Prepare for the Nanorobots, Futurist Says

And even once Moores Law reaches its expected end in coming decades, the rate of growth in computing power wont slow, Kurzweil said. Instead, the paradigm will shift to a new form, which Kurzweil predicts will be 3-D molecular computing and nanotubes replacing transistors.

"Sometime around 2020 or 2015, the key features of transistors will be a few atoms," he said. "Will that be the end of Moores Law? Yes, but not the end of exponential growth in computing."

By 2020, with computing power continuing its growth rate unabated, Kurzweil expects that $1,000 worth of computation will be able to emulate the computational power of the human brain.

Among the trends he foreshadowed was that by 2010, computers as theyre now known will disappear. People will interface through retinal images directly within their eyes, Kurzweil said.

Software will evolve thanks to the reverse engineering of the human brain, enabling artificial intelligence to be applied directly in the brain itself, he said. By 2029, Kurzweil envisioned millions of nanorobots implanted in the human, all wirelessly connected and tapping into the Internet.

By then, $1,000 worth of computation will equal 1,000 times the computational power of human brain, he said.

"There will be a significant expansion of human intelligence," Kurzweil said. "Were already able to do intellectual feats that would be impossible without technology."

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