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Ray Kurzweil made a startling prediction in 1999 that appears to be coming true: that by 2023 a $1,000 laptop would have the computing power and storage capacity of a human brain. \u00a0He also predicted that\u00a0Moore\u2019s Law<\/a>, which postulates that the processing capability of a computer doubles every 18 months, would apply for 60 years –\u00a0until 2025 –\u00a0giving way then to new paradigms of technological change.<\/p>\n Kurzweil, a renowned futurist and the director of engineering at Google, now says that the hardware needed to emulate the human brain may be ready even sooner than he predicted –\u00a0in around 2020 –\u00a0using technologies such as graphics processing units (GPUs), which are ideal for brain-software algorithms. He predicts that the complete brain software will take a little longer: until about 2029.<\/p>\n The implications of all this are mind-boggling. \u00a0Within seven years –\u00a0about when the iPhone 11 is likely to be released –\u00a0the smartphones in our pockets will be as computationally intelligent as we are. It doesn\u2019t stop there, though. \u00a0These devices will continue to advance, exponentially, until they exceed the combined intelligence of the human race. Already, our computers have a big advantage over us: they are connected via the Internet and share information with each other billions of times faster than we can. It is hard to even imagine what becomes possible with these advances and what the implications are.<\/p>\n Doubts are understandable about the longevity of Moore\u2019s Law and the practicability of these advances. There are limits, after all, to how much transistors can be shrunk: nothing can be smaller than an atom. \u00a0Even short of this physical limit, there will be many other technological hurdles. Intel acknowledges these limits but suggests that Moore\u2019s Law can keep going for another five to 10 years. \u00a0So the silicon-based computer chips in our laptops will likely sputter their way to match the power of a human brain.<\/p>\n Kurzweil says Moore\u2019s Law isn\u2019t the be-all and end-all of computing and that the advances will continue regardless of what Intel can do with silicon. Moore\u2019s Law itself was just one of five paradigms in computing: electromechanical, relay, vacuum tube, discrete transistor, and integrated circuits. In his (1999) \u201cLaw of Accelerating Returns<\/a>,\u201d Kurzweil explains that technology has been advancing exponentially since the advent of evolution on Earth and that computing power has been rising exponentially: from the mechanical calculating devices used in the 1890 U.S. Census, via the machines that cracked the Nazi enigma code, the CBS vacuum-tube computer, the transistor-based machines used in the first space launches, and more recently the integrated-circuit-based personal computer.<\/p>\n With exponentially advancing technologies, things move very slowly at first and then advance dramatically. \u00a0Each new technology advances along an S-curve \u2014 an exponential beginning, flattening out as the technology reaches its limits. \u00a0As one technology ends, the next paradigm takes over. \u00a0That is what has been happening, and why there will be new computing paradigms after Moore\u2019s Law.<\/p>\n Already, there are significant advances on the horizon, such as the GPU, which uses parallel computing to create massive increases in performance, not only for graphics, but also for neural networks, which constitute the architecture of the human brain. There are 3D chips in development that can pack circuits in layers. IBM and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency are developing cognitive-computing chips. New materials, such as gallium arsenide, carbon nanotubes, and graphene, are showing huge promise as replacements for silicon. And then there is the most interesting \u2014 and scary \u2014 technology of all: quantum computing.<\/p>\n Instead of encoding information as either a zero or a one, as today\u2019s computers do, quantum computers will use quantum bits, or qubits, whose states encode an entire range of possibilities by capitalizing on the quantum phenomena of superposition and entanglement. \u00a0Computations that would take today\u2019s computers thousands of years will occur in minutes on these.<\/p>\n Add artificial intelligence to the advances in hardware, and you begin to realize why luminaries such as Elon Musk<\/a>, Stephen Hawking<\/a>, and Bill Gates<\/a> are worried about the creation of a \u201csuper intelligence.\u201d \u00a0Musk fears that \u201cwe are summoning the demon.\u201d \u00a0Hawking says it \u201ccould spell the end of the human race.\u201d \u00a0And Gates wrote: \u201cI don\u2019t understand why some people are not concerned.\u201d<\/p>\n Kurzweil tells me he is not worried. \u00a0He believes we will create a benevolent intelligence and use it to enhance ourselves. He sees technology as a double-edged sword, just like fire, which has kept us warm but has also burned down our villages. \u00a0He believes that technology will enable us to address the problems that have long plagued human civilization –\u00a0such as disease, hunger, energy, education, and clean water –\u00a0and that we can use it for good.<\/p>\n