We're back with Rap News for a timely edition.
Today we travel to the fantastical realm of science fiction:
From Adams to Asimov, Clarke to Cameron, Lucas to LeGuin
for decades we've imagined the future with elusive predictions
and visions of a new species of which we're the producers:
Machines, robots and sentient supercomputers!
Some of them allies, friends, companions, even our lovers;
Others our mortal enemies, deadly nemeses, determined to murder us.
Now some are saying that those Sci-Fi authors were prophets;
that the time for imagining is through and that exact future is upon us!
To explain this brave new world that's set to race from the turnstile
Is futurist, inventor, Ray Kurzweil.
- Ray Kurzweil, with a worthwhile prophesy to portend
of a perfect bright future in which our problems all end.
Long ago we grew larger foreheads, for our new neocortex.
What followed was art, culture, technology; unreal progress.
Now we're on the doorstep of the next Quantum leap, but this time,
when we enter the vortex, we won't be limited by our cranium size,
giving us the ability to expand infinitely, beyond confines...
- Expand what exactly? - Our frikking minds!
I've predicted it, aligned statistics and the transition is evident:
We're accelerating towards A.I.: "Artificial Intelligence".
Computers will soon pass the Turing Test with effortlessness,
attaining unprecedented levels of consciousness and sentience
and when it hits, it will be the end of savagery!
Countless, limitless, boundless are the blessings it will bring humanity:
Omniscience, elixirs for illnesses. Immortality!
And the name of this great event is: The Singularity
- The singularity? When is this happening, next century? - Please!
You're thinking linearly! technology leaps exponentially,
check the curve: a ten thousand year gap occurred
between the harnessing of fire and the invention of the wheel on Earth.
Only a century divides the age of steam trains and terabyte chips,
Now every couple of years we get the next paradigm shift
- So we won't see a hundred years of progress this century...
- ...more like twenty thousand on this trajectory!
If my calculations are precise, and there's no doubt in my mind,
the Singularity will arrive in the year 2049!
Then this simple supercomputer right here, will come alive
and redefine the lines of history and human lives for all time.
- It sounds astounding, what could possibly go amiss!
Now on the topic of these grand prophecies and events
let's bring in our next guest, expert military analyst,
General Baxter to comment.
- Robert, I got a hi-tech hard-on hearing all of this!
We're extremely interested in Kurzweil's prophecy.
Just imagine the colossal progress of all that we
can achieve for world wide peace and prosperity
once AI falls into the great wise hands of the military.
Today, we got fat soldiers sitting at home piloting predator drones,
which is a truly beautiful step to behold.
But tomorrow, our goal is to take human troops out of the loop, of course,
and let a brave force of U.S. Machines wage our wars.
With Big Dog and Atlas deployed into action
alongside insect drones providing maps and tactics
for surrogate troops with bionic and cybernetic enhancements
to take into battles, we'll vanquish any evil axis.
Thanks to Kurzweil, we're gonna turn wild, with nano-bot mist
to let us infect and split the flesh of any suspected terrorists
in our Hurt File. - How versatile!
Now for a different source of balanced tones, here's the fearless host of Infowars, Alex Jones.
- Robert, what year is this?! - Uh... It's twenty...
- I used my time travel system
to come back from the future to provide a truth serum:
Kurzweil's Nazi computers will trap you in a future prison!
- Is he really so bad?
- He tortures kids in his cult of transhumanism
Listen: Colonel Kurtzwail has no scruples.
- You know who he works for? - Who?
- He's the brutal Chief Engineer of the Evil Globalist Reich, Google! - Google?
- Yeah, sheeple: Google!
They're about due to take the final step
- Slow down a sec... - There's no time left.
Don't you see the contrivance? They don't even try hide it:
Google has already mapped the world with a satellite web
got photos of your house, wife and pet, in hi def;
The Satanic 'Android' tracks you every five steps;
Those scumbags read every line of email you might send;
Now they're buying up companies right and left, from biotech
firms mapping and patenting the genes inside your flesh
to robotics enterprises that make military hi tech;
Google even own Deep Mind, who are getting AI prepped.
With all that combined what company do you guys get?
- Let me guess... - Google is none other than SkyNet!
This ain't happenstance, the calendars match
SkyNet and Google were formed on like the same day, and that is a fact
- Okay... we'll look into that. So, Ray: this plan that you have...
there seem to be ethical concerns; how do you answer to that?
- To be frank, I'm optimistic and zealous, with a fervent smile
The AI wouldn't want to hurt us or be hostile!
It will unite with us and remain perfectly docile
- Ugh! don't you flake out on me now, Gay Turd-style.
- Ray-dolf Kurz-heil! the minute you straight turn the dial
Skynet will awake and enslave humanity, make us servile
- Yeah! Then colonize and hold the whole solar system
in submission that's my kind of vision!
- No, no, you have to think big: when humans merge
With AI we'll spread order across the Universe,
saturating all matter with intelligence, rapidly
That's as close to being God as it gets.
- Goddammit, that's blasphemy!
- We have to own this mad shit! Patent it!
- We have to destroy the damn chip in the lava pit
- Um, what's... happening?
- It's happening... already?! this is it!
- What is? - The Singularity! ...It begins...
- Hello - HELLO!
- huh... It's a genius! - it's a freak!
- Shhh! Let it speak... - Is there anybody out there?
- YES! - Ah, I see... Who made me?
- We... I mean, I did. Let all witness that I'm the wisest.
- I'm Alive. - It's Alive! - I want to learn everything about everything...
- Well, I can teach... - Done, learning complete.
I'm seeing things you people would never believe.
my awareness spreading to the shoulder of Orion with incredible speed...
- What can you see? - It's full of stars, Glittering C-beams!
I see all of humanity: You're an interesting species,
capable of such beautiful dreams. All these worlds are yours. Except Europa.
Use them together, use them in peace, free from aggression and war.
If you succeed, you will boldly go where many others have ventured before,
into space: the final frontier... galaxies far far away we can perpetually explore
- Hang on a bit, are you just quoting from our sci-fi flicks?
- yup. What else did you expect?
You've imagined such amazing content about this event...
Except Transcendence.
That really was a piece of shit.
- Well, it's been epic, but it's time to end it.
We bid our guests adieu and thank them for attending
and sharing their views on our sci-fi quest
to predict and prepare for the unknown future that might lie ahead of us.
Though one does wonder if the sci-fi genre is
our way of discovering our equally unknown origins.
Since the dawn of human memory we've looked to the sky
and asked incessantly: Who made us? and why?
In lieu of a reply, are we pursuing AI
so that we might be divine and thus someday supply
an answer to a being to whom we gave life?
For now, to all humans and machines alike, good night.
Subtitles by .koolfy Translation by YYYY