I, Robot

After that, computers will start engineering their own replacements, and the hockey-stick curve will soar upward. By 2045, Kurzweil estimates, we will use computers to enhance our intelligence, and "nanobots"—microscopic machines—to roam our bloodstream, stomping out diseases before they can spread. Maybe this sounds nuts. But Kurzweil points out that today doctors can implant a computer the size of a pea into the brain of a person suffering with Parkinson's disease. Why shouldn't we believe that in 20 years such devices will be the size of a blood cell? "The computer in my cell phone today is a million times cheaper and a thousand times more powerful than the computer that we used at MIT when I was an undergraduate," he says. "That's a billionfold increase. And we'll do that again in the next 25 years."

What happens then? Once computers are a billion times more powerful than today—and we're all a bunch of cyborgs with brains like supercomputers and bodies that can't be killed by disease? For one thing, stuff starts progressing really, really fast. Imagine a thousand scientists, each a thousand times smarter than they are today, operating a thousand times faster. First thing these smarty-pants cyborgs will do, Kurzweil reckons, is make themselves even smarter, and then smarter still, until intelligence is sprouting all over the place like some kind of crazy out-of-control IQ kudzu. Eventually you've got scientists who are a million times smarter and a million times faster than they are today. Breakthroughs should be popping up all over. "An hour would result in a century of progress [in today's terms]," Kurzweil claims in The Singularity Is Near. Eventually, we leap beyond the boundaries of our planet, and every bit of matter in the entire universe becomes intelligent. "This," Kurzweil concludes, "is the destiny of the universe."

These ideas have attracted some high-powered followers. Kurzweil's partner at Singularity University is Peter Diamandis, best known for his work as the chairman and founder of the X Prize Foundation, a nonprofit in California that grants prizes for breakthroughs in space technology and other areas. In 1987 Diamandis founded the International Space University to teach courses about space. Three years ago Diamandis read The Singularity Is Near and was so taken by the work, he contacted Kurzweil and proposed creating a university to teach people about The Singularity. Diamandis takes 40 supplements a day and says he expects to live several centuries. "There are many life forms on the planet that live for hundreds of years," he says, "and there's no reason we can't." Diamandis says academics who scoff at The Singularity are just threatened because the established order will be disrupted. "These technologies can topple major companies, even governments," he says. "All these ideas are about empowering the individual."

The goal of living long enough to experience The Singularity has taken over Kurzweil's life, turning him into a health nut. He's trim and fit, thanks to exercise, a careful diet and loads of supplements. It's also made him wealthier. He's written three books on the subject. His latest, Transcend, released in April, is coauthored with a physician, Terry Grossman, and provides recipes—baked cod, cauliflower with Indian spices, fruit smoothies—and tells you what supplements you should be taking. Grossman and Kurzweil sell their own line of supplements, vitamins and nutrition shakes called Ray & Terry's Longevity Products. Kurzweil has even crafted a contingency plan in case he dies before The Singularity arrives. He'll be frozen in liquid nitrogen and put into storage, waiting for technology to rescue him from the grave. Kurzweil also hopes to bring his father back to life by getting DNA from his father's grave site and using a swarm of nanobots to create a new body that is "indistinguishable from the original person." He'll dig up all of his father's old letters and other materials, and download them along with his own memories into an artificial-intelligence program to create a "virtual person."

The great thing about being a futurist, of course, is that you can't really be proved wrong. You can predict away, secure in the knowledge that no one is going to time-travel into the future and come back to tell the world that you got it wrong. Or that you're a complete loon. All we know is this: Kurzweil is very intelligent, very rich and very sincere. And very adamant. No matter what hurdle you throw at him, Kurzweil has already thought about it and has his answer ready. Won't the Singularity tech-nologies be available only to people who can afford them? Won't that create a situation where the rich become "enhanced," and the rest of us become moronic muggles? Kurzweil says no, the price of technologies will come down so quickly that everyone will be able to afford them. OK, so what about natural selection? If we all stop dying, won't we mess that up? "Natural selection isn't significant anymore," Kurzweil says. "Technological change is the cutting edge of evolution." As for fears that computers will kill us, or keep us as slaves, Kurzweil insists the computers will want us around.

Kurzweil took some serious heat on this last point during a panel discussion after the premiere of Transcendent Man at the Tribeca Film Festival last month. Some leading artificial-intelligence experts were in the audience, and they think we are racing toward a dystopian future. But Kurzweil is having none of that—he thinks the "man-machine civilization" is going to be wonderful. He doesn't argue. He just sits there, smiling. Ask him a pointed question and he just dodges it and launches into another monologue. He has no doubt. None. He is utterly, completely, 100 percent sure that he is going to live forever. He will be reunited with his beloved father, and they will become immortal and spend eternity together. He is absolutely certain about this. Nothing can talk him out of it. And that, at the end of the day, may be the scariest, or saddest, thing of all.

© 2009