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Loading... The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology (original 2005; edition 2006)by Ray Kurzweil
Work InformationThe Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology by Ray Kurzweil (2005)
  
Futurism Works (13) No current Talk conversations about this book.  guhlitz | Mar 14, 2024 |   Philosophically the most interesting aspect is that computational power is automatically aligned with intelligence and with sustainable existence. While many of the discussions since this work note how coexistence with general AI might be impossible, that exponential growth may damage the environment, that intelligence in the true sense should account for all other conscious versions of itself. (  ) yates9 | Feb 28, 2024 | Let’s be realistic, the explosion of interest in Generative AI (or as some call it – ‘plagiarism machines’ or ‘computer models that can lie’) has brought us no closer to ‘the singularity.’ However, it has made AI more conversational and has the potential to bring more existing information to more people faster. In addition, clearly technology adoption rates have accelerated (at least in some cases). It took Facebook four and a half years to reach 100 million users, ChatGPT reached that milestone in two months. In this bestseller, Kurzweil takes on predictions around GRN (Genetics, Nanotechnology, and Robotics/strong AI). He explores the potential advances on human brain interfaces, brain reengineering, and uploading the brain into a computer. Crazy stuff, right? Well, he does include over 100 pages of notes and references. This is not just some person making wild predictions, it is supported with a substantial amount of research and expertise. Is it crazy to think we become more integrated with technology when 95% of the world is covered by broadband networks? When the average screen time in the U.S. is over seven hours, when nearly 7 billion humans own a smart phone, and the average person checks their mobile device over 95 times per day? At some level, humans have already merged with technology. The global active implanted medical device market size is $26.82 billion and most consider it in its infancy. Ultimately, the book is about ‘the Singularity.’ This is a future event where technology advances so rapidly that human life will be transformed and unrecognizable. Likely outcomes are where advanced AI exceeds humans as the dominate force, or more likely, according to Kurzweil, humans and AI’s merge. Even reading this book eighteen years later, I found it to be well researched, intriguing, bold, and useful. Don’t expect a perfect roadmap and timeline to our species’ future but do expect a great deal of well thought out implications, extrapolations, and forecasts. Four stars. I, for one, welcome our new A.I. overlords, they can’t do any worse in managing the planet than we are. ( ) Kevin_A_Kuhn | Aug 11, 2023 |  ) GlennBell | Sep 3, 2022 | Vernor Vinge Change is the process by which the future invades our lives. Alvin Toffler You can't write this story. Neither can anyone else. John W. Campbell This is a difficult book to review. It's a futurist treatise on how ever-accelerating changes will change society. And it's a love letter to technology, Mr. Kurzweil is obviously enamored of computers. It's also very well written, particularly for such a dense topic. The Singularity is Near reads like a cross between an academic paper and an Isaac Asimov science popularization. The basic premise is that technology is progressing at an ever-increasing rate, and at a certain point, change will continue so rapidly that it's difficult to predict anything beyond that point, the singularity. It's a fascinating concept, and one I've been introduced to in the fiction of Charles Stross. The future will not look like the present with better tech, it's going to be pretty unrecognizable. Possible technologies such as genetic engineering, nanotech manufacturing, and robotics and artificial intelligence (the author's "GNR" triumvirate), will transform not only how we live but what we think of as a human being. Artificial intelligences, critical to the theory of the singularity, are by definition capable of expanding their own capabilities, and will drive much change. It's an ambitious work, and not the first book the author has written on this topic. It does have weak spots, namely the tendency to assume that technology will progress according to plan, not accounting for technological setbacks very well. All we've seen in the last few centuries is progress, so of course that's all we ever will see. To the book's credit, it does include a chapter on the dangers of these technologies. The "grey goo" scenario, where out of control self-replicating nanobots consume our biosphere for raw materials, is particularly chilling, but there are other equally deadly ways for hostile "strong" AI or perhaps genetically engineered plague vectors to wipe out the human race. Responses to the critics of the arguments presented in the book tends to be dismissive, however. The Singularity is Near is hardly a book to be read during a lazy afternoon on the beach, but it's very rewarding and thought-provoking if you stick with it. ( ) neilneil | Dec 7, 2020 | no reviews | add a review
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Wikipedia in English (21)
I had to close it. AI is here. (