Scientist Predicts Humans Will Reach Singularity In 20 Years

Futurists have long debated the arrival of the singularity—a moment when human and artificial intelligence merge, a concept originally borrowed from quantum physics.

Kurzweil reiterated that humans will reach a millionfold increase in intelligence by 2045, thanks to brain interfaces formed by non-invasively inserted nanobots.

American computer scientist and futurist Ray Kurzweil has long argued that the singularity would likely occur around the middle of the 21st century. With the rapid rise of AI, his predictions are gaining renewed attention, Popular Mechanics’ Darren Orf reported.

In his new book, The Singularity Is Nearer, Kurzweil doubles down on those predictions, detailing how humanity’s intelligence could increase a millionfold through the use of nanobots and other advanced technologies.

“You don’t exactly become a world-renowned futurist by making safe predictions,” Orf writes. And while some of Kurzweil’s past forecasts haven’t quite come to pass (Back to the Future Part II, anyone?), his ideas continue to shape how we imagine the future.

Few make bold predictions quite like Kurzweil. Once a leading computer scientist, he has long maintained that humanity is moving toward “the singularity,” when humans and machines will effectively merge.

In 1999, Kurzweil predicted that artificial general intelligence (AGI) would be achieved when technology could perform a trillion calculations per second—something he expected by 2029.

At the time, many experts dismissed the idea, believing it was at least a century away. Now, with AGI seeming increasingly plausible, that decades-old prediction is starting to look more credible.

In The Singularity Is Nearer (a follow-up to his 2005 book The Singularity Is Near), Kurzweil reiterates that humans will reach a millionfold increase in intelligence by 2045, thanks to brain interfaces formed by non-invasively inserted nanobots.