Audiences at SxSW were shocked to hear Google Director of Engineering Ray Kurzweil predict that by 2029 smart computers will be implanted in human brains.
“Will we have implants in 2029? Yeah. But will everyone have them? No,” says University of Houston futurist Andy Hines. He’s the Program Coordinator for the school’s graduate program in Foresight. “We already have computers beating us at chess and Go and all these games, and people said it could never happen. Well, it’s happened, right?”
Kurzweil suggests hardwiring the technology of your smartphone into your brain is a logical next step. He says by 2029 artificial intelligence will surpass human intelligence and merging the two in one space will bring about singularity.
As much as the concept sounds like science fiction, Hines sees practical applications, perhaps treating the impact of aging and illnesses including dementia and Alzheimer’s. “Some of it sounds really scary, but on the other hand, there may be some really useful, practical stuff that comes out of that,” he tells KTRH News.
Kurzweil has made 147 predictions since 1990, and as events have unfolded, he’s been proven right 86% of the time.