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Authors: Ray Kurzweil
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Haptic interface In virtual reality systems, the physical actuators that provide the user with a sense of touch (including the sensing of pressure and temperature).
Haptics The development of systems that allow one to experience the sense of touch in virtual reality. See Haptic interface.
Hologram An interference pattern, often using photographic media, that is encoded by laser beams and read by means of low-power laser beams. This interference pattern can reconstruct a three-dimensional image. An important property of a hologram is that the information is distributed throughout the hologram. Cut a hologram in half, and both halves will have the full picture, only at half the resolution. Scratching a hologram has no noticeable effect on the image. Human memory is regarded to be distributed in a similar way.
Holy Grail Any objective of a long and difficult quest. In medieval lore, the Grail refers to the plate used by Christ at the Last Supper. The Holy Grail subsequently became the object of knights’ quests.
Homo erectus
“Upright man.” Homo erectus emerged in Africa about 1.6 million years ago and developed fire, clothing, language, and weapon use.
“Upright man.” Homo erectus emerged in Africa about 1.6 million years ago and developed fire, clothing, language, and weapon use.
Homo habilis
“Handy human.” A direct ancestor leading to Homo erectus and eventually to Homo sapiens. Homo habilis lived approximately 1.6 to 2 million years ago. Homo habilis hominids were different from previous hominids in their bigger brain size, diet of both meat and plants, and creation and use of rudimentary tools.
“Handy human.” A direct ancestor leading to Homo erectus and eventually to Homo sapiens. Homo habilis lived approximately 1.6 to 2 million years ago. Homo habilis hominids were different from previous hominids in their bigger brain size, diet of both meat and plants, and creation and use of rudimentary tools.
Homo sapiens
Human species that emerged perhaps 400,000 years ago. Homo sapiens are similar to advanced primates in terms of their genetic heritage and are distinguished by their creation of technology, including art and language.
Human species that emerged perhaps 400,000 years ago. Homo sapiens are similar to advanced primates in terms of their genetic heritage and are distinguished by their creation of technology, including art and language.
Homo sapiens neanderthal (neanderthalensis)
A subspecies of Homo sapiens. Homo sapiens neanderthalensis is thought to have evolved from Homo erectus about 100,000 years ago in Europe and the Middle East. This highly intelligent subspecies cultivated an involved culture that included elaborate funeral rituals, burying their dead with ornaments, caring for the sick, and making tools for domestic use and for protection. Homo sapiens neanderthalensis disappeared about 35,000 to 40,000 years ago, in all likelihood as a result of violent conflict with Homo sapiens sapiens (the subspecies of contemporary humans).
A subspecies of Homo sapiens. Homo sapiens neanderthalensis is thought to have evolved from Homo erectus about 100,000 years ago in Europe and the Middle East. This highly intelligent subspecies cultivated an involved culture that included elaborate funeral rituals, burying their dead with ornaments, caring for the sick, and making tools for domestic use and for protection. Homo sapiens neanderthalensis disappeared about 35,000 to 40,000 years ago, in all likelihood as a result of violent conflict with Homo sapiens sapiens (the subspecies of contemporary humans).
Homo sapiens
sapiens
Another subspecies of Homo sapiens that emerged in Africa about 90,000 years ago. Contemporary humans are the direct descendants of this subspecies.
sapiens
Another subspecies of Homo sapiens that emerged in Africa about 90,000 years ago. Contemporary humans are the direct descendants of this subspecies.
Human Genome Project An international research program with the goal of gathering a resource of genomic maps and DNA sequence information that will provide detailed information about the structure, organization, and characteristics of the DNA of humans and other animals. The project began in the mid-1980s and is expected to be completed by around the year 2005.
Idiot savant A system or person who is highly skilled in a narrow task area but who lacks context and is otherwise impaired in more general areas of intelligent functioning. The term is taken from psychiatry, where it refers to a person who exhibits brilliance in one very limited domain but is underdeveloped in common sense, knowledge, and competence. For example, some human idiot savants are capable of multiplying very large numbers in their heads, or memorizing a phone book. Deep Blue is an example of an idiot savant system.
Image processing The manipulation of data representing images, or pictorial representation on a screen, composed of pixels. The use of a computer program to enhance or modify an image.
Improvisor A computer program that creates original music, written by Paul Hodgson, a British jazz saxophone player. Improvisor can emulate styles ranging from Bach to jazz greats Louis Armstrong and Charlie Parker.
