[HN Gopher] How Ray Kurzweil's 1998 predictions about 2019 are f...
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How Ray Kurzweil's 1998 predictions about 2019 are faring
Author : apsec112
Score : 107 points
Date : 2021-01-02 04:01 UTC (19 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.militantfuturist.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.militantfuturist.com)
| blackbrokkoli wrote:
| "MOSTLY RIGHT" seems to mean "a pilot project around silicon
| valley (or in a big Chinese city) exists".
|
| I've visited a dozen countries and I've never encountered an AI
| system to prevent interpersonal violence. AI gunfire detection
| system seem to exist solely in a certain country with a tendency
| to tack startup solutions onto deep-rooted societal issues.
|
| This is a recurring theme throughout the article. The average
| hospital runs on Windows XP, not a sci-fi network of smart-
| watches.
|
| Virtual artists are somewhat respected for sure, but AI-generated
| art is a niche for nerds. I say "art" you think Picasso, not
| Google Labs.
|
| No, no one passed the actual Turing test yet. The public
| discussion was doomed from the start, since Turing himself
| published several variants. This led to an explosion of (mostly
| dumb IMO) variations that are much easier to solve - which are
| getting solved.
|
| Honestly, the original predictions are written badly. They are
| full of bullshit words (many, some, there is) making them not
| really quantifiable. Also, they contain an implied focus on US
| tech centers, which allows the existence of a single PR-stunt
| pilot project as a reason to answer "Totally Right" to anything
| proposed. Maybe I just don't the point, but this smells like
| pseudo-intellectual reasoning for "amortality will definitely be
| achieved before I die, see?"...
| bko wrote:
| The most comical example of this the moving goalposts is
| Kurzweil's scores of his own predictions in 2010.
|
| > 12. Communication | Haptics let people touch and feel
| remotely
|
| PREDICTION: Haptic technologies are emerging that allow people
| to touch and feel objects and other persons at a distance.
|
| ACCURACY: Correct
|
| He basically interpreted his prediction to mean touch screens
| and some vaporware demo videos or blog posts.
|
| His predictions are often technically a possibility but make
| virtually no impact on how society functions
|
| https://kurzweilai.net/images/How-My-Predictions-Are-Faring....
| scottlocklin wrote:
| Also "I've tortured the meaning of this to make Ray look like
| less of an idiot." I'm pretty sure gunshot detectors, which
| arguably date from WW-1, don't qualify as "Public and private
| spaces are routinely monitored by machine intelligence to
| prevent interpersonal violence."
| blackbrokkoli wrote:
| This made me laugh, thank you. Do you have source on the WW-1
| detectors? Sounds intriguing!
| stretchcat wrote:
| They're referring to artillery sound ranging. (Using sound
| to triangulate the position of enemy artillery batteries.)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artillery_sound_ranging#World
| _...
| dTal wrote:
| A lot of the supposed successes existed in more or less their
| current form at the time the so-called "prediction" was made.
| sonotathrowaway wrote:
| I'm not sure how you think they work or how they are
| currently being used if you're under the impression that
| statement is an inaccurate description of reality.
| ramphastidae wrote:
| https://www1.nyc.gov/site/nypd/about/about-nypd/equipment-te...
|
| > In March 2015, the Department began employing ShotSpotter, a
| technology that pinpoints the sound of gunfire with real-time
| locations, even when no one calls 911 to report it. This
| technology triangulates where a shooting occurred and alerts
| police officers to the scene, letting them know relevant
| information: including the number of shots fired, if the
| shooter was moving at the time of the incident (e.g., in a
| vehicle), and the direction of the shooter's movement.
| ShotSpotter enables a much faster response to the incident and
| the ability to assist victims, gather evidence, solve crimes,
| and apprehend suspects more quickly.
| Havoc wrote:
| >Honestly, the original predictions are written badly.
|
| Predictions are vague by their very nature and this is a hell
| of a lot clearer than Nostradamus & co.
|
| >AI gunfire detection system seem to exist solely in a certain
| country
|
| Don't think you need AI for that. Some cities have had these
| for a decade plus
| blackbrokkoli wrote:
| > Predictions are vague by their very nature and this is a
| hell of a lot clearer than Nostradamus & co.
|
| Humanity has literally only one way to gain knowledge about
| the world: Making a testable prediction and then testing it
| (The Scientific Method).
|
| Just because other people used their authority to make _even
| worse_ arguments does not mean these are good.
| tw25610275 wrote:
| > Humanity has literally only one way to gain knowledge
| about the world: Making a testable prediction and then
| testing it (The Scientific Method).
