Originally posted on sciy.org by Ron Anastasia on Wed 12 Oct 2005 01:39 PM PDT
A friend of mine who knows John Mauldin just sent this recent email
from John. It's an interesting summary of Ray Kurzweil's new book ...
_____________
Solving an Old Age Problem
by John Mauldin
September 30, 2005
The Singularity, Part Two Biotechnology - Solving the Problems of Aging The Fountain of Youth
You, Too, Can Be a Rock Star
Reverse Engineering the Brain
So What is the Singularity?
What will the world look like in 10-20-30 years? What might future
technological advances allow us to do? What will medicine look like?
Can we solve the age old problems of food shortages and disease? How
will we solve the problems of environmental clean-up? Where will we get
our energy? How will we communicate? Travel? Research? Invest?
And speaking of investing, which is the usual subject of my weekly
missive, is there an investment theme in all of this? Is there a way we
can better our bottom lines as we better our technology?
Last week I started a series on Ray Kurzweil's new book, "The
Singularity is Near." Sub-titled "When Humans Transcend Biology."
(www.amazon.com) We are going to continue looking at his view of the
future for the next two letters. This week we are going to look at the
positive side of ! his view of the future. Warning: it is beyond your
wildest science ï¬ction dreams, and seems so far out there that you will
wonder if I have taken leave of my senses to take this seriously. But
as I note below, there are reasons you should take Kurzweil very, very
seriously. Next week we look at the dark side of the future. It will
not be as much fun. I suggest you remove sharp objects from the
vicinity before you read it.
This e-letter is derived from the book, published articles and
interviews, Ray's lectures from a conference I attended last weekend
and a private conversation when I was fortunate enough to be asked to
lunch with Ray by John Smart. (Thanks a lot, John!) Quotes or comments
from the book are followed by page numbers.
(One quick note. If you are a senior hedge fund research executive and
would be interested in moving to the West Coast, check out the
information at the end of the letter.)
You can learn more about who Kurzweil is by going to !
www.kurzweilai.net. To say he is a genius is an understatement. He
invented the ï¬rst machine which could read books for the blind, optical
character recognition, music synthesizers, speech recognition and a lot
more, mostly based around his work on pattern recognition. Inc.
Magazine named him one of the most 26 fascinating entrepreneurs this
last April, calling him the rightful heir to Thomas Edison.
Kurzweil has been tracking the progress of technology, and predicting
its advances fairly accurately for almost 3 decades. He has some 18
staff members who track technological progress and keep tabs on
research in a very broad arena of science and technology. He is on top
of the progress we are making in a wide variety of ï¬elds. While his
book is optimistic about the future of progress, it is also grounded in
150 pages of footnotes and indexes. He spends a considerable portion of
the end of the book dealing with each of the arguments of various
critics. He is not Pollyanna.
For those who missed last week's letter, I would suggest you go back
and read the last half of the letter (www.2000wave.com) where I
introduce the topic of accelerating change. Basically, the premise is
that we will see as much change in the next 14 years as we saw all of
last century, and that much change again in the following 7 years. In
the next 21 years, give or take a few, Kurzweil projects we will see
twice as much progress in human knowledge as we saw in the entire 20th
century. And the pace will accelerate.
As one quick example from last week, when the Human Genome Project was
started in 1990, critics pointed out that it would take thousands of
years to map the human genome at the current rate of technology. 8-9
years into the project, mapping technology had improved dramatically,
but still far less than 10% of the genome had! been mapped. Yet one
company started in 2001 and ï¬nished 2 years later, as did the
government project by 2003. In another example, it took 14 years to map
the genome for AIDS. SARS was done in 39 days. It will take even fewer
days the next time. Within a decade, you will be able to get your
personal genome done in a day or so for around $1,000.
That is what we mean by an accelerating pace of technology. Things get
faster and cheaper and more sophisticated. More and better research is
done. This is true whether it is chip speeds, transistors, internet,
wireless, bio tech patents, software applications or nanotech papers.
Kurzweil spends the ï¬rst chapter in the book documenting the increased
pace of change.
Biotechnology - Solving the Problems of Aging
Kurzweil suggests that technology will advance along three broad
fronts: Genetics (biotechnology), Nanotechnology and Robotics, or GNR.
L! et's take a look at each of these fronts and see what Kurweil thinks
is in store for us.
