idea era algo lejano, pero, para defender su opinión, argumentó que ya existen páncreas artificiales e implantes neuronales

Kurzweil escribió un artículo en el periódico británico The Sun expresando, “igual que yo, muchos científicos creen también que en unos 20 años contaremos con nuevas técnicas que podrían reescribir el viejo ‘software’ del cuerpo humano. La nanotecnología nos permitirá tener una vida eterna”.

Kurzweil afirmó que, “al final, los nanobots reemplazarán las células sanguíneas y harán el trabajo de forma mil veces más eficiente”. Predijo también que en 25 años seríamos capaces de correr a alta velocidad durante 15 minutos consecutivos sin inhalar aire y permanecer bajo el agua durante 4 horas sin oxígeno.

El científico indicó que aquellos enfermos cardiovasculares que aún no hayan recibido un corazón artificial podrían conducir tranquilamente su propio vehículo al hospital para recibir una pequeña operación, puesto que el nanobot puesto en su cuerpo podría mantenerlos con vida. Además, las técnicas genéticas pueden extender nuestras capacidades mentales a tal nivel que incluso podremos escribir libros en minutos.

Kurzweil expresó también que “si queremos entrar en un modo de realidad virtual, los nanobots apagaran algunas señales de nuestro cerebro y nos llevarán a donde queramos ir… Así que esperamos la aparición del mundo de los semirobots y semihumanos, en que los seres humanos tendrán órganos vitales artificiales”.

Los medios de comunicación británicos consideran que, pese a que muchas personas consideran como una locura la predicción de Kurzweil, este “loco” era un excelente estudiante del Instituto Tecnológico de Massachusetts e inventor de la primera máquina lectora de documentos impresos para ciegos. Cuando no hace predicciones, Kurzweil es un científico muy serio.

Recogido de Esencia21