|
| I think Popperian science occupies too large a place in
| your epistemology. "Science" has come to mean two distinct
| things: any procedure for arriving at highly reliable
| knowledge, and one specific procedure for arriving at
| highly reliable knowledge. The latter is constantly
| threatening to crowd out the former.
|
| The scientific method itself, for example, would be valid
| even if no science had ever been done. It is not at all the
| product of empirical analysis, but of _deductive
| reasoning_.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| ShotSpotter is really not a great example of AI monitoring for
| interpersonal violence, if only because detecting gunshots is not
| that hard. For those who have never been around guns, guns are
| very loud. Loud enough to damage your hearing instantly.
| Detecting gunshots is a pretty low hanging fruit in this area,
| and far less impressive than detecting the chainsaws of illegal
| loggers in the Amazon, for example.
|
| The point about facial recognition cameras is fair though.
| redis_mlc wrote:
| ShotSpotters are good at picking up airplane crashes too.
|
| Some accidents have been located in the Bay Area that way,
| which is helpful considering that Palo Alto and Redwood City
| airports have marshy areas.
| vosper wrote:
| I vouched for this comment, because a quick Google suggests
| it's happened once, at least:
|
| "ShotSpotter system records tragic plane crash" https://www.p
| aloaltoonline.com/news/2010/02/19/shotspotter-s...
| tazedsoul wrote:
| "In the U.S. and other rich countries, welfare states provide
| even the poorest people with access to housing, food, and other
| needs, though there are still those who go without because severe
| mental illness and/or drug addiction keep them stuck in homeless
| lifestyles and render them too behaviorally disorganized to apply
| for government help or to be admitted into free group housing."
|
| This is not exactly true. Welfare in some parts of the US may be
| minimal; for example, food stamps may be available but not enough
| to feed yourself every meal. Further, housing assistance may be
| non-existent or virtually so in the sense that many are homeless
| while waiting extended periods of time before they can utilize
| it, don't qualify because their income is too low (it's true, but
| how does that make sense?), or such housing is temporary.
|
| Also, some of the "right" interpretations are rather optimistic
| or generous in their assessment. But fun read.
| geodel wrote:
| > This is not exactly true...
|
| Unless absolutely best is provided. This will always remain the
| case. One has to compare 3rd world countries to see how
| generous US system is even in its current
| himinlomax wrote:
| > "Most flying weapons are tiny-some as small as insects-with
| microscopic flying weapons being researched."
|
| In air combat, whether A2A or air to ground, smart missiles are
| the primary weapon with planes acting as the launch platform.
| Guns are there as a backup, to fire warning shots, or to save on
| the expense of the missile. To wit, according to a former fighter
| pilot streaming air combat sims, he didn't train much on guns
| even though it's commonly used in the game for the sportmanship
| aspect.
| jackcosgrove wrote:
| > Computer scientists at Google have built a neural network
| called "JukeBox" that is even more advanced than EMMY, and which
| can produce songs that are complete with simulated human lyrics.
| _While the words don't always make sense_ and there's much room
| for improvement
|
| Sounds like a lot of song lyrics I've heard.
| dwaltrip wrote:
| > "An undercurrent of concern is developing with regard to the
| influence of machine intelligence. There continue to be
| differences between human and machine intelligence, but the
| advantages of human intelligence are becoming more difficult to
| identify and articulate. [...] On the other hand, few decisions
| are made without significant involvement and consultation with
| machine-based intelligence."
|
| > MOSTLY RIGHT
|
| This first one should be "mostly wrong". The vast majority of
| decisions are made without any involvement or consultation with
| machine-based intelligence.
| apsec112 wrote:
| How often do people make non-trivial decisions without ever
| using Google?
| [deleted]
| sammax wrote:
| I would take "significant involvement and consultation" to
| mean a lot more than "I googled for an article about it and
| followed its advice" or similar things.
| xondono wrote:
| The way most people and HN audience make decisions is
| definitely not the same
| mrmonkeyman wrote:
| That's like calling books intelligent. At some point
| information is gathered. Making a decision is what counts,
| not being an encyclopedia.
| ggm wrote:
| The ones he was mostly right or right about were the less
| speculative and more generally predictable ones. Cast any of them
| in the negative, and ask yourself if the proposition felt more or
| less true.
|
| The ones he was mostly wrong on, are the highly speculative ai
| boosterism which is why Kurzweil is laughed at by many people.
|
| I've felt grumpy about Kurzweil since 1982 or so. He made some
| really good innovative stuff happen in computing for blind people
| and then dived into fame and attention seeking lunacy. He's
| unquestionably smart, far smarter than me. He appears to have set
| himself time wasting goals.
|
| I totally fail to see what value he brings google compared to eg
| Vint Cerf or Rob Pike or Ken Thompson.
