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TIME's report on our robotic future: 5 incredible predictions
Our species may become obsolete by 2045, says the magazine ominously, overtaken by artificial intelligence
posted on February 11,2011, at 4:37 PM

According to futurologist Raymond Kurzweil, robots will advance well beyond the role of helpful sidekick by mid-century. Photo: Corbis SEE ALL 18 PHOTOS
The Singularity is coming.That's the belief of Raymond Kurzweil, a futurist and engineer profiled by Lev Grossman in this week's TIME magazine. Kurzweil's particular focus is predicting the point — known as the Singularity — atwhich the progress of machines will supersede that of humans. After decades of research, Kurzweil thinks he's finally put a date on it. Here, the five most extreme predictions highlighted in TIME'sprofile:

1. Computers will think like humans do by the end of the 2020s
The way Kurzweil sees it, technological progress will balloon in the 2020s. By midway through that decade, we will be able toreverse-engineer the human brain — that is, figure out exactly how it works. By the end of the 2020s, "computers will be capable of human-level intelligence." That means they'll be able to emulate"whatever it is our brains are doing when they create consciousness."

2. The Singularity will occur in 2045
In that year, artificial intelligence will be so dominant and abundant that people willeither merge with machines to "become super-intelligent cyborgs," or we'll "scan our consciousnesses into computers and live inside them as software, forever, virtually." Another option: The robots willturn on us, in a Terminator-style twist.

3. After the Singularity, humans will become "functionally immortal"...
"Singularitarians" like Kurzweil believe that human beings alive in 2045 will"wind up being functionally immortal." Not just because we'll be able to transfer our minds into computers or robots, but also because the rise of "regenerative medicine" will repair the "damage" of old...