3 min reading time

At last week’s annual Exponential Medicine program from Singularity University, futurist and Google Director of Engineering Ray Kurzweil said,

“I’m developing these neocortical models. We don’t perfectly know how the neocortex works but we have enough information about it to begin to simulate it and create intelligent systems and I’m applying that to natural language. Turing defined language as the epitome of human intelligence.

On Google and Siri, you can ask natural questions and those answers are getting more sophisticated. We’d like to broaden that even further and have a system you can really talk to and get to know you. The early vision of that is “Samantha” in the movie “Her,” and there will be a gradual but exponential path to getting there.

In terms of life sciences, the motivating goal is applying information technology to “solving health.” Google fashions itself as organizing the world’s information. Some of that information is the software that runs life and we now have the means of reprogramming it.”

Question one for today’s discussion: If you accept the notion we’ll be able to “reprogram life,” how will that affect your plans? How will it affect the medical device industry? And how can we use our 300,000-member community to work together on the objective?

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Ray also said, “You can’t predict the future. But one aspect is very predictable: The price/performance capacity of every information technology.

One industry after another becomes an information technology. Write down the technical attributes that affect your business and you can actually plot exactly where they will be.

For example, I did this five years ago with e-readers and wrote down all the parameters: Display resolution, cellular computing, transmission speeds, and so on.”

He talked about the exponential movement in mobile computing and said 3-dimensional printing start taking off in the 2020s.

Question two for today: When you consider the vast information being collected by the Human Genome Project – and if you consider that to eventually be “open-source information,” how will you use that information to better deliver health solutions.

A lot to think about.

And even if you don’t choose to share your comments publicly, make a note of this thread. Share it and refer to it when you’re planning your business’ future.

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Further Inspiration

Watch the movie Her: http://medgroup.biz/the-movie-Her

Read Ray’s latest book: http://medgroup.biz/how-to-create-a-mind

Think strategically: http://medgroup.biz/MDMS

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FOR RECRUITERS

I am trying something new to give your jobs more visibility.

This link will list your jobs on our discussion page.

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Make it a great week.

Joe Hage
Medical Devices Group Leader

P.S. Register before Thanksgiving to save $200 on MDMS, the Medical Device Marketing and Sales Program we created for the group. See http://medgroup.biz/MDMS for information.

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Troels Eskildsen
QA Professional at Novo Nordisk
@Jimmi Hansen

Joe Hage
🔥 Find me at MedicalDevicesGroup.net 🔥
Nick, what, in particular, do you have in mind?

Damián Ramírez
Jefe de Esterilización en ICBA Instituto Cardiovascular de Buenos Aires
Thanks to share this information, Joe. Best regards from Argentina.

Nick Bachur
President at True Vortex
Playing in a neighborhood near you. Sooner than Ray predicts. The big year is just around the corner: 2017.

Karen Boyd
Owner / Operator at QMS Consulting LLC
Scary stuff. These neocortical models may tell us what we don’t want to hear…a voice of “reason” or raw data truth? Otherwise, we turn them off and ignore the voices….back to where we are currently. The consumer or user always has a choice (right, wrong, better, or worse). Unless we are somehow forced to interface with these models, I see it as an option and perhaps maybe only a novelty for some. I guess I’m a cynic too!

Jon Gardner
Technology Consultant
Call me a cynic, but we don’t want intelligent systems that can get to know us, unless we can keep them from telling us the truth. We already have the answers to the vast majority of health issues, at least in the U.S. (eat right & exercise), but we don’t want to hear that. We want anorexia without the vomiting (the Aspire device), we want to be fit without exercise (supplements & vibration plates…really?), and I’m sure we’d love nothing more than to be able to “reprogram” our DNA so we can do what we want, when we want, with whom we want, with no repercussions. We’d best remember that every genetic mutation we’ve been able to observe, in any species, has been detrimental, if not fatal.