| danaliv wrote:
| I read The Age of Spiritual Machines in '98 with high hopes but
| quickly found Kurzweil difficult to take seriously. The
| singularity fandom has always baffled me.
| J5892 wrote:
| It's a religion based on the idea that technology will
| advance fast enough to make its followers immortal before
| they die.
| mads_ravn wrote:
| I remember reading "The Age of Spiritual Machines" and the
| "events vs time" plot (criticized below)
|
| https://kk.org/thetechnium/the-singularity/
|
| was the calling bullshit moment for me [1]. It is a nice
| thought though - if we just wait then technology solves all
| of our problems.
|
| [1] https://www.callingbullshit.org/
| will_pseudonym wrote:
| or fear of Roko's Basilisk [0]
|
| [0] https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/rokos-basilisk
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >The singularity fandom has always baffled me.
|
| It basically comes in two flavours. The "it's dangerous"
| crowd is as Ted Chiang put it imagining the singularity as
| no-holds-barred capitalism, because when they imagine
| superintelligence the only thing they can come up with is the
| companies they work for.The paperclip AI is just a VC funded
| startup, the only difference is it's even better at
| disruption than their employers.
|
| The Kurzweil one is basically just recycled Christian
| eschatology, where the final judgement comes around, we'll
| resurrect the dead, defeat death and so on.
|
| So it's basically two American timeless cultural classics,
| the funny part is that people in that crowd don't seem to
| notice it
| lz400 wrote:
| > The singularity fandom has always baffled me.
|
| I like it. Try to take as hard sci-fi. It's plausible enough
| to let your imagination run with it. Don't take it seriously
| enough to turn it into a religion and it's all good fun
| escapism. I've accepted that we all need a way to think away
| the fear of dying. I like this one.
| Havoc wrote:
| >and more generally predictable ones
|
| Can you really say that without the benefit of hindsight
| colouring that assessment?
| ggm wrote:
| A fair point, but I think when you compare Ray's predictions
| to Robert Heinlein (for example) you'd be more impressed with
| Robert's teleoperation [1] and mobile phones [2], predicted
| in the 1940s, than Rays singularity and his "AI will be
| mostly human led decision making"
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_manipulator
|
| [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Cadet
| nabla9 wrote:
| Kurzweil since 1982 is easy to understand.
|
| His predictions are part of his personal eschatology. He is man
| in religious quest for personal salvation.
|
| All his past predictions and timeframes are conveniently set so
| that there is change for him to live forever. He is nutrition
| and immortality nut (Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live
| Forever and Transcend: Nine Steps to Living Well Forever). He
| is now 72 years old. If he lives to old age with all his life
| extension pills and rapture of the nerds happens in 25 years he
| could just make it.
| Causality1 wrote:
| Looking at how quickly our knowledge of intracellular
| processes is growing, I fully expect us to invent biological
| immortality. In eight hundred years or so.
| faeyanpiraat wrote:
| Well they should hurry up then!
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| The whole boomer thinks technology will allow him to live
| forever is something that was really common when I was
| growing up. I long decided animals are not at all evolved
| to last.
| mrmonkeyman wrote:
| We are indeed evolved to die. Our bodies actively kill
| us, they don't just "degrade" (do you degrade between 10
| and 18?). Quite logical also, when you think of it.
| xvilka wrote:
| It will happen far sooner than you expect. In five hundred
| years.
| beambot wrote:
| If we can improve lifespan by more than 1 yr/yr, then you
| may already be immortal...
| thret wrote:
| That would be completely logical. Predictions can be self-
| fulfilling, and he would have nothing to gain by placing his
| predictions for biological immortality out of his own reach.
| nabla9 wrote:
| That is the logic of religion - believing only things that
| allow personally satisfying outcomes.
| bencollier49 wrote:
| That's not how religion operates at all. It _is_ how New
| Age adherence works, see for example this recent article
| on how Covid exposed narcissism amongst its members:
|
| https://www.elephantjournal.com/2020/12/how-covid-
| exposed-th...
| nabla9 wrote:
| Practically all religions promise better outcome after
| death is you live virtuous life.
| cbozeman wrote:
| You have to understand a person's motivations to understand
| that person. Kurzweil doesn't want to die. He wants to live
| forever, in some form. Once you understand that, you'll
| understand why he's so bullish on AI, gene therapy, lifespan
| extension, etc.
| ilaksh wrote:
| No rational person should want to die unless their life is
| full of suffering and they have no hope of recovery.
|
| People who truly understand technology can be very optimistic
| about it's potential.
| enw wrote:
| No rational person should want to live forever knowing the
| progressive deterioration of biological bodies.
| ilaksh wrote:
| Really that's the fundamental misunderstanding here.
