Unfortunately Kurtweil’s vision, as with that of other adherents of the transhumanist cult, is grossly distorted.
His efforts to underline the very clear exponential pattern of technological development (which has been apparent to many of us for more than half a century and even quantified by Gordon Moore 40 years back) are certainly to be commended.
Nevertheless, Kurtzweil remains completely oblivious to the clear and inevitable extension of biological evolution which, by a process of self-assembly rather than direct human design, which will, within decades... (read more)
There are only 7 billion people on the planet, even if all of them gained internet access that would still be fewer than 13 billion. In this case, instead of looking at the exponential graph, consider where it needs to level off. It also isn't at all clear to me why this analogy matters in any useful way- humans aren't acting as neurons- there's no selection pressure or other effect to cause people on the internet to self-organize into some sort of large brain. Maybe if everyone played a special game where you had to pretend to be a neuron and pass signals accordingly you could maybe get something like that.
That something has a lot of processing power doesn't make it do the same thing. Currently even with supercomputers we can't do a decent simulation of where the individual molecules in a cup of tea will go over a course of a second. That doesn't mean that a large container of hot water automatically functions as a sentient or sapient entity.
Most of the people here who are concerned about a Singularity are not concerned about a "robot revolution" but rather an intelligence explosion. The similarities between these ideas are superficial. It may help for you to lurk a bit and read some of what people have wrote here. This would be an obvious bit to start with.
Unfortunately Kurtweil’s vision, as with that of other adherents of the transhumanist cult, is grossly distorted.
His efforts to underline the very clear exponential pattern of technological development (which has been apparent to many of us for more than half a century and even quantified by Gordon Moore 40 years back) are certainly to be commended.
Nevertheless, Kurtzweil remains completely oblivious to the clear and inevitable extension of biological evolution which, by a process of self-assembly rather than direct human design, which will, within decades... (read more)