The Last 6 Decades of AI — And What Comes Next: Ray Kurzweil (Transcript)

Here is the full transcript of futurist Ray Kurzweil’s talk titled “The Last 6 Decades of AI — And What Comes Next” at TED 2024 conference.

Listen to the audio version here:

TRANSCRIPT:

The Evolution of Artificial Intelligence

So we’ve heard a lot about artificial intelligence. I’ve actually been involved with AI for 61 years, which is a record. And we’ve heard a lot about what people think about AI today. So I tried to figure out, what did we think about artificial intelligence 61 years ago?

First of all, people asked, “What are you into?” I’d say artificial intelligence. And they’d say, “What’s that?” So no one was really aware of it.

I joined, in 1962, 1956 was the conference where artificial intelligence got its name. So the views were quite different. People who were in computer science had heard of artificial intelligence. Most people were quite skeptical. They thought it would never happen, or if they thought it would happen, maybe it would happen in a century or several centuries. But the people that actually came to that Dartmouth conference in 1956, they were quite optimistic.

Some of them, including Minsky, thought it would take like, one semester to reach the level of intelligence that humans had. And in fact, that led to our first argument. He was my mentor for 50 years. But we argued about that because I thought it would take decades, but we would see it within our lifetime.

Human Intelligence and Tool Creation

So we’re the only species that actually creates tools that enhances our intelligence. I mean, I’ll bet almost everybody has one of these that makes us more intelligent. This connects to the cloud. It gets more intelligent every year.

Basically, the singularity is going to bring that into our minds. We’re going to become smarter. And there’s two different things we have in our anatomy that enable us to do that. One is our brain, but we’re not the only species that has a brain or even a comparable brain. Elephants and whales actually have a brain that’s larger than ours.

But there’s another aspect of their anatomy that they don’t have and that no one else has aside from humans which is our thumb. So I can look at a tree and I can imagine, yeah, I could take those poles and create a tool and then I can actually do it.

Now, monkeys, if you look at them they have a thumb, but it doesn’t really work very well, it’s actually an inch down. They can grab things without much force. They can create a first generation of tools, but they can’t use that tool to create another set of tools.

The Growth of Computation

So they really can’t create a whole set of tools that will enhance their intelligence. We’re the only species that does that. And that’s what artificial intelligence is doing. From the very first hominid that created a very primitive tool to Gemini and GPT-4 today, we create tools that make us smarter.

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And so I’ve been actually monitoring the growth of computation, which is right here. I spent like, 45 years on this. And as you go up the chart, it represents exponential growth. You might think that someone was in charge of this. Gee, we’ve done this much, it’s in a straight line, let’s get our next computer to be right here. But no one was aware of it. No one even knew that this was happening for the first 40 years.

I discovered this 45 years ago. I had various reasons to feel it would continue at this pace. In 1939 that represents 0.000007 calculations per second per constant dollar. At the upper right hand corner, you’ve got a Google computer, which was 130 billion calculations per second.

The Rapid Progress of AI

And recently Nvidia just came out with a chip which is half a trillion calculations per second. So this little chart represents a growth of 75 quadrillion-fold increase. That’s why we didn’t have large language models in 1939 or even three years ago. We did have something called large language models. They didn’t work very well three years ago, began to work two years ago. We’ve seen a tremendous progress that’s happened in the last two years.

In 1999, I was asked to make a prediction of when would we see AGI, artificial general intelligence. And so I figured that this chart would continue, which it has. And I figured we’d need about a trillion calculations per second to do AGI. So I estimated 2029. That was met with a lot of skepticism. Stanford had actually been monitoring my predictions. They called an international conference to talk about my prediction.

The Timeline for AGI

And hundreds of AI scientists came from around the world. And they agreed that it would happen. We would achieve AGI, but not within 30 years. The estimate was 100 years.

And I’ve talked actually to some of the people who were there who said 100 years then and they’re basically agreeing it’s going to happen very soon. Musk says it’s going to happen in two years. It’s not an unreasonable position. Other people saying three or four years, I’m sticking with five years. But it could happen soon. But everybody agrees now, AGI is very soon.