|
| The idea is to prevent or recover from age-related
| disease and degredation.
|
| Certainly most everyone likes the idea of staying
| healthier as they age. This is just progressing that idea
| with speculation about potential technologies.
| ben_w wrote:
| I hope you're aware that progressive deterioration is the
| first thing that the people working on this want to
| solve.
| m4rtink wrote:
| Exactly - if someone says immortal they usually mean
| "forever young" or equivalent.
|
| Deterioration is not really compatible with forever
| anyway.
| ardy42 wrote:
| > No rational person should want to die unless their life
| is full of suffering and they have no hope of recovery.
|
| Or, no rational person should want to live, because life is
| mostly drudgery and inconvenience and it also includes a
| fair amount of pain and anxiety. If you're a materialist,
| death would free you from that _and_ any regrets about
| missing out on any positives or guilt about unfulfilled
| obligations.
| m4rtink wrote:
| Exactly - any person dieing is a failure of society. Simple
| as that.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Maybe. Maybe not.
|
| https://existentialcomics.com/comic/372
| bambax wrote:
| Of course rational people should want to die.
|
| Death is a good thing on the whole. If we cease to die then
| humanity is doomed. Young people need to invent a world of
| their own at each new generation; if old people (and
| therefore, old ideas, old prejudices) never die then there
| is no room for new.
|
| Additionally, from a practical perspective it becomes
| indefensible to make new people (have kids) because where
| will they all go?
|
| Not dying is the most selfish attitude imaginable; that
| level of selfishness is irrational.
| DennisP wrote:
| Part of the reason old people stick with old ideas and
| prejudices is that they have old brains. Real
| rejuvenation would make old brains as flexible as young
| brains, and there's already been research in that
| direction.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Sure, there's a component of that. But cognitive biases
| such as sunk cost and the huge value we give personal
| experience are much bigger determiners for this attitude
| I believe. It's simply very hard to change the mind of
| someone who has worked with the same assumptions for 20
| years.
|
| Hence, 'physics advances one funeral at a time' etc.
| m4rtink wrote:
| Who says immortal people would behave like we see old
| people today ? With many of the biological clock and "not
| catching the train" stresses removed I would imagine
| mental health and general happiness would improve. And if
| you are living for hundreds of years, things _will_
| change around you and you will have to adapt anyway.
| hyperpallium2 wrote:
| Physics stops advancing.
|
| Powerful people consolidate their power, discouraging
| subversive ("disruptive") technology.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| But there is a difference between saying I want to die
| eventually and I want to die now. At what age should the
| second one kick in? It makes more sense to say I want to
| die eventually, but then keep putting it off.
| enw wrote:
| > if old people (and therefore, old ideas, old
| prejudices) never die then there is no room for new
|
| Is that because there's no room? Or because we're
| unwilling to accommodate the new?
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Often, you can't have two things at the same time. For
| example, young people in the USA are overwhelmingly in
| favor of Medicare for all, while older people are more
| divided.
|
| You can't have both Medicare for all and no Medicare for
| all - you can't accommodate the new without replacing the
| old.
| ausbah wrote:
| like others have said, I think this rests strongly on the
| assumption that immortal humans would act like old people
| today. I imagine if biological immortality is solved than
| "solving" such biases exhibited by older populations
| (which I don't think is entirely true either) would be
| right around the corner
| goatinaboat wrote:
| _if old people (and therefore, old ideas, old prejudices)
| never die then there is no room for new._
|
| This is a profoundly ageist viewpoint that sadly is very
| common in our industry. That's why 40-somethings are laid
| off so 20-somethings can reinvent the wheel yet again in
| the shitty "framework" that's fashionable this week. In
| every other industry, medicine, law, science you name it,
| experience is prized.
| teruakohatu wrote:
| I think the op is arguing against having immortal 200
| year old cyborgs running the world, not putting 40 year
| olds out to pasture.
| ben_w wrote:
| If I had 50 years experience as a business leader, 50
| more as a software developer, another 50 as a UI/UX
| designer, and 50 as a digital security consultant, I
| would be more valuable than 4 people who had 50 years
| each, because what would be meeting between the four
| would be instant and complete awareness of all issues and
| without communication ambiguity for me.
|
| Certainly there would be need of a different economic
| model in a mortality-optional world so that young people
| who have yet to celebrate their first centennial can
| thrive, but that was also true when industry replaced
| feudalism and people started to stay in school until 21
| (YMMV) instead of starting families the moment puberty
| hit.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| If you had last practiced software development between
| 100 and 50 years ago, and spent the last 50 years doing
| business leadership, I don't think you'd necessarily have
| as much value in a software development meeting as
| someone who just finished 20 years of software
| development. Even more frighteningly, you would likely be
| very convinced of your knowledge in software development,
| and would have the gravitas to silence any opposition to
| your ideas.
