The Future of Artificial Intelligence and the Pace of Change with Ray Kurzweil

I had the opportunity to attend a private reception at Cannes Lions with Ray Kurzweil, Google’s Director of Engineering and one of the worlds most respected futurist. Bill Gates said that Ray Kurzweil in “the best person I know at predicting the future of artificial intelligence.”

 The question on business leaders minds today is what is the impact of the rate of change on my company and how should we respond. Kurzweil explained that rate of change is exponential. This translates to us experiencing 20,000 years of change in the 21st century. He cited Alan Turing who said "those who can imagine anything, can create the impossible."

There was a question and answer session that covered a wide range of subjects

Artificial Intelligence & Consciousness.

Question: Can you talk about the whole area of artificial intelligence. We want to talk about a very specific area of AI, which is about the consciousness. You predicted, that we will connect our brains to non-biological neurons with a simple graft. And in that scenario, we wanted to know, what role does consciousness play? And are the non-biological neurons conscious? Is that possible?

Answer: Ray said, “so I've written a lot about this. It's actually, not a scientific question. There's no falsifiable experiment, that's the basis of science, that you can create that you can create that would definitively say this entity is conscious and this one isn't. You can't build a consciousness detector, slide it in to the inner gray line, because okay this one's conscious, this one isn't, that doesn't have some philosophical assumptions built into it. Non-conscious entities are only important insofar as they affect the conscious experience of consciousness. So then the whole important moral issue is who and what is conscious. The whole debate about animal rights has to do with people's disagreements about whether animals ... which animals are conscious ... the nature of their conscious experience. So I believe it's important, but it's not a scientific question Which is only to say that there is still a role for philosophy. Furthermore, I say that we can't get up in the morning and actually go about our day without taking a leap of faith, as to what and whom we believe is conscious. So I share my leap of faith, which is, if it seems conscious, if it has the subtle behavior that we associate with subjective states, that it is conscious. That's a leap of faith. So we believe that human beings are conscious. At least, some human beings seem to be conscious. And the essence of my prediction, that machines will pass a valid Turning test and be able to handle human intelligent activities like language at human levels by 2029. Except they will be conscious. So you can have a machine today, like a calculator or a virtual reality game, that says, "I'm very angry at you," and we don't believe it because it doesn't have the subtle behavior we associate with that subjective state. The essence of my prediction is by the 2030s, they will have those subtle behaviors. So some people would say, "Okay, it's very smart and it's acting as if it's conscious, but it's a simulation and it's really not conscious." My belief, my leap of faith, is that it is conscious, if it really is convincing. And my prediction is that people will believe it. And we better believe it, because they will be very smart and they'll get angry and upset if we don't accept their conciseness.

A Brand is a Pattern.

Question: What is the role of the brand in the world of AI?             

 Answer: A brand is a pattern, it's a logo, representing a brand. A simple pattern. But for a brand to establish itself, it tried to associate itself with a certain pattern that people will identify with. Like, this brand is fun, and this brand is reliable. And the essence of your intelligence, the essence of our neocortex, which is part of your thinking, is recognizing patterns. It's based on patterns and brands take advantage of that, so we recognize a certain pattern of activity. And we need brands to help guide us through all the information resources. And the brand is a pattern. It's a pattern of reliability. We use them as guide posts. We'll continue to do that as we extend our brains.

A New Generation of Data Centers Is Needed for Growth to support these Trends

 Consumers in Motion Group, highlighted the key trends that will transform business which support Kurzweil’s pace of change argument while highlighting the need for smarter, greener and faster data centers to process the world’s information in real time.

o   A population of five billion people connected for the first time in humanity. 

o   The rapid connectivity of the world’s objects from cars, houses, refrigerator, office buildings, medical devices and much more.

o   More industries joining the industrial Internet of Things.

o   The global 24/7 information always-on economy.

o   The industrialization of cloud with the rapid growth of data centers.

o   The mass commercialization of Graphene for use by industries is a game changer. 

o   An AI (Artificial Intelligence) First World

*Source: Consumers in Motion Group 2017