Keynote: The Next 20 Years of Gaming

  • Article

Speaker: Ray Kurzweil

[Aside: One of the best talks I've ever been to...ever]

Rough notes below

Acceleration of Progress

  • Studying exponential growth of technology
  • Games are the cutting edge, VR will be more competitive
  • VR advantages - become someone else, Ray became 25 year-old female named Ramona

 

Perspective of next several decades

  • Study last several decades to make forward looking predictions
    • 1980's book, predictions tracked very well (Arpanet doubling)
    • Predicting world wide web connecting world
    • Chess supercomputer doubling power and beating machines
    • Decentralized electronic communication - effect on Russian totalitarian control
    • Democratizing tools of creativity - Kid in dorm room can build full HD video
  • What are the trends?
  • Became inventor at 5 years old - key is timing
  • Tools of production will also be democratized (Nano technology)
  • 1 billion fold increase in computation in the last 40 years
  • Another billion fold increase with same costs in next 25 years
  • Pea-size computer today
  • Apply 1B and 100K-fold size shrinking, expand intelligence, will be platelet size and AI inside your body..."but I'm getting ahead of myself"
  • Fat insulin receptor gene
    • Hold on to every calorie, hunting may be bad, we live in an area of abundance, obesity is the problem
      • What would happen if we turned gene off (RNA), rats 20% longer lives, thin
      • Companies rushing to bring to market for humans
      • Appetite suppressants - Like a birth control pill that inhibits sex
  • People make linear projections instead of exponential
    • Acceleration is so fast, things change radically in just a few years
  • 6/7 years ago, people didn't use search engines, blogs, podcasts, MMOs, social networks didn't exist

 

Kurzweil Reading Machine

  • Got started in 2002 for device that would be possible,
  • 5,000 times smaller, now the size of a cell phone
  • Takes a screenshot of a document, does real-time TTS

 

Game Technology will be completely different

  • Games becoming harbinger of technology

Apply IT through energy

  • nanotechnology
  • 19th century
  • New generation of nano-engineered solar panels, less expensive per watt for crossover
  • Is there enough sunlight?
  • Within 20 years to capture 1/10,000 of Sun fuels
  • V/C - Pet interest of Larry Paige
  • Doubling amount of solar energy every two years

Paradigm Shift Rate is now doubling every decade

  • Phone 50 years to be adopted
  • Countdown to singularity - theory of evolution
    • Life 1 Billion years
    • Biologic evolution accelerating
    • homo sapiens (100K years)
    • Technology builds on technology
      • Leads to technological evolution

Exponential growth

  • Looks very similar to linear when it starts, can even be sublinear, but growth is exponential
  • History of computation follows exponential growth
    • Vacuum tubes exponential growth did end
    • Transistors took over to exponential growth will end by ~2020, transistors are 2D only
      • Switch to 3D chips, multilayer circuits, Intel is prototyping 3D
  • Despite unpredictable history (world wars, depression, etc), technological advances stayed on exponential growth

 

Transistor Price

  • Logarithmic decrease in transistor price, cost of transistor cycle gone down by half 1.1 years, massive deflation through technology
  • Tech deflation helps drive lack of economy inflation

10 years for first billion, 3 years for next billion

 

DNA sequencing - Govt program (15 years) - 1% in first 7 years is correct growth as exponential growth will hit 100%

Respirocyte - releasing oxygen in blood cell, could sit in bottom of pool for four hours

"Creepy valley" - Really intelligent, but not all there, will seem like demented humans

A complex system can't be so complex as to understand itself - Not what we're seeing

  • Seven of the dozen separate movies that the eye extracts from a scene and sends to the brain (7 low res images)

Within 20 years, be able to model and simulate all parts of the human brain

  • Simulate human intelligence

Exponential progression

  • B2B and B2C growing exponential (would be 5/6th largest country)
  • 2 trillion dollars on Internet

[aside Question: How does Microsoft stack in terms of exponential growth?  Do our products/adoption follow this curve? ]

 

Video of a real-time translator for cell phones, within a few years, we will be able to talk to anyone regardless of their language.

 

2010 - Computers disappear

  • Images written directly to our retinas
  • Ubiquitous high bandwidth connection to the the Internet at all times
  • tiny electronics that can be embedded
  • Interaction with virtual personalities as a primary interface
  • Effective language technologies

2029: Predictions

  • Reverse engineering of the human brain
  • Computers can pass the Turing test
  • $1,000 of comp = 1K times the human brain
  • Enhances human, not evil robots
  • non-bio intelligence will continue to grow exponentially whereas biological intelligence is effectively fixed
    • Don't stay within confines of biology
  • 15 years from now will be adding a year every year to human life