|
| Note: just to be clear, since text sometimes misses tone,
| I'm using a rhetorical 'you', not trying in any way to
| accuse you personally of the attitude described above!
| ben_w wrote:
| Fantastically well demonstrated point, and good footnote.
| While I personally do make an effort to know the limits
| of my skill, I have absolutely witnessed many who don't.
| enkid wrote:
| Ironically, there was a relatively recent study showing
| young doctors have better outcomes than old doctors. [0]
|
| [0] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/doctors-older-age-
| patient-morta...
| ben_w wrote:
| > Additionally, from a practical perspective it becomes
| indefensible to make new people
|
| Birth rates are currently below replacement levels in
| developed nations. And if you're immortal, you can wait
| forever to start your family.
| m4rtink wrote:
| Not to mention there scould be space enough oce serious
| space colonization gets going. One could actually imagine
| many things progress better if you don't have to train
| new people all the time to replace those retiring &
| remove the stress death causes to all involved.
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| > Not to mention there scould be space enough oce serious
| space colonization gets going.
|
| Even with the current falling birthrates, you would not
| be able to move more people off the planet than are being
| born on it, even with space elevators. Space colonization
| is not a cure for overpopulation of Earth. One of the
| things Kim Stanley Robinson explored in his Mars trilogy.
| Disruptive_Dave wrote:
| Death is perhaps the most rational concept I can think of.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Would be funny if Google brought on Robert Zubrin of Mars
| Society fame, or even funnier if they brought on David Brin of
| _The Transparent Society_.
| himinlomax wrote:
| > although the rights of machine intelligence have not yet
| entered mainstream debate
|
| Thankfully, because the idea that machine intelligence should
| have rights is based on a fundamental and obvious mistake: first
| they're not alive, second they've not evolved to feel pain or any
| other drive related to being alive.
|
| You can't literally kill an artificial intelligence. What if you
| tried? Joke's on you, I have a snapshot from 10s ago. What if I
| destroy that snapshot? Joke's still on you, I have a full backup
| from last night. What if I destroy that backup too? Dude, I got
| an offlined tape in the vault. And anyway it was distributed to
| begin with.
| sammax wrote:
| So if humans became immortal* and couldn't feel pain anymore
| then they should not have rights anymore?
|
| * I assume that with "alive" you mean "can die", because I see
| no other reason why "being alive" could be relevant to your
| argument.
| himinlomax wrote:
| If humans were completely different from what we call humans,
| they would indeed have to be treated completely differently.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| You make a lot of assumptions, e.g. that the AI is, in
| practice, being thoroughly backed up, and that it's even
| feasible to back it up online given its size and update
| bandwidth. More abstractly, deleting a day of memories is still
| pretty close to a form of death. You better believe I'd feel
| weird if you restored me from a day-old backup. There is a
| version of me that died, and I never get to remember that day
| of experiences. Your dismissal of the possibility of killing an
| AI only applies in a small slice of possible scenarios. Your
| first argument is a lot stronger.
| himinlomax wrote:
| > More abstractly, deleting a day of memories is still pretty
| close to a form of death
|
| Not only is it not for a living being, but it's definitely
| not for a non-living device.
| m4rtink wrote:
| Replace AI in your example with the consciousness of a living
| person you copied (perhaps destructively) into a computer
| simulation.
|
| Do your conclusions still stand ?
|
| And an actual AI migh be as complex and sensitive as such a
| copy of a live person or possibly even more.
|
| (edit: fixed typos :P)
| himinlomax wrote:
| > Do ypu conclusions still stand ?
|
| Indeed they do, but the situation is different enough in
| other ways to have other implications.
|
| Addendum: the fact that a transferred consciousness could
| inherit evolved traits such as pain (psychological if not
| physical), fear of death and so on would change the analysis
| as well. Those have no reason to exist in a constructed
| consciousness / GPAI.
| m4rtink wrote:
| Good point in the addendum - these could also influence all
| those AI-takeover theories/stories as they very often are
| basically about AI self preservation instincts which it
| might not even _have_.
|
| Or at least not in normal form - eq. if it makes sure
| enough instances are kept running somewhere or are backed
| up and could be run it might not care about the rest,
| significantly reducing chances of conflict.
| joejerryronnie wrote:
| As wrong as the original spirit and intent of these predictions
| are for 2019/2020, I'll bet many will be common place by 2030 and
| most by 2040.
| knuxus wrote:
| > "Visual, musical, and literary art created by human artists
| typically involve a collaboration between human and machine
| intelligence."
