A look at the future with Ray Kurzweil

At the 4th Dresden Future Forum, Ray Kurzweil delivered the keynote speech; in early February he was the subject of a TIME Magazine cover story. In a video interview with Steffen Büffel, Ray Kurzweil talks about the law of accelerating returns, the idea of exponential growth and its effects on education and ethics.

Asked how the exponential growth of technology affects education, Kurzweil says that in his opinion there is no need to learn facts; instead, children should learn how to think and how to solve problems. “The best way to learn something is to actually do something.” The Singularity University is a new experimental vision of how education can work: small groups of students collaborate on projects with the goal of positively affecting a billion people within ten years. That is feasible, believes Ray Kurzweil, adding that only the exponential growth of information technologies can solve the major challenges of humanity.

Interfaces between humans and technology

In Kurzweil’s opinion, we become closer and closer to technology until it is ultimately integrated into our lives. Implanting computer chips, for example, is no longer merely an experiment, but an approved therapy for Parkinson’s patients. In the video interview, Ray Kurzweil says that in the future, everyone will use implanted computers to stay healthy, become smarter, and also for direct “brain2brain communications”.

What about the ethics of these projects, which can affect the lives of thousands?

The main question is how to keep the technology safe, says Kurzweil. He cites biotechnology as an example of an excellent achievement which can unfortunately also be abused. According to Kurzweil, we must develop immune systems for new technology, similar to virus protection technology. Regular scanning for and rapid removal of software viruses could serve as a model for the defence and maintenance of new technologies.

Future: 2050

Asked what the people of the year 2050 will think about us today, Kurzweil says that people will look back and wonder how we dealt with not having a back-up of our “mind file”. Nowadays we don’t back up our memories. But our memories are also information! According to Kurzweil, in the future we will back them up and also have ways of storing people’s memories and skills. “There will be many other changes!”, adds Kurzweil and smiles.