A great deal of the analysis of the aging process is by Aubrey de
Grey,a scientist in the department of genetics at Cambridge University.
De Grey believes we age because of seven speciï¬c factors, all of which
he believes are "ï¬xable." The areas he has isolated are: DNA mutations,
toxic cells, mitochondrial mutations, intracellular aggregates,
extracellular aggregates, cell loss and atrophy. (You can read more
about these on pages 212 and following.)
"De Grey describes his goal as 'engineered negligible senescence' -
stopping the body and brain from becoming more frail and disease prone.
As he explains, "All the core knowledge needed to develop engineered
negligible senescence is already in our possession - it mainly needs to
be pieced together. De Grey believes that we will demonstrate 'robustly
rejuvenated' mice - mice that are functionally younger than before
being treated ! and with the life extension to prove it - within ten
years, and he points out this achievement will have a dramatic affect
upon public opinion. Demonstrating that we can reverse the aging
process in an animal that shares 99 percent of our genes will
profoundly challenge the common wisdom that aging and death are
inevitable. Once robust rejuvenation is conï¬rmed in an animal, there
will be enormous competitive pressure to translate these results into
human therapies, which should appear ï¬ve years later." (page 213)
Last month, researchers in Dallas, not far from me, announced they were
able to extend the life of a mouse by 30%, and not just 30% longer, but
functionally younger through what was formerly old age. They simply
were adding a normal hormone to the mouse, which seems to increase his
life span. Interestingly, we humans have this same hormone. Think we
will see human trials soon? "For example, by modifying genes in the C.
elegans worm that control its insulin and sex-hormone levels, the
lifespan of the test animals was expanded six-fold, to the equivalent
of a ï¬ve hundred year life span for a human." (page 221)
Dr. Michael Roizen and I had dinner in Chicago a few weeks ago. He is
one of the premier anti-aging doctors in the world. (He wrote the
RealAge book series and the recent blockbuster best-seller (1,000,000+
sold) called "You - The Owner's Manual."
I was going through an intense set of tests the next day (normal
check-up, no real problems). I asked him about the speculation on
whether we could stop the aging process, or at least really extend it.
Mike is pretty sober-minded, so I was expecting him to tell me to
temper my enthusiasm. Interestingly, he thinks it is quite possible we
stop the aging process in 10 or at least 15 years. Then he looked at me
and gave me some very sobering advice. "John, it won't do you any good
if we stop the aging process if your arteries are clogged and you have
a body which is falli! ng apart. That is what we are going to work on
tomorrow and over the next year. We need to keep your body as young as
possible so that it will work when we can halt the aging process."
As an aside, Mike has me off salad dressing (I used to eat a LOT,
salads are healthy, right?) and much less wine. (Bummer.) But I am
losing weight. He calls me 2-3 times a week to check up on me. (Mike, I
am sitting in the Houston airport, eating a salad with no dressing and
just salsa as I write this letter. Let's see if I can continue to lose
weight in Europe. That will be hard.)
The Fountain of Youth
There are numerous therapies in research which are designed to combat
heart disease, attack cancer, and reverse degenerative diseases. There
has been signiï¬cant progress using gene therapy to stop cancer in mice.
But Kurzweil, de Grey and others think we will actually be able to
reverse the aging process by the beginning to middle of the third
decade.
Essentially, they think we are going to be able to re-program our DNA.
The odds are quite high you are reading this on or got it from a
computer. We all regularly change and update our computer software as
well as new hardware (I am writing this on a new Fujitsu Nseries
Lifebook - amazing screen quality). We would think it odd if we were
required to live with 10 year old software.
Yet our genes are basically software transference mechanisms. We are
stuck with the software of our ancestors, some of which does not work
very well from our modern perspective. The fat storage gene, which once
was useful as we needed to store fat because there were frequent hard
times, is now creating an obesity epidemic.
But relief may be in sight. Researchers at a ï¬rm south of Dallas, now
allied with Texas A&M, have ï¬gured out how to turn off the fat gene
in mice. They can eat 3 times what they normally eat and ! not gain
weight. I see a future where I can once again eat bread, ice cream and
pie at will. It can't happen to soon.
But while re-programming our DNA is one approach, it is not the only
way to improve upon what Ray calls the 1.0 version of our body.
