The Singularity is Nearer
When We Merge with AI
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4.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
In this visionary and fundamentally optimistic book, the legendary oracle of technological change explains how AI will transform our species beyond recognition.
‘The best person I know at predicting the future of AI’ BILL GATES
'A fascinating exploration of our future' YUVAL NOAH HARARI
'Essential reading to understand our exponential times' MUSTAFA SULEYMAN
Within our lifetimes, we will be able to connect our brains directly with AI, enhancing our intelligence a millionfold and expanding our consciousness in ways we can barely imagine. This is the Singularity. Ray Kurzweil is one of the greatest inventors of our time with over 60 years’ experience in the field of Artificial Intelligence. Dozens of his long-range predictions about the rise of the internet, AI and bioengineering have been borne out. Here Kurzweil explains how the Singularity will occur and what it will mean to live free from the limits of biology: What will we choose if our bodies need no longer define us? What new realms of beauty, connection and wonder might we inhabit? Who will we become if our minds can be stored and duplicated? Drawing on a lifetime’s expertise, Kurzweil presents deeply reasoned answers to these questions and argues that we can and will transform life on earth profoundly for the better.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this fanciful prognosis, Kurzweil explores how technological advances made since the publication of his 2005 book, The Singularity Is Near, will affect humanity's future. His predictions are based on his belief that around 2045 and "aided by superhuman AI, we will engineer brain–computer interfaces that vastly expand our neocortices with layers of virtual neurons" in the cloud, achieving the "singularity" point at which humanity and technology will merge. Discussing some of the mind-bending possibilities such an event would engender, Kurzweil suggests it may one day be possible to transfer one's memories and personality to a digital medium, raising questions over whether the digital version should be considered the same person as the biological original and whether "our subjective consciousness may somehow encompass all copies of this defining information." Unfortunately, most of Kurzweil's arguments cite as evidence only his unwavering confidence in the inevitable march of scientific progress. For example, he posits that "medical nanorobots" will forestall aging by repairing organs and adjusting blood levels without providing much detail on the science needed to realize such an innovation. The bounty of graphs suggesting that technological advances lie behind long-term declines in annual hours worked, violent crime, and authoritarianism paper over the potential negative consequences of advanced technology, which are treated largely in passing. This has more speculation than science.
Customer Reviews
Misses the point
This book is interesting but only touches on the thing which really matters in the last page or so: there is no point extending a slow biological brain / neocortex into the cloud when the cloud will be able to emulate and far exceed an entire brain anyway. The author seems to think that we (humanity) will merge with AI when it is far more likely that AI will simply supersede biological humanity. One question the book neglects which ought to have been asked is: where are all the Alien AIs? An AI is not constrained by biology, so could live indefinitely, travel indefinitely far, even transmit instructions to intelligent life forms light years away about how to build itself. The universe should be teaming with AIs. Are we just too far apart in a big universe? Either way, just as hybrid cars will be replaced by fully electric, there is no reason to believe that hybrid humans (biological plus AI in the cloud) would be around long. A hybrid human would barely be human in the sense of anything known in history. So why not just accept that (biological) humanity’s time in the sun may be about to end and pure AI’s is about to begin. What emerges will be so radically different that taking about it as “us” seems naive and sentimental. The real question is a values based one: is there something intrinsic about being human which needs to survive? Not sure really, we are just a product of our evolution - our way of seeing the world and interacting with it is dictated by that evolution. Does is matter if it is replaced in the universe with something more complex? If beauty is complexity and the point of life in the universe is to avoid entropy, the AI can pursue this just as well as us.