Within 25 years, non-biological intelligence will match the range and subtlety of human intelligence. It will then soar past it because of the continuing acceleration of information-based technologies, as well as the machines' ability to instantly share their knowledge.

Intelligent "nanorobots" (blood-cell sized robots) will be deeply integrated in our bodies, brains, and environment. They will overcome pollution and poverty, and by doing so, overcome our bodies' deterioration. There will be full-immersion virtual reality incorporating all the senses (like The Matrix), "experience beaming" (like Being John Malkovich), and vastly enhanced human intelligence.  

We'll eventually get to a point where technical progress will be so fast that unenhanced human intelligence will be unable to follow it. That will mark "the singularity" - a profound and disruptive transformation in human capability, which I believe will happen around 2045. The non-biological intelligence created in that year will be one billion times more powerful than all human intelligence today.

We need about 10 quadrillion calculations per second (cps) to provide a functional equivalent to all the regions of the brain. Several supercomputers with one quadrillion cps are on the drawing board, with two Japanese efforts targeting 10 quadrillion cps by the end of the decade. By 2020, 10 quadrillion cps will be available for around $1,000.

The human brain

To understand the principles of human intelligence we must reverse-engineer the brain. Here, progress is far greater than most people realise - by the mid 2020s, we will have effective models for all of the brain. And at that point, we'll have a full understanding of the methods of it, too. This will expand the toolkit of techniques we can use to create artificial intelligence, and we will then be able to create non-biological systems that match and surpass human intelligence in ways that humans are now superior.

But these super-intelligent computers will also do things we can't, such as share knowledge and skills at electronic speeds. By 2030, $1,000 of computation will be about a thousand times more powerful than a human brain.

An end to ageing?

Biotechnology is providing the means to actually change genes. Already, new drug development is targeting key steps in the development of heart disease, cancerous tumour formation, and the processes underlying major diseases and ageing. The biotechnology revolution is in its early stages and will reach its peak in the second decade of this century, when we'll be able to overcome most major diseases and dramatically slow the ageing process.

The nanotechnology revolution, which will achieve maturity in the 2020s, will mean we are able to go beyond the limits of biology, and replace the current "human body version 1.0" with a dramatically upgraded version 2.0, providing radical life extension.

The "killer app"of nanotechnology will be nanorobots, which will travel in the bloodstream destroying pathogens, removing debris, correcting DNA errors, and even reversing the ageing process.

Ray Kurzweil's book, The Singularity is Near, is available now.