A couple of months ago I listened to a podcast on my way to work between Neil DeGrasse Tyson and a man who was introduced as the rightful heir to Thomas Edison, Ray Kurzweil. I was astonished at how soon Kurzweil suggested we would be able enhance ourselves with microscopic intelligent machines. He believes that once we hit the 2030’s we will have nanobots in our brain which can directly connect our neocortex to the cloud, giving us quicker access to information and enhancing our intellect as a result. In this article I am going to outline Kurzweil’s suggested uses for nanotechnology and it’s possible drawbacks, and criticise his every suggestion because accepting information at face value is for pussies. Oh, and I’m gonna stick the podcast just below this paragraph so you can listen to it at your leisure.

Enhance Our Intellect

Kurzweil suggests that the development of the additional neo cortex — the part of the brain which separate us from other primates — was a one shot deal 2 million years ago, and that it’s unlikely the brain would expand in such a way again. The introduction of nanomachines into our neo cortex would bypass this problem as, according to Kurzweil, they will expand our intelligence exponentially. The nanomachines do this by linking the neo cortex to the cloud, which — due to the fact that it doubles in size every year — will annually increase the power of our brains. When asked by Neil DeGrasse Tyson if a shared connection to the cloud would put limits on a person’s individuality, Kurzweil responded with the opposite: that it would increase a persons individuality, as we would have more brain power to apply to literature and music, creating more diverse forms than we did previously.

Alright, it’s time to counterbalance these optimistic predictions with some of my personal stores of pessimism. I have no issue with Kurzweil’s logic, I’m sure he’s calculated everything as accurately as possible and the technology will exist somewhere near the region of time he’s suggested, however I do have to critique the technology’s implementation for two reasons.

FIRSTLY, from the research I’ve done on the cloud, it’s clear that term is abstract; it refers to a network of servers which are accessible through the internet by anyone at any time. Some of the servers are used by companies to provide a service, so instead of selling a program in a box, you can subscribe to it through the cloud. Some are used to store personal data, with services like Dropbox, and websites like Facebook and Instagram which store everything that’s posted on them on cloud storage. This second type of server creates a problem for Kurzweil’s theory. Kurzweil asserted at one point in the podcast that people are more intelligent already because they have a smartphone at their fingertips, but I beg to differ. People look up what they want to on the internet and install the applications they like, so a person who wants to watch videos of fat people falling over on YouTube and wants to install an app where you pop balloons for hours on end for no personal gain (download Jerry’s Game for clarity) will continue to do that; they wont go out of their way to listen to every piano concerto ever created and create one far superior by building on the knowledge they now have of the others. Some might, but it’s not everyone’s cup of tea. Basically people could choose to make themselves less intelligent if they’re that way inclined.

SECONDLY, I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that those of us who are finding it hard to make next months rent, and are attempting to survive the week on 6 packets of super noodles, are not going to be able to afford a nanotech upgrade. That’s the main difference between our first neo cortex upgrade and this new one, the first was free and was distributed to 100% of our species, I doubt this second upgrade will make its way into even 5% of our species’ neo cortex’s. AND — I’m going to go Orwellian on you for a moment — considering the political elite, the media, and those who own the most important businesses are flush with cash, they will all be walking around with their brand new super brains, more capable than ever of deceiving and exploiting the masses for personal gain. Class separation could happen too, upper and middle class people with the upgrade would be even more adept at securing jobs, leaving the working class in their drooling pits of thick, wondering how they got left so far behind. Maybe they’ll even cull us (the working class) like foxes, ride their newly built hover horses past us and will us into submission with their newly developed psionic brain implants. The first to make an underclassmen cry every last drop of water out of his body wins the golden nanobot trophy. Okay, maybe I should’ve dialled down the pessimism a tad, the rich aren’t as evil as that… maybe some would give us a warm place by the fire and a litter tray to relieve the last of our dignity in.

Cure “Incurable” Diseases

Kurzweil identifies three overlapping revolutions: biotechnology, nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence, which occur in that order. We will only be dealing with the first two revolutions here, artificial intelligence is too massive a topic to be discussed in passing (I’ll likely write something on it soon). Biotechnology is the observation that gene sequences are reminiscent of sequences of data, making human beings just advanced pieces of software. Human bodies have limited capability and as a result can only last so long. The immune system doesn’t go after cancerous cells because they’re recognised as human, and it doesn’t go after retroviruses like HIV because they replicate within human cells etc. Nanotechnology is the next revolution, we will be able to create nanobots which act like T-Cells but aren’t limited like the ones in our body.

I did some research to find out exactly how the nanobots would remove a cancerous tumour, considering their size they could hardly separate the tumour from the healthy cells and carry it out of the body. What I found out was that the nanobots would be laden with ribonucleic acid which deactivates the cancer cell’s protein production, disabling it at a genetic level.

I also came across other medical uses for these bots, including finding arterial weaknesses, detecting harmful toxins or chemicals in the body, and giving early warnings of organ failure or tissue rejection.

I wont critique the implication of this too much because the only major issue is financial. The nanomachine cancer treatment might be used on Ivanka Trump’s tumour but your nan’s will still be receiving a thick blast of radiation.

Drawbacks

Kurzweil identifies some key drawbacks to the use of nanotechnology. If you can create cell sized artificial robots, viruses can be mimicked and weaponised. However, Kurzweil speaks of an ethical council which has been put in place to make sure there are no weaponisation incidents. He also cites experiments which have used this tech to fix damaged hearts, and there has been no weaponising of the tech thus far, but its not to say there wont be any in the future.

Kurzweil’s second identified concern is a lack of privacy. People are worried that connecting your brain to the cloud could leave your brain open to hacking, and as a result, all that lies within revealed to a third party. Kurzweil suggests that these privacy concerns are unwarranted by explaining that there are currently layers of encryption which cannot be breached, as statistically encryption is outpacing decryption.

Conclusion

I’m going to end this by paying my respects to Ray Kurzweil, as he has utterly convinced me that nanotechnology will be available in the near future. The criticisms I’ve made are entirely based on how the technology will be implicated; I feel like the creators need to be careful how it is distributed, by making sure its affordable before its made available to anyone. This would likely be a difficult task, but the closest we can get to advancing intellectually as a collective whole, the less problems we will face as a species. I’ll likely be expanding on these musings when I write an article on Artificial Intelligence in the coming weeks, also known as Kurzweil’s third and final intellectual revolution.