Microsoft Word Kurzweil, Ray The Singularity Is Near doc

Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
108.5 
(November 2000): 2266–71. Watts is the founder of Audience, Inc., which is devoted to applying functional 
simulation of regions of the human auditory system to applications in sound processing, including creating a 
way of preprocessing sound for automated speech-recognition systems. For more information, see 
http://www.lloydwatts.com/ neuroscience.shtml. 
Disclosure: The author is an adviser to Audience. 
39.
U.S. Patent Application 20030095667, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, May 22, 2003. 
40.
The Medtronic MiniMed closed-loop artificial pancreas currently in human clinical trials is returning 
encouraging results. The company has announced that the device should be on the market within the next five 
years. Medtronic news release, "Medtronic Supports Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation's Recognition of 

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Artificial Pancreas as a Potential 'Cure' for Diabetes," March 23, 2004, 
http://www.medtronic.com/newsroom/news_2004323a.html. Such devices require a glucose sensor, an insulin 
pump, and an automated feedback mechanism to monitor insulin levels (International Hospital Federation, 
"Progress in Artificial Pancreas Development for Treating Diabetes," 
http://www.hospitalmanagement.net/informer/technology/tech10). Roche is also in the race to produce an 
artificial pancreas by 2007. See http://www.roche.com/pages/downloads/science/pdf/rtdcmannh02-6.pdf. 
41.
A number of models and simulations have been created based on analyses of individual neurons and 
interneuronal connections. Tomaso Poggio writes, "One view of the neuron is that it is more like a chip with 
thousands of logical-gates-equivalents rather than a single threshold element," Tomaso Poggio, private 
communication to Ray Kurzweil, January 2005. 
See also T. Poggio and C. Koch, "Synapses That Compute Motion," 
Scientific American
256 (1987): 46–
52. 
C. Koch and T. Poggio, "Biophysics of Computational Systems: Neurons, Synapses, and Membranes," in 
Synaptic Function
, G. M. Edelman, W. E. Gall, and W. M. Cowan, eds. (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 
1987), pp. 637–97. 
Another set of detailed neuron-level models and simulations is being created at the University of 
Pennsylvania's Neuroengineering Research Lab based on reverse engineering brain function at the neuron 
level. Dr. Leif Finkel, head of the laboratory, says, "Right now we're building a cellular-level model of a small 
piece of visual cortex. It's a very detailed computer simulation which reflects with some accuracy at least the 
basic operations of real neurons. [My colleague Kwabena Boahen] has a chip that accurately models the retina 
and produces output spikes that closely match real retinae." See 
http://nanodot.org/article.pl?sid=0l/12/18/1552221. 
Reviews of these and other models and simulations at the neuron level indicate that an estimate of 10
3
calculations per neural transaction (a single transaction involving signal transmission and reset on a single 
dendrite) is a reasonable upper bound. Most simulations use considerably less than this. 
42.
Plans for Blue Gene/L, the second generation of Blue Gene computers, were announced in late 2001. The new 
supercomputer, planned to be fifteen times faster than today's supercomputers and one twentieth the size, is 
being built jointly by the National Nuclear Security Agency's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and 
IBM. In 2002, IBM announced that open-source Linux had been chosen as the operating system for the new 
supercomputers. By July 2003, the innovative processor chips for the supercomputer, which are complete 
systems on chips, were in production. "Blue Gene/L is a poster child for what is possible with the system-on-a-
chip concept. More than 90 percent of this chip was built from standard blocks in our technology library," 
according to Paul Coteus, one of the managers of the project (Timothy Morgan, "IBM's Blue Gene/L Shows 
Off Minimalist Server Design,"