Industrial Revolution The period in history in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries marked by accelerating developments in technology that enabled the mass production of goods and materials.
Information A sequence of data that is meaningful in a process, such as the DNA code of an organism or the bits in a computer program. Information is contrasted with “noise,” which is a random sequence. However, neither noise nor information is predictable. Noise is inherently unpredictable but carries no information. Information is also unpredictable; that is, we cannot predict future information from past information. If we can fully predict future data from past data, then that future data stops being information.
Information Theory A mathematical theory concerning the difference between information and noise, and the ability of a communications channel to carry information.
Intelligence The ability to use optimally limited resources—including time—to achieve a set of goals (which may include survival, communication, solving problems, recognizing patterns, performing skills). The products of intelligence may be clever, ingenious, insightful, or elegant. R. W Young defines intelligence as “that faculty of mind by which order is perceived in a situation previously considered disordered.”
Intelligent agent An autonomous software program that performs a function on its own, such as searching the Web for information of interest to a person based on certain criteria.
Intelligent function
A function that requires increasing intelligence to compute for increasing arguments. The busy beaver is an example of an intelligent function.
A function that requires increasing intelligence to compute for increasing arguments. The busy beaver is an example of an intelligent function.
Internet computation harvesting proposal A proposal to harvest the unused computational resources of personal computers on the Internet and thereby create virtual parallel supercomputers. There are sufficient unused “computes” on the Internet in 1998 to create human brain capacity supercomputers, at least in terms of hardware capability.
Knee of the curve The period in which the exponential nature of the curve of time begins to explode. Exponential growth lingers with no apparent growth for a long period of time and then appears to erupt suddenly. This is now occurring in the capability of computers.
Knowledge engineering The art of designing and building expert systems. In particular, collecting knowledge and heuristic rules from human experts in their area of specialty and assembling them into a knowledge base or expert system.
Knowledge principle
A principle that emphasizes the important role played by knowledge in many forms of intelligent activity. It states that a system exhibits intelligence in part due to the specific knowledge relevant to the task that it contains. Knowledge representation A system for organizing human knowledge in a domain into a data structure flexible enough to allow the expression of facts, rules, and relationships.
A principle that emphasizes the important role played by knowledge in many forms of intelligent activity. It states that a system exhibits intelligence in part due to the specific knowledge relevant to the task that it contains. Knowledge representation A system for organizing human knowledge in a domain into a data structure flexible enough to allow the expression of facts, rules, and relationships.
Law of Accelerating Returns As order exponentially increases, time exponentially speeds up (i.e., the time interval between salient events grows shorter as time passes).
Law of Increasing Chaos As chaos exponentially increases, time exponentially slows down (i.e., the time interval between salient events grows longer as time passes).
Law of Time and Chaos In a process, the time interval between salient events (i.e., events that change the nature of the process, or significantly affect the future of the process) expands or contracts along with the amount of chaos.
Laws of thermodynamics The laws of thermodynamics govern how and why energy is transferred.
The first law of thermodynamics (postulated by Hermann von Helmholtz in 1847), also called the Law of Conservation of Energy, states that the total amount of energy in the Universe is constant. A process may modify the form of energy, but a closed system does not lose energy. We can use this knowledge to determine the amount of energy in a system, the amount lost as waste heat, and the efficiency of the system.The second law of thermodynamics (articulated by Rudolf Clausias in 1850), also known as the Law of Increasing Entropy, states that the entropy (disorder of particles) in the Universe never decreases. As the disorder in the Universe increases, the energy is transformed into less usable forms. Thus, the efficiency of any process will always be less than 100 percent.The third law of thermodynamics (described by Walter Hermann Nemst in 1906, based on the idea of a temperature of absolute zero first articulated by Baron Kelvin in 1848), also known as the Law of Absolute Zero, tells us that all molecular movement stops at a temperature called absolute zero, or 0 Kelvin (—273°C). Since temperature is a measure of molecular movement, the temperature of absolute zero can be approached, but it can never be reached.
Life The ability of entities (usually organisms) to reproduce into future generations. Patterns of matter and energy that can perpetuate themselves and survive.
LISP (list processing) An interpretive computer language developed in the late 1950s at MIT by John McCarthy used to manipulate symbolic strings of instructions and data. The principal data structure is the list, a finite ordered sequence of symbols. Because a program written in LISP is itself expressed as a list of lists, LISP lends itself to sophisticated recursion, symbol manipulation, and self-modifying code. It has been widely used for AI programming, although it is less popular today than it was in the 1970s and 1980s.
