He’s a certifiable genius, they say, having invented the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, the flatbed scanner and a music synthesizer that sounds like a grand piano.
In his book, “The Age of Intelligent Machines,” he predicted the Internet as we know it today and the rise of mobile devices, back when I was using a Motorola “brick” for a cellular phone and thought personal communication couldn’t get any better than this. Since 2005, he’s been working full time on developing artificial intelligence.
But his real goal is achieving immortality within the next 25 years.
His name is Ray Kurzweil, and I was disturbed by reading an interview with him in the Financial Times this week.
He takes 100 pills a day, costing “a few thousand dollars” to protect his health so the 67-year-old can live long enough to see his dream come true – to live forever, that is.
How will that happen exactly? “The biotechnology revolution will reprogram our inherited biology,” he explains. Then molecular nanotechnology will rebuild our bodies.
He’s hardly alone in this quest. He’s joined by Paypal co-founder and billionaire Peter Thiel and Google’s Larry Page to name two. He’s working with the latter on achieving his goal.
“I think every death is tragic,” says Kurzweil. “We’ve learnt to accept it, the cycle of life and all that, but humans have an opportunity to transcend beyond natural limitations. Life expectancy was 19 a thousand years ago. It was 37 in 1800. Everyone believes in life extension. Somebody comes out with a cure for disease, it’s celebrated. It’s not, ‘Oh, gee, that’s going to forestall death.'”
Kurzweil claims the fundamental mistake his critics make is in believing progress is linear. This is his key thesis: “The reality of information technology is it progresses exponentially … 30 steps linearly gets you to 30. One, two, three, four, step 30 you’re at 30. With exponential growth, it’s one, two, four, eight. Step 30, you’re at a billion.”
He says confidently: “Over the next 20, 25 years, we’re going to overcome almost all disease and aging.”
I was surprised at my strong reaction to this piece.
Here’s an obviously very smart and influential man proclaiming to millions of people that if they can just stick around for the next 20-25 years, there’s a good chance they will live forever thanks to technology.
One question he wasn’t asked by the entertaining interviewer was, “What about God?”
Does he know that death was conquered almost 2,000 years ago when God sent His Son to Earth to die on the cross to take away the ultimate disease preventing immortality – that being sin?
I’m not a betting man, nor am I much of a prognosticator, though I did start the first independent news organization for the Internet 18 years ago, and I did figure out something like the Internet was on the horizon about the same time as Kurzweil. But I will bet anyone that man will not achieve immortality through technology or any other way than by following the Creator’s simple formula – repent, be born-again spiritually and live forever.
While I share Kurzweil’s impassioned view that every death is a tragedy, I think it’s dangerous for obviously intellectually gifted men like Kurzweil to sell technological fountains of youth to a gullible public.
As for me, I’d rather die once, receive a glorified body and live forever within that perfect casing than go the bionic route. It’s too bad there aren’t better salesmen pushing the one and only way to achieve immortality – the way God planned it from the beginning.
“For God so loved the world, that he gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” – John 3:16
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