Humans will achieve immortality in 7 years, says futurist
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There’s no denying that we live in an era of rapid technological changes. New inventions are taking place in AI, machine learning, and nanotechnology. Over the last decade alone, we have seen massive strides in science, inching us closer to a world where our lives will be permeated by artificial intelligence all around.
And now we’re learning that humans might be able to achieve immortality by the year 2030. Let’s take a moment for that to sink in.
In 7 years, humans might be able to live indefinitely, predicts Ray Kurzweil, a futurist with a track record of accurate predictions. He believes that with the technological advances and expansions, we’re witnessing today in genetics, robotics, and nanotechnology; we’ll soon have nanobots running through our veins.
Nanobots are tiny robots, 50-100 nm wide, which carry out tasks in clinical medicine. They are used in research as DNA probes, cell imaging materials, and cell-specific delivery vehicles.
Kurzweil thinks that nanobots are the future of medicine. They will be able to repair our bodies at a cellular level, making us immune to diseases and aging, and eventually death. He also believes humans can upload their consciousness into digital form, achieving immortality.
In an interview with PBS News in 2016, Kurzweil said, “We’ve been expanding our life expectancy for thousands of years. It was 19 1,000 years ago. It was 37 in 1,800. We’re going to get to a point 10-15 years from now (by 2025 or 2030) where we’re adding more time than is going by to our remaining life expectancy. People say, ‘Oh, I don’t want to live past 90’. But, you know, I talked to 90-year-olds and they definitely want to live to 91 and then, to a 100.”
He further says, “We’re going to be able to overcome disease and aging. Most of our thinking will be non-biological, that will be backed up. So part of that gets wiped away, you can recreate it and we’ll be able to extend our lives indefinitely”.
Should this be taken with a pinch of salt?
Ray Kurzweil is famous for making predictions that have actually become true. He correctly predicted in 1990 that a computer would beat human in chess by 2000, the growth of the internet and the shift to more wireless technology.
But his most famous prediction, about which he even wrote a book, is that we will reach singularity by 2045. Singularity is the moment when machine intelligence becomes equal to or surpasses human intelligence.
As AI becomes more intrusive and pervasive, that possibility cannot be dismissed.
Look at the highly contested Neuralink, the brain chips that Elon Musk’s scientists and engineers developed. The chip will help the disabled move, communicate, and restore vision. It’s another story that U.S regulators shot down his bid for Neuralink’s human trial.