"Another important line of attack is to regrow our own cells, tissues
and even whole organs, and introduce them into our bodies without
surgery. One major beneï¬t of this 'therapeutic cloning' technique is
that we will be able to create these new tissues and organs from
versions of our cells that have also been made younger - the emerging
ï¬eld of rejuvenation medicine. For example, we will be able to create
new heart cells from your skin cells and introduce them into your
system through the bloodstream. Over time, your heart cells get
replaced with these new cells, and the result is a rejuvenated 'young'
heart with your own DNA.
"Drug discovery was once a matter of ï¬nding substances that produced
some beneï¬! cial effect without excessive side effects. This process
was similar to early humans' tool discovery, which was limited to
ï¬nding rocks and natural implements that could be used for helpful
purposes. Today, we are learning the precise biochemical pathways that
underlie both disease and aging processes, and are able to design drugs
to carry out precise missions at the molecular level. The scope and
scale of these efforts is vast.
"But perfecting our biology will only get us so far. The reality is
that biology will never be able to match what we will be capable of
engineering, now that we are gaining a deep understanding of biology's
principles of operation." (interview)
You, Too, Can Be a Rock Star
Kurzweil envisions a world of cloning, but not human cloning, which he
considers impractical. But cloning of organs? Cloning of meat proteins
and useful foods as a way to combat hunger? Most deï¬nitely.
Roizen agrees if we can develop stem cell research he thinks reversing
the aging process is possible. You can bet such research is going to go
on in universities and laboratories around the world. This is one area
where the US government needs to get with the program. I am fully aware
that the US government does not ban stem cell research. It needs to be
promoting it. Interestingly, new work done in Florida suggests the ban
may be obsolete within a few years, as science moves past using stem
cells from the usual sources and creates their own from your cells.
They are now growing functioning neurons! Scientists there are
suggesting that within ï¬ve years, there may be amazing progress with
Alzheimer's and other brain related illnesses.
As an aside, if things progress the way Ray thinks, human cloning will
be a mute point within 40 years. Who would want to clone an old
inferior body? Ray is not talking about designer babies, but Designer
Baby Boomers! . Ray laughingly suggests he wants to come back as a 24
year old female rock star. Better than coming back as Keith Richards.
Now there's a guy in need of some serious designer genes.
The next front in the march to the Singularity (more on that below) is
nanotechnology. This starts to kick in during the 2020s. Biotechnology
gets us to human body 2.0. Nanotechnology gets us to 3.0. Nothing
happens all at once, but we start augmenting our bodies with small
cellular machines called nanobots. Something called a respirocyte is
already being thought about which would be an improvement on our normal
red blood cells in delivering oxygen. Just a small portion, percentage
wise, in your bloodstream and your body would have greatly enhanced
physical ability. At some point, well, let's let Ray share:
"Our biological brains use chemical signaling, which transmit
information at only a few hundred feet per second. Electronics is
already millions of times faster that this. In the bo! ok, I show how
one inch of nanotube circuitry would be one hundred million times more
powerful than the human brain. So we'll have more powerful means of
instantiating our intelligence than the extremely slow speeds of our
interneuronal connections.
"I see this starting with nanobots in our bodies and brains. The
nanobots will keep us healthy, provide full-immersion virtual reality
from within the nervous system, provide direct brain-to-brain
communication over the internet, and otherwise greatly expand human
intelligence. But keep in mind that the nonbiological intelligence is
doubling in capability each year, whereas our biological intelligence
is essentially ï¬xed in capacity. As we get to the 2030s, the
nonbiological portion of our intelligence will predominate."
Kurzweil does not see this happening all at once. It starts slowly with a modiï¬cation here, an enhanced ability there.
We have these small molecular machines replicating all sorts of food,
mate! rials and objects. Can't be done? Just remember that you and I
start with two cells, from which the entire code for our bodies is
held. And we won't be building anything as complicated as bodies.
So when someone asks won't there be a problem if we are all living
longer, Ray suggests that if we get to that point, we will have other
technologies which will solve the problems of basic necessities.
Reverse Engineering the Brain
The ï¬nal front is robotics and artiï¬cial intelligence. Ray does not
necessarily see human looking robots but he does see what he called
Strong AI or strong Artiï¬cial Intelligence. We are talking about
computers that pass what is called a Turing Test, in that someone
talking to the computer could not tell the difference. In talking with
George Gilder about this, we both wonder what is so impressive about
passing a Turing Test and whether if (or when) some computer do! es so
that means it is self aware.
