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RAY KURTZWEIL
Transcript of the Commencement Address by Ray Kurzweil at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, May 21, 2005

We have little software programs inside us called genes, about 23 thousand of them. They were designed or evolved tens of thousands of years ago when conditions were quite different. I'll give you just one example. The fat insulin receptor gene says, “Hold on to every calorie because the next hunting season may not work out so well.” And that’s a gene we'd like to reprogram. It made sense 20 thousand years ago when calories were few and far between. What would happen if we blocked that? We have a new technology that can turn genes off called RNA interference. So when that gene was turned off in mice, these mice ate ravenously and yet they remained slim. They got the health benefits of being slim. They didn't get diabetes, didn't get heart disease or cancer. They lived 20 to 25 percent longer while eating ravenously. There are several pharmaceutical companies who have noticed that might be a good human drug.
There’s many other genes we'd like to turn off. There are genes that are necessary for atherosclerosis, the cause of heart disease, to progress. There are genes that cancer relies on to progress. If we can turn these genes off, we could turn these diseases off. Turning genes off is just one of the methodologies. There are new forms of gene therapy that actually add genes so we'll not just have designer babies but designer baby boomers. And you probably read this Korean announcement a couple of days ago of a new form of cell therapy where we can actually create new cells with your DNA so if you need a new heart or new heart cells you will be able to grow them with your own DNA, have them DNA-corrected, and thereby rejuvenate all your cells and tissues.
Ten or 15 years from now, which is not that far away, we'll have the maturing of these biotechnology techniques and we'll dramatically overcome the major diseases that we've struggled with for eons and also allow us to slow down, stop and even reverse aging processes.
The next revolution is nanotechnology, where we're applying information technology to matter and energy. We'll be able to overcome major problems that human civilization has struggled with. For example, energy. We have a little bit of sunlight here today. If we captured .03 percent, that’s three ten-thousandths of the sunlight that falls on the Earth, we could meet all of our energy needs. We can't do that today because solar panels are very heavy, expensive and inefficient. New nano-engineered designs, designing them at the molecular level will enable us to create very inexpensive, very efficient, light-weight solar panels, store the energy in nano-engineered fuel cells, which are highly decentralized, and meet all of our energy needs.
The killer app of nanotechnology is something called nanobots, basically little robots the size of blood cells. If that sound very futuristic, there are four major conferences on that already and they're already performing therapeutic functions in animals. One scientist cured Type-1 diabetes with these blood cell-sized nano-engineered capsules.
In regard to the 2020s, these devices will be able to go inside the human body and keep us healthy by destroying pathogens, correcting DNA errors, killing cancer cells and so on and even go into the brain, and interact with our biological neurons. If that sounds futuristic, there are already neural implants that are FDA-approved so there are people walking around who have computers in their brains and the biological neurons in their vicinity are perfectly happy to interact with these computerized devices. And the latest generation of the neural implant for Parkinson’s disease allows the patients to download new software to their neural implant from outside the patient. By the 2020s, we'll be able to greatly enhance human intelligence, provide full immersion virtual reality, for example, from within the nervous system using these types of technologies.
And finally R, which stands for robotics, which is really artificial intelligence at the human level, we'll see that in the late 2020s. By that time this exponential growth of computation will provide computer systems that are more powerful than the human brain. We'll have completed the reverse engineering of the human brain to get the software algorithms, the secrets, the principles of operation of how human intelligence works. A side benefit of that is we'll have greater insight into ourselves, how human intelligence works, how our emotional intelligence works, what human dysfunction is all about. We’ll be able to correct, for example, neurological diseases and also expand human intelligence. And this is not going to be an alien invasion of intelligent machines. We already routinely do things in our civilization that would be impossible without our computer intelligence. If all the AI programs, narrow AI, that’s embedded in our economic infrastructure were to stop today, our human civilization would grind to a halt. So we're already very integrated with our technology. Computer technology used to be very remote. Now we carry it in our pockets. It'll soon be in our clothing. It’s already begun migrating into our bodies and brains. We will become increasingly intimate with our technology.
The implications of all this is we will extend human longevity. We've already done that. A thousand years ago, human life expectancy was about 23. So most of you would be senior citizens if this were taking place a thousand years ago. In 1800, 200 years ago, human life expectancy was 37. So most of the parents here, including myself, wouldn't be here. It was 50 years in 1900. It’s now pushing 80. Every time there’s been some advance in technology we've pushed it forward.: sanitation, antibiotics. This biotechnology revolution will expand it again. Nanotechnology will solve problems that we don't get around to with biotechnology. We'll have dramatic expansion of human longevity.
But actually life would get boring if we were sitting around for a few hundred years—we would be doing the same things over and over again—unless we had radical life expansion. And this technology will also expand our opportunities, expand our ability to create and appreciate knowledge. And creating knowledge is what the human species is all about. We're the only species that has knowledge that we pass down from generation to generation. That’s what you've been doing for the last four years. That’s what you will continue doing indefinitely. We are expanding exponentially human knowledge and that is really what is exciting about the future.
I was told that commencement addresses should have a vision, which I've tried to share with you, and some practical advice. And my practical advice is that creating knowledge is what will be most exciting in life. And in order to create knowledge you have to have passion. So find a challenge that you can be passionate about, and there many of them that are worthwhile. And if you’re passionate about a worthwhile challenge, you can find the ideas to overcome that challenge. Those ideas exist and you can find them. And persistence usually pays off. You've all had timed tests where you had two or three hours to complete a test. But the tests in life are not timed. If you need an extra hour you can take it. Or an extra day, an extra week, an extra year, an extra decade. You’re the only one that will determine your own success or failure. Thomas Edison tried thousands of filaments to get his light bulb to work and none of them worked. And he easily could have said, “I guess all those skeptics who said that a practical light bulb was impossible were right.” Obviously he didn't do that. You know the rest of the story.
If you have a challenge that you feel passionately about that’s really worthwhile, then you should never give in. To quote Winston Churchill, “Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in.”