Frank Tipler Quotes

By the time we get to the 2040s, we'll be able to multiply human intelligence a billionfold. That will be a profound change that's singular in nature. Computers are going to keep getting smaller and smaller. Ultimately, they will go inside our bodies and brains and make us healthier, make us smarter.

By definition, the Singularity means that machines would be smarter than us, and, in their wisdom, they can innovate new technologies. The innovations would come so quickly, and increasingly quickly, that the innovation would make Moore's Law seem as antiquated as Hammurabi's Code.

Nanotechnology has been moving a little faster than I expected, virtual reality a little slower.

How will the approach of the Singularity spread across the human world view?

Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence.

The capacity of computers is doubling every eight months. It's exponential development. I think it's a real threat, actually, that a computer one day will be more intelligent than us.

But if the technological Singularity can happen, it will.

In Harvest of Stars, there is this notion, not original with me of course, that it will become possible to download at least the basic aspects of a human personality into a machine program.

The most attractive habitats for synthetic sentience might be the vicinities of exceptional sources of energy - for example black holes, or even the neighbourhoods of large stars, which routinely boil off the energy of ten thousand suns. These are the destinations they may seek.

'Skinned' tells the story of Lia, a young girl who has it all - until she nearly dies and has her consciousness transferred into a robot body.

Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons.

I think that the development of artificial intelligence could lead to the end of the human race.

I would say that nanotech's worth paying attention to no matter what your background because if you look far enough into the future, it'll impact just about any industry you can think of.

We believe the singularity is inevitable, and all businesses will be redefined as computers overtake humans in intelligence.

I am patiently waiting for the singularity.

You take fantasies, which for thousands of years belonged to the religious realm - overcoming death or our merging with the universe - and you suddenly start talking about them in a more technical perspective as something that can be achieved, not after you die with the help of supernatural beings, but in this very life with the help of technology.

'Altered Carbon' is one of the most seminal pieces of post-cyberpunk hard science fiction out there - a dark, complex noir story that challenges our ideas of what it means to be human when all information becomes encodable, including the human mind.

Machine intelligence of a human nature could be a century away, and immortality is at least a millennium away, if not unattainable altogether.

Some claim that computers will, by 2050, achieve human capabilities. Of course, in some respects they already have.

We'll be 'outsourcing' our creativity and our thought processes to manufactured components that could be inconspicuously implanted beneath our coiffeurs. Welcome to the Borg. You might not be entirely comfortable with such cybernetic enhancements, but all the smart money says it's going to happen.

I think the brain is essentially a computer and consciousness is like a computer program. It will cease to run when the computer is turned off. Theoretically, it could be re-created on a neural network, but that would be very difficult, as it would require all one's memories.

For the moment, machines able to 'think' in anything approaching a human sense remain science-fiction. How we should prepare for their potential emergence, however, is a deeply unsettling question - not least because intelligent machines seem considerably more achievable than any consensus around their programming or consequences.

I just want the future to happen faster. I can't imagine the future without robots.

Time travel and teleportation will have to wait. It may take centuries to master these technology. But within the coming decades, we will understand dark matter, perhaps test string theory, find planets which can harbor life, and maybe have Brain 2.0, i.e. our consciousness on a disk which will survive even after we die.

Looking ahead, future generations may learn their social skills from robots in the first place. The cute yellow Keepon robot from Carnegie Mellon University has shown the ability to facilitate social interactions with autistic children. Morphy at the University of Washington happily teaches gestures to children by demonstration.