How do we get to such powerful software, as our past performance does
not suggest such future results. Ray thinks we do it by reverse
engineering the brain. We have the model, so let's ï¬gure out what
algorithms work and then use them on a "substrate" (like a computer)
that is faster as a processor.
We will have that computer power by the end of the next decade which is
a decade or so before we can reverse engineer the brain. Can we do it?
Is this even rational?
Brain imaging power and magniï¬cation are doubling every year, much like
computer chip speeds and power. We have seen this movie before. Just
like 1990 and the human genome project, if we look at today's speed and
image quality, it is totally unrealistic. But if progress in imaging
keeps up at the same pace? Simply saying that something cannot be done
because it is beyond our technical grasp today is not an argument
against something happening.
(Some time in! the next few weeks, I will comment on Jeff Hawkins' new
book called "On Intelligence" about the structure of the human brain.
He has some different thoughts on the matter.)
So What is the Singularity?
Within a quarter century, says Kurzweil, nonbiological intelligence
will match the range and subtlety of human intelligence. It will then
soar past it because of the continuing acceleration of
information-based technologies, as well as the ability of machines to
instantly share their knowledge. Intelligent nanorobots will be deeply
integrated in our bodies, our brains, and our environment, overcoming
pollution and poverty, providing vastly extended longevity,
full-immersion virtual reality incorporating all of the senses (like
"The Matrix"), "experience beaming" (like "Being John Malkovich"), and
vastly enhanced human intelligence. The result will be an intimate
merger between the technology-creat! ing species and the technological
evolutionary process it spawned.
But that's not the Singularity. That's just the precursor.
Nonbiological intelligence will have access to its own design and will
be able to improve itself in an increasingly rapid redesign cycle.
We'll get to a point where technical progress will be so fast that
unenhanced human intelligence will be unable to follow it. That will
mark the Singularity.
When will that occur? Kurzweil "…sets the date for the Singularity -
representing a profound and disruptive transformation in human
capability - as 2045. The nonbiological intelligence created in that
year will be one billion times more powerful than all human
intelligence today."
Why is this called Singularity? "The term 'Singularity' in my book is
comparable to the use of this term by the physics community. Just as we
ï¬nd it hard to see beyond the event horizon of a black hole, we also
ï¬nd it difï¬cult to see beyond the event horizon of! the historical
Singularity. How can we, with our limited biological brains, imagine
what our future civilization, with its intelligence multiplied
trillions-fold, be capable of thinking and doing? Nevertheless, just as
we can draw conclusions about the nature of black holes through our
conceptual thinking, despite never having actually been inside one, our
thinking today is powerful enough to have meaningful insights into the
implications of Singularity. That's what I've tried to do in this book."
I know many, if not most, readers will roll their eyes. This guy is
just crazy. But go back to 1965. The wild-eyed optimists, except for a
few sci-ï¬ writers like Isaac Asimov, had no concept of 2045, and what
they did project was nowhere near what we have now. Yes, there were the
crazy predictions about speciï¬c technologies, many of which did not
come to pass.
But the accelerating trend of human knowledge and of Moore's Law were
not really discussed. Will a lot of what Kurzweil predict be wrong?
Absolutely. But while some speciï¬cs may be wrong, and who really knows
as to timing, that is not the point.
The key is that I think he has the direction right. We are going toward
that mountain way over there. Maybe he is an optimist. We only see as
much progress in 20 years as we saw last century instead of twice that
much. That will still represent a profound cycle of change in human
discourse. It is still going to mean a lot of opportunity.
Next week we look at the dark side of the singularity. This type of
technological progress is not all sweetness and light. And if there is
time, we being to look at some of the implications for our portfolios.
If not, we will do so the week after. I hope you are enjoying this
foray into the future. It is different than what I normally write, but
I think it is important that we have an idea of the general direction
the world of technology is taking us.
Also, a lot of you are asking ques! tions. "What about this or that?" I
can't answer them. But Ray does. Get the book and read it, or go to
your local bookstore, use the index and ï¬nd your answer. But I really
think you should try and read the book. (www.amazon.com) Order "On
Intelligence" with it and get free shipping.
<snip>
Your ready to turn off his fat gene analyst,
John Mauldin
John@FrontLineThoughts.com
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