So I have another book coming out, “The Singularity is Nearer.” And I’ve got about 50 graphs in there. I can’t explain it right now, but if you talk to me later, I can explain these charts, but it basically shows that artificial intelligence is going to take over everything.

The Impact of AI on Society

The amount of money that we make right now is ten times greater in constant dollars than it was 100 years ago. We were very, very poor 100 years ago, there was no government programs. So we’re much richer than we were then.

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And the movement, not only of computation, but every single technology, is done by creating, taking the latest thing we’ve created and making the next one.

We take the latest chip and we use that to create the next one. We have greater wealth, as I said, that leads to better education, leads to better doctors, leads to healthy people, leads to more global wealth.

All of these things work together. AI supercharges everything. So I could talk about each thing as being actually revolutionized. I think the most interesting thing is actually medicine. There are a lot of people who are experts in AI who are against what’s happening, and they’re very nervous about it, and they think it’s going to wipe us out.

AI in Medicine

But people tend to get diseases which are threatening to them. And what’s going to happen? People are going to get diseases and AI is going to come up with a cure, very soon, which will lead to a great deal of appreciation.

People say that AI is not creative. It’s very creative. You can actually put together possibilities that might work. For example, Moderna was trying to create their COVID vaccine. They actually put together a list of different mRNA sequences.

Now, what would we do in the past? Someone would come in and say, “OK, there’s several billion. Let’s try this one.” Or maybe they’d pick three. You can’t do a clinical test on billions of different possibilities. But that’s exactly what they did by simulating the reaction. And that took two days.

Rapid Advancements in Medical Research

So in two days, they created the Moderna vaccine. And that is still on the market. It’s been the best vaccine. It was done in two days. And we’re going to do that with every other thing. There’s some very promising cancer cures that are out there, which AI produced, and they’re looking very promising. The next few years is going to be remarkable for medicine.

We had 190,000 proteins done by people in 2022. 2023, AlphaFold 2 did 200 million, basically every protein and how they fold. Every protein that’s used in humans and every other species on Earth done in a few months. And we’re going to be able to go through cures for diseases at the same rate. So we’re going to simulate trials digitally. It’ll be much safer. It’ll be a million times faster.

Longevity Escape Velocity

And by the end of this decade, as we go into the 2030s, we’re going to achieve a new milestone. It’s called longevity escape velocity. Let me say that again, because you’re going to be hearing a lot about that. Longevity escape velocity.

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Right now you go through a year and you use up a year of your longevity. However, scientific progress is also progressing, which is actually bringing us back. It’s giving us cures for diseases, new forms of treatment. So right now you’re getting back about four months. So you lose a year, you get back four months, so you’re losing eight months.

However, the scientific progress is on an exponential. It’s going to get faster and faster. And as we get to the early 2030s, let’s say between 2029 and 2035, depending on how diligent you are, you’re going to get back a full year.

The Future of Resources and Energy

So you lose a year, you get back a year. As we actually go past that point, you’ll actually get back more than a year and you’ll go backwards in time, which would be cool. Now some people are concerned we’re going to run out of resources.

And actually, if we just went ahead and didn’t make any new resources, we would run out of resources like energy, for example. But this is not happening in a vacuum. AI is revolutionizing everything. For example, we only have to connect one part in 10,000 of the sunlight that falls on the Earth to meet all of our energy needs. It’s plenty of headroom and that’s growing exponentially and will achieve that within ten years.

And that’s also growing exponentially. So we will have plenty of resources. And when we get to the 2030s, nanobots will connect our brains to the cloud just the way your phone does.

The Singularity and Beyond

It’ll expand intelligence a million-fold by 2045. That is the singularity. We will be funnier, sexier, smarter, more creative, free from biological limitations. We’ll be able to choose our appearance. We’ll be able to do things we can’t do today, like visualize objects in 11 dimensions. We can speak all languages.

We’ll be able to expand consciousness in ways we can barely imagine. We will experience richer culture with our extra years. So I’ve recently become a grandfather; I’m very much looking forward to that, spending more time with family, friends, loving and being loved, all enhanced by AI.

I believe this gives life its greatest meaning. Thank you very much.