Logical positivism A twentieth-century philosophical school of thought that was inspired by Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus
Logico-Philosophicus.
According to logical positivism, all meaningful statements may be confirmed by observation and experiment or are “analytic” (deducible from observations).
Logico-Philosophicus.
According to logical positivism, all meaningful statements may be confirmed by observation and experiment or are “analytic” (deducible from observations).
Luddite
One of a group of early-nineteenth-century English workmen who destroyed labor-saving machinery in protest. The Luddites were the first organized movement to oppose the mechanized technology of the Industrial Revolution. Today, the Luddites are a symbol of opposition to technology.
One of a group of early-nineteenth-century English workmen who destroyed labor-saving machinery in protest. The Luddites were the first organized movement to oppose the mechanized technology of the Industrial Revolution. Today, the Luddites are a symbol of opposition to technology.
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) A noninvasive diagnostic technique that produces computerized images of body tissues and is based on nuclear magnetic resonance of atoms within the body produced by the application of radio waves. A person is placed in a magnetic field thirty thousand times stronger than the normal magnetic field on Earth. The person’s body is stimulated with radio waves, and the body responds with its own electromagnetic transmissions. These are detected and processed by computer to generate a three-dimensional map of high-resolution internal features such as blood vessels.
Massively parallel neural nets A neural net built from many parallel processing units. Generally, a separate, specialized computer implements each neuron model.
Microprocessor An integrated circuit built on a single chip containing the entire central processing unit (CPU) of a computer.
Millions of Instructions per Second A method of measuring the speed of a computer in terms of the number of millions of instructions performed by the computer in one second. An instruction is a single step in a computer program as represented in the computer’s machine language.
Mind-body problem
The philosophical question: How does the nonphysical entity of the mind emerge from the physical entity of the brain? How do feelings and other subjective experiences result from the processing of the physical brain? By extension, will machines emulating the processes of the human brain have subjective experiences? Also, how does the nonphysical entity of the mind exert control over the physical reality of the body?
The philosophical question: How does the nonphysical entity of the mind emerge from the physical entity of the brain? How do feelings and other subjective experiences result from the processing of the physical brain? By extension, will machines emulating the processes of the human brain have subjective experiences? Also, how does the nonphysical entity of the mind exert control over the physical reality of the body?
Mind trigger
A stimulation of an area of the brain that evokes a feeling usually (i.e., otherwise) gained from actual physical or mental experience.
A stimulation of an area of the brain that evokes a feeling usually (i.e., otherwise) gained from actual physical or mental experience.
Minimax procedure or theorem A basic technique used in game-playing programs. An expanding tree of possible moves and countermoves (moves from the opponent) is constructed. An evaluation of the final “leaves” of the tree that minimizes the opponent’s ability to win and maximizes the program’s ability to win is then passed back down the branches of the tree.
MIPS See Millions of Instructions per Second.
Mission critical system A software program that controls a process on which people are heavily dependent. Examples of mission critical software include life-support systems in hospitals, automated surgical equipment, autopilot flying and landing systems, and other software-based systems that affect the well-being of a person or organization.
Molecular computer
A computer based on logic gates that is constructed on principles of molecular mechanics (as opposed to principles of electronics) by appropriate arrangements of molecules. Since the size of each logic gate (device that can perform a logical operation) is only one or a few molecules, the resultant computer can be microscopic in size. Limitations on molecular computers arise only from the physics of atoms. Molecular computers can be massively parallel by having parallel computations performed by trillions of molecules simultaneously. Molecular computers have been demonstrated using the DNA molecule.
A computer based on logic gates that is constructed on principles of molecular mechanics (as opposed to principles of electronics) by appropriate arrangements of molecules. Since the size of each logic gate (device that can perform a logical operation) is only one or a few molecules, the resultant computer can be microscopic in size. Limitations on molecular computers arise only from the physics of atoms. Molecular computers can be massively parallel by having parallel computations performed by trillions of molecules simultaneously. Molecular computers have been demonstrated using the DNA molecule.
Moore’s Law First postulated by former Intel CEO Gordon Moore in the mid-1960s, Moore’s Law is the prediction that the size of each transistor on an integrated circuit chip will be reduced by 50 percent every twenty-four months. The result is the exponentially growing power of integrated circuit-based computation over time. Moore’s Law doubles the number of components on a chip as well as the speed of each component. Both of these aspects double the power of computing, for an effective quadrupling of the power of computation every twenty-four months.
BOOK: The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence
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