The Age of Spiritual Machines - How We Will Live, Work and Think in the New Age of Intelligent Machines [Hardcover]

How much do we humans enjoy our current status as the most intelligent beings on earth? Enough to try to stop our own inventions from surpassing us in smarts? If so, we'd better pull the plug right now, because if Ray Kurzweil is right, we've only got until about 2020 before computers outpace the human brain in computational power. Kurzweil, artificial intelligence expert and author of The Age of Intelligent Machines, shows that technological evolution moves at an exponential pace. Further, he asserts, in a sort of swirling postulate, time speeds up as order increases, and vice versa. He calls this the "Law of Time and Chaos," and it means that although entropy is slowing the stream of time down for the universe overall, and thus vastly increasing the amount of time between major events, in the eddy of technological evolution the exact opposite is happening and events will soon be coming faster and more furiously. This means that we'd better figure out how to deal with conscious machines as soon as possible--they'll soon not only be able to beat us at chess, they'll likely demand civil rights, and they may at last realise the very human dream of immortality.

The Age of Spiritual Machines is compelling and accessible, and not necessarily best read from front to back--it's less heavily historical if you jump around (Kurzweil encourages this). Much of the content of the book lays the groundwork to justify Kurzweil's timeline, providing an engaging primer on the philosophical and technological ideas behind the study of consciousness. Instead of being a gee-whiz futurist manifesto, Spiritual Machines reads like a history of the future, without too much science fiction dystopianism. Instead, Kurzweil shows us the logical outgrowths of current trends, with all their attendant possibilities. This is the book we'll turn to when our computers first say "hello." --Therese Littleton, Amazon.com

Ray Kruzweil is a legend in artificial intelligence. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

The scope of the ideas is breath-taking, and anyone who intends to spend some time in the next millennium ought to read it. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

An intelligent and exhilarating look at what the next century holds for the computer and the species that invented it. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

By 2020 computers will equal the capacity of the human brain; people will have relationships with virtual personalities. 10 years later machines will have the computing capacity of 1,000 brains; they will learn on their own, create their own literature and claim to be conscious. By the end of the century there will no longer be any clear distinction between humans and computers. Most conscious entities will not have a permanent physical presence and life expectancy will no longer be a viable term in relation to intelligent beings. Ray Kurzweil is a leading technologist and author of the prize-winning The Age of Intelligent Machines. He is also one of the world's leading inventors and entrepreneurs in the field of artificial intelligence. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Ray Kurzweil is the world's leading authority on artificial intelligence. He is the found and chairman of Kurzweil Applied Intelligence. He was the principal developer of the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind and has made other significant advances in artificial intelligence technology. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology named him Inventor of the Year in 1988 and Engineer of the Year in 1990. He is the recipient of eight honorary doctorates. He lives in Waltham, Massachusetts, USA. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.