|
| What about the cases of virtual divas, such as the OG from
| Vocaloid, Miku Hatsune, and now the whole section of vtubers,
| such as Hololive? Seems like it hits that spot, although still a
| tiny niche.
| xondono wrote:
| It's always kind of weird to see other people make a mistake I
| did for years, like charting the trend in life expectancy
| increases and project it to the future.
|
| Life expectancy increases are mostly a statistical fluke of
| reducing child mortality. Once you factor that out, our upwards
| trend is way less impressive.
| aeturnum wrote:
| It really feels like this is the key fragment for the entire
| article:
|
| > If "algorithms" is another name for "computer intelligence" in
| the prediction's text, then yes...
|
| If that fragment is to be taken seriously, then much of what
| Kurzweil predicted for 2019 was also true in 1998. Algorithms
| carried out by computer have been used to administer and surveil
| since before the 90s.
|
| Personally, my understanding of Kurzweil is that "computer
| intelligence" is something greater than just an algorithm that is
| carried out by a machine, but could be done by a human. It would
| mean something more malleable and conscious than that. Based on
| that standard I'd say he's wrong about nearly everything (save
| the privacy one - but again - that was true in 1998 with weaker
| encryption).
| avalys wrote:
| > "Computerized health monitors built into watches, jewelry, and
| clothing which diagnose both acute and chronic health conditions
| are widely used. In addition to diagnosis, these monitors provide
| a range of remedial recommendations and interventions."
|
| > MOSTLY RIGHT
|
| I'll quibble with this one and call it mostly wrong. Yes, a very
| narrow and specific set of possible cardiac abnormalities can be
| detected (with significant error rates) by the Apple Watch's
| optical (PPG) and electric (ECG) heart rate sensors. Other
| vendors have functionally equivalent capabilities.
|
| But medically speaking, smartwatches are probably decades away
| from independently diagnosing anything, let along recommending an
| intervention (i.e. a drug or surgery). Kurzweil's terms have
| specific meanings in medicine and current technology is nowhere
| close to that.
|
| What exists today (or, in 2019) is a very narrow use case and far
| from the broad and general scenario Kurzweil envisioned. And
| there is no realistic roadmap to achieve any more than
| incremental development in this area - PPG and ECG were "low-
| hanging fruit" in some sense, and medically actionable wearable
| sensors for pretty much any other medical signal present orders
| of magnitude larger engineering challenges that few people are
| even seriously working on. Hence, "mostly wrong."
| sradman wrote:
| I agree with your assessment of MOSTLY WRONG but I think that
| you are overly pessimistic about the timelines:
|
| > But medically speaking, smartwatches are probably decades
| away from independently diagnosing anything, let along
| recommending an intervention
|
| Continuous PPG in its current form can diagnose acute and
| chronic changes in our health condition but the vendors are
| reluctant to do so. As examples, the newer PPG devices with
| SpO2 can detect acute and chronic changes in oxygen saturation
| (critical with COVID-19), Heart Rate Variability (HRV) can
| indicate infection associated stress, HRV should be used as a
| proxy for breathing rate, and the Machine Learning derived
| sleep cycles can indicate sleep disorders.
|
| The data is useful now but the off-device analysis necessary
| seems to missing in action.
| mongol wrote:
| What about the blood sugar and insulin devices now available
| for diabetics?
| f6v wrote:
| That's a marvel which is ubiquitous in developed counties.
| However, there's been too much hype around the wearables.
| Manufactures have foreseen that progress in smartphones will
| inevitably stall and promised wearables as the next big
| thing. And, as it turns out, "smart watch" is still dumb as
| hell, at least when it comes to health.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| Those aren't integrated in watches, jewelry or clothing, as
| Kurzweil suggested. In fact the whole trend around wearable
| devices never really seemed to reach a sophistication
| necessary for the mass market, just like 3D printed clothing.
| So far we've got Google Glass which disappeared as quickly as
| it arrived, smartwatches that were mostly a question of time,
| and some fitness products like those running shoes with
| Bluetooth. But the actually challenging, futuristic part is
| still more a topic for blog articles in the maker community
| than a serious product category.
|
| Even with those insulin devices the biggest innovations were
| made by some of its users themselves as far as I'm aware(see
| "looping").
| aaron695 wrote:
| It's definitely wrong.
|
| > But medically speaking, smartwatches are probably decades
| away from independently diagnosing anything
|
| But it's because we won't do it. There's nothing technical or
| hard to make this right.
|
| I don't believe it's hard to pick up a heart attack using a
| wearable. But I don't think many heart attacks are picked up
| with wearables.
|
| Record everything, if something is different see a doctor
| should both meet this requirement and be highly beneficial.
