Renowned artificial intelligence and speech recognition expert Ray Kurzweil opened attendees' eyes to the future at PC Expo 2000, during a keynote speech.
The human brain is already relatively slow in comparison to computers, and it doesn't work that well as a database, according to Kurzweil. Many people would be "hard pressed to remember a handful of phone numbers," illustrated the industry visionary.
People do have capabilities not yet fully realised by computers, he acknowledged. Kurzweil described the human brain as a "massively parallel" and "redundant" system, also characterised by "endearing qualities" such as "lack of precision" and "sudden flashes of insight."
But human knowledge and experiences cannot now be shared easily with others, Kurzweil said. "My knowledge of French, limited as it is, cannot be downloaded into your brain," he told the audience.
Already, however, scientists have started to understand how certain portions of the brain really work, and they're even able to use neural networking to duplicate some brain functions in software programs, he said.
Doctors have alleviated the symptoms of Parkinson's disease by hooking up patients to computers running software that emulates portions of healthy brain tissue.
Similarly, computers can now recognise many patterns of human speech. Software vendors can now "just take the pattern and load it on to a system" that runs a speech-recognition engine on any home PC, Kurzweil said.
Other technologists have "selectively replaced" the neurons in spiny lobsters, so that "the biological neurons accept their non-biological peers," according to Kurzweil. "Within 25 to 30 years," the keynoter foretold, "we'll have [complete human] brain scans."
Meanwhile, scientists are working on electronics technology due to result in 3-D virtual reality (VR) applications supported by "nanotubes" 300 layers of circuitry deep.
Sooner or later, "meetings will routinely take place over the Web." Participants will be able to decide where they want their 3-D VR meetings to happen -- on a virtual African game reservation or in a virtual French café, for instance.
As technology continues to progress at exponential levels, circuitry becomes more and more miniaturised, Kurzweil observed.
By the time of PC Expo 2040, "nanobots" hidden in people's clothing, eyeglasses and contact lenses will be able to create "millions of connections" between the wearer's brain, other people's brains and other computers.
Predicting that life expectancy also will keep rising at exponential levels, Kurzweil suggested that many in the audience at PC Expo 2000 will still be going to trade shows 40 years from now.
"But we won't wake up in 2040 with a completely different world," Kurzweil cautioned. Instead, changes will be introduced gradually and less glaringly, as a result of discoveries made through separate projects taking place at various times, in places all over the globe.
