The Coming Problem Of Our iPhones Being More Intelligent Than Us

What Happens When Our iPhones Become More Intelligent Than Us?
A man uses a smartphone in front of an Apple store display advertising the Apple watch in Hong Kong on April 24, 2015. The watch officially launched in the southern Chinese city but Apple -- which opened pre-orders on April 10 -- is taking a different approach than it has for the iPhone and iPad, which traditionally draw huge crowds to its retail stores for product launches. AFP PHOTO / Philippe Lopez (Photo credit should read PHILIPPE LOPEZ/AFP/Getty Images)
A man uses a smartphone in front of an Apple store display advertising the Apple watch in Hong Kong on April 24, 2015. The watch officially launched in the southern Chinese city but Apple -- which opened pre-orders on April 10 -- is taking a different approach than it has for the iPhone and iPad, which traditionally draw huge crowds to its retail stores for product launches. AFP PHOTO / Philippe Lopez (Photo credit should read PHILIPPE LOPEZ/AFP/Getty Images)

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. He also predicted that Moore’s Law, which postulates that the processing capability of a computer doubles every 18 months, would apply for 60 years — until 2025 — giving way then to new paradigms of technological change.

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 — in around 2020 — using 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.

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