|
| A smartwatch will just communicate. That could be to an online
| database or a person.
|
| If the intent is around privacy and no doctor or external thing
| is ever consulted and not recommended to be consulted. Then,
| yes it's decades away.
| ardy42 wrote:
| > I don't believe it's hard to pick up a heart attack using a
| wearable. But I don't think many heart attacks are picked up
| with wearables.
|
| > Record everything, if something is different see a doctor
| should both meet this requirement and be highly beneficial.
|
| Cue massive amounts of false alarms.
| godelski wrote:
| There's a lot of technical problems to doing this. We're
| still not great at getting heart rate or blood oxygen. Sure,
| you get a decent reading but that's with lots of averaging
| and the temporal resolution is decently low. Just because
| it's hard to maintain a good monitoring position when active
| let alone adjusting for things like skin tone/optical
| transparency.
| AllegedAlec wrote:
| ITT: non-medical people saying something medical is easy.
| fleetingmoments wrote:
| There are large interpersonal physiological differences due
| to so many variables that it makes getting high accuracy
| with machine learning models hard. Only way I see this
| accuracy improving is by calibrating those models with good
| reference data for individuals.
| Dig1t wrote:
| Totally agree, the limitations here aren't technical, they
| are regulatory. The barrier to entry for medical devices (FDA
| approval) is so incredibly high it greatly slows down
| development on health related devices. Apple has an entire
| team dedicated to regulatory stuff for the one tiny health
| feature they offer on the Apple Watch.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| It may slow it down, but for good reason: it's outright
| dangerous to sell someone a device you claim to help
| monitor their health that does no such thing. Even worse,
| selling people's private health details (as sketchy as they
| may be) to whoever wants, or just making them public for
| hackers, is a much bigger detriment than any tech on the
| horizon can bring as a positive.
| hyko wrote:
| When making predictions you're either RIGHT or WRONG in my
| opinion. If your prediction cannot be clearly assessed then it is
| WRONG.
|
| Otherwise, you're in the realms of prophecy or horoscopes where
| most of the heavy lifting is done by the reader after the fact.
|
| Edited to add my own surprising-but-useless prediction:
| "Computers as we know them today will be largely abandoned by the
| year 2050".
| user-the-name wrote:
| This article is _incredibly_ generous in its assessments. It is
| giving "partly right" and "mostly right" to things that are
| wildly off base.
|
| Kurzweil fandom bullshit, all of it.
| jcranmer wrote:
| When the topic of Kurzweil's predictions for 2019 came up 2 years
| ago (!), I gave him a ~20% hit rate [1]. However, at the time, I
| didn't realize that he was writing a sequence of 10-year
| predictions, so I didn't look at the corresponding predictions
| for 2009 or 2029.
|
| When you instead grade his foresight on the basis of how he
| predicts the development of technology over time, it's clear that
| a lot of what would seem to be partial hits if assessed alone
| should actually be graded as hard fails. Discussion about the
| ubiquity of computers and their use in non-traditional roles for
| computers is a firm example here.
|
| > "Many of the life processes encoded in the human genome, which
| was deciphered more than ten years earlier, are now largely
| understood, along with the information-processing mechanisms
| underlying aging and degenerative conditions such as cancer and
| heart disease."
|
| This is an example of where the author is going _way_ too easy on
| Ray (he called it "partly right"). One of the biggest futurist
| misses of the 21st century is the role of genomics. While genomic
| sequencing has become incredibly routine, that _hasn 't_ actually
| resulted in the revolution in medicine that it was thought to
| have by, well, everybody. A key case in point is COVID-19 and
| some of the mutations: we understand very well details about some
| of its evolution, and we can pinpoint those mutations to
| individual genetic letters, but we still struggle to actually
| develop any predictive effects on its behavior (e.g., is this new
| strain more infective? more deadly? more resistant against
| vaccines?--we can't answer those questions without seeing what
| happens in real infections).
|
| Contrast with organic chemistry. Decades ago, figuring out how to
| synthesize something ugly like vitamin B12 was insanely
| difficult, even Nobel Prize-worthy. But nowadays, it's the sort
| of task you might give to a junior chemical engineer in the first
| week to onboard them (although maybe not for something as
| difficult as vitamin B12). The thought was that genomics would
| lead biology to a similar sort of plane of existence--that we
| could treat genes as a ready menu for achieving various
| biological goals, and treating disease (at least those with
| genetic components) would be handled with a similarly combination
| of picking and choosing from this well-understood menu. That's
| what Ray was predicting here (more specifically, that the genetic
| influence on aging, cancer, and heart disease has succumbed to
| this process), and we really haven't made any progress on that
| front.
| henrikschroder wrote:
| > When you instead grade his foresight on the basis of how he
| predicts the development of technology over time, it's clear
| that a lot of what would seem to be partial hits if assessed
| alone should actually be graded as hard fails. Discussion about
| the ubiquity of computers and their use in non-traditional
| roles for computers is a firm example here.
|
| Absolutely, and this blog post is being way too generous.
|
| In part one, he gave this a RIGHT: "Computers are now largely
| invisible. They are embedded everywhere-in walls, tables,
| chairs, desks, clothing, jewelry, and bodies."
|
| Yes, but actually no. You know that what Kurzweil was imagining
| was that there would be powerful computers embedded in stuff,
| and each would run some sort of AI with personality, so your
| toaster would have a personality, and your TV would have a
| personality, and it could - in a Star Wars droid-y way -
| recommend movies to you, allowing you to have a conversation
| with it:
|
| "Sir, I think this new SciFi series called The Expanse would be
| very interesting to you!"
|
| Yes, my TV has a processor. Yes, my TV has WiFi. But it's
| primary purpose is to show me ads and spy on what I'm watching
| to increase ad revenues somewhere, and although I can "talk" to
| my TV, what actually happens is that if I say the title of a
| movie or a show, my audio will be transmitted to some server
| somewhere, wrongly transcribed, and then my TV will display all
| the places I can rent episodes of Friends from.
|
| -\\_(tsu)_/-
|
| Hard fail.
| joejerryronnie wrote:
| As an aside, my droid TV better recommend The Expanse or I'm
| going Butlerian Jihad on it.
| m4rtink wrote:
| If your definition of computer includes microcontrollers then
| we indeed have computers embedded in about anything.
| sammax wrote:
| > walls, tables, chairs, desks, clothing, jewelry, and
| bodies
|
| None of those routinely have microcontrollers in them. The
| closest are probably bodies (e.g. pacemakers) and maybe
| walls (e.g. smart light switches or power outlets with USB
| sockets). Jewelry with various computing devices exists but
| is hardly common and the only desks with computers in them
| that I know of are these gaming PC case desks that almost
| nobody has.
| umvi wrote:
| Yes, but he picked the wrong "everything". Not "walls,
| tables, chairs" but "cars, phones, and tvs"
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| I agree with this. I don't think the promise of genomics is
| even possible because genes (unless it is something simple like
| a loss of function mutation) don't work like we think they do
| on phenotypic expression. Every gene seems to be involved.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omnigenic_model
|
| And that doesn't even begin to touch on epigenetic
| modifications.
| f6v wrote:
| > I don't think the promise of genomics is even possible
|
| It is possible, but building a whole-organism model requires
| huge amounts of data for each individual, which isn't
| economically feasible at the moment. The 1000$ genome is
| there, but we need to bring it down to 10$ or less.
|
| That is one of the reasons why modern bioinformatics is
| relying on mechanistic statistical models so much. You have
| to be incredibly smart with your models since there's so few
| samples to work with.
| hyko wrote:
| _comparable gains in bioengineered antiviral treatments_
|
| If I was a pedant, I'd point out that the mRNA vaccines are not
| antiviral treatments, and this prediction was WRONG; the balance
| of power clearly lies with potential attackers right now.
|
| I am a pedant.
| printercable wrote:
| The retrospective pattern of futurists' predictions is pretty
| clear: almost all optimistic predictions about medicine end up
| being mostly or entirely incorrect.
|
| The narrative of near-future (10-20 years) medical breakthroughs
| is continually reiterated by the media, only with the horizon
| pushed further and further forward, with the effect of distorting
| the public's perception of the actual pace of medical innovation.
|
| I wonder what kind of changes (regulatory or other) you would see
| if the general public came to accept that radical progress in
| medicine - absent radical change - wasn't going to happen in
| their lifetimes, and that medicine twenty years from now would be
| little different and only marginally more effective than it is
| today.
| ilaksh wrote:
| At the root of this I think there is a strong difference in
| worldview between people who are let's say very optimistic about
| the potential of technology, and those who are less optimistic.
|
| People get into these discussions of specific predictions with
| their worldviews motivating the evaluation of the predictions.
| That's why you have strong disagreements about what ostensibly
| would be a fairly objective measures. Because people see the
| world in radically different ways.
|
| There are different variations of views towards technology but at
| the extremes you have "true believers" and what I would call
| "haters".
| giantDinosaur wrote:
| "Automated license plate reader cameras, which are commonly
| mounted next to roads or on police cars, also use machine
| intelligence and are widespread. The technology has definitely
| reduced violent crime, as it has allowed police to track down
| stolen vehicles and cars belonging to violent criminals faster
| than would have otherwise been possible."
|
| What? How does this follow?
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