Viking The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology

Ray Kurzweil behauptet in diesem Buch nichts anderes, als dass alleje dagewesenen Science-Fiction-Träume von Bio- und Nanotechnologie sowiekünstlichen Intelligenzen in Zukunft noch weit übertroffen werden - undzwar schon gegen Mitte dieses Jahrhunderts ! Als Beleg für diese doch sehrgewagte Behauptung zeichnet und erklärt er im ersten Teil des Buches Graphen,die die bisherige exponentielle technische Entwicklung auf diversen Gebietendarstellen und extrapoliert diese. Im zweiten Teil dann versucht er darausim Detail abzuleiten, was es für uns bedeutet, wenn das Wachstum unseresWissens in demselben Tempo weitergehen würde.Kritiker meinen, auf dieselbe Art könnte man auch beweisen, dassEinwegrasierer bald unendlich viele Klingen haben werden. Denn schliesslichhatten sie ja erst eine, dann zwei, jetzt fünf... zeichnet man dies alsGraphen, bekommt man ähnliche Voraussagen.Was man auch immer von Ray Kurzweils Weltsicht halten mag, auf jeden Fall schaffter es, einen kleinen, aber sehr motivierenden Funken der Hoffnung daran zuzünden, dass wir vielleicht noch einen Teil der versprochenen Wunder erlebendürfen. Der Rest des Buches ist eine Mischung aus interessanten Einblickenin den aktuellen Stand der Forschung und gut geschriebenerReal-Science-Fiction, die absolut lesenswert und mit grosser undmitreissender Begeisterung geschrieben ist.

Ray Kurzweil isn't renowned for his authoring talents and is better known for his inventions. I remember many years ago owning a copy of Kerzweil's voice recognition program (I forget the exact title) and being impressed with its accuracy. Kerzweil is also renowned for his work in digital music and a vast array of other fields.In this book the author expands on his vision of the future as he sees it in the next 50 years. The main thrust of the book is that Moore's law is continuing and as such computing power is increasing exponentially (exponentials are a large part of this book). The premise that as computing power increases dramatically we will be able to create even more technology, with the aim to "uploading" ourselves into our computers. This at first seems like science fiction but be assured that the author looks at every detail and examines the feasibility of each stage of his premise. The results are startling, and I must admit give me a strange feeling in the gut of my stomach when I realised the full breadth of his suggestions.This book could be considered a sequel to the author's previous books, the Age of Intelligent Machines, and the Age of Spiritual Machines. However you don't need to have read these previous books to understand the concepts involved. A basic understanding of genetics and nanotechnology would help, but are not required.I don't know if the authors predictions will come to pass (And I honestly hope they do!) but I would recommend this book to anyone seriously interested in the future and who wants to prepare themselves in advance.

Exceptional book and fantastic service delivery from Amazon.

I enjoyed this book. The central concept is fascinating and retrospectively very plausible. The book is 10 years old and some but not all of its predictions for this decade have already happened.The extrapolation into the future starts to feel like the “culture” civilisation in an Iain M Banks Sci Fi novel. Difficult to know who got what ideas from who.Don’t know whether to be optimistic or terrified about the future. I’m nearly 50 years old, so I’ll definitely be taking my Statins, vitamins and blood pressure pills in the hope that I can “live long enough to to live forever”

Among technological optimists in the world, the "singularitarians", led by Ray Kurzweil, are perhaps the most extravagant, extrapolating from the growth in information technologies of the past century. This book provides a good review of the ideas behind this optimism, and its likely consequences over the next century or so. It also raises and partly addresses a few central questions: do these extrapolations faithfully represent reality? Do they really extend beyond information technology to our control of the material world around us? And how can Kurzweil be so sure the predicted doubly exponential progress will be good for us?Kurzweil's fundamental basis for optimism is his "Law of Accelerating Returns" for information technology, which claims that the components of our information systems naturally grow in capability at an exponential rate, and that as each reaches limits, it is superceded by new technology with ever-faster exponential growth rates. Not only is the growth exponential, but the rate of growth is itself growing exponentially. Kurzweil even justifies this "law" with a mathematical appendix that suggests the exponent should grow roughly at the same rate as world GDP; he does not mention that the actual rate he finds is a little under half that (1.2% vs 2.8% annually for the 20th century). As I argue elsewhere, if one discounts the putative computation rates per thousand dollars of the early years of the twentieth century (before 1920), the numbers seem to just as easily fit a non-growing exponential rate (0% instead of 1.2%), so it seems hard to saw Kurzweil's "law" is at all proven. The next decade or so will be the real test, as integrated circuits are replaced by whatever the next technological leap coming along is.The idea that this acceleration applies beyond information technologies has also been criticized by people like physicist Jonathan Huebner, who argues that we are, far from entering an era of exponentially greater growth in capabilities, actually approaching a new dark age. Huebner claims the rate of technological innovation per person per year reached a peak a century ago, and the decline now, despite high R&D and education funding, is because developing new technology beyond what's already been done has become more and more difficult. Kurzweil has his own list of innovations to refute this, but he does not manage to make a convincing case that his "law of accelerating returns" is in any way a necessary consequence of the way the world works. In comparing linear and exponential behavior in the first chapter, Kurzweil notes that "people tend to overestimate what can be achieved in the short term (because we leave out necessary details)". There are many details Kurzweil has necessarily skipped over, but no indication that he thinks he might himself be overestimating.So we may have accelerating returns, continued exponential growth, or much slower growth or even decline, depending on your view of the world. At least with either of the growing curves, Kurzweil's other projections still apply, but under plain exponential growth would be simply delayed a bit. Kurzweil estimates a "human-level" computer would require between 10^16 and 10^19 cycles per second. With accelerating returns, that computer would be under $1000 at some point between 2020 and 2030. If the growth continues only on a simple exponential, we have to wait until after 2050 for human-scale personal computing. Kurzweil fully intends to be alive when his brain can be scanned and uploaded to a simulation of immortality, a motive that perhaps overly encourages him to argue for the earlier date.Kurzweil sets 2045 as the date for the Singularity itself, the point when all this computer power really transforms our capabilities. If the plain exponential law is true instead, the date for comparable computational capabilities is pushed back to the first decade of the 22nd century. Continued doubly exponential growth in computational power would reach the ultimate computational capacity of our solar system, between 10^70 and 10^80 calculations per second, before 2120, within the natural life-span of some alive today. Growth along the ordinary exponential would not reach such astronomical scales until the 25th century. Depending on whether such vastly enhanced intelligence can find a way around the speed-of-light restriction or not, Kurzweil sees a universe filled with computation possible less than 200 years from today.This vast growth in computational power is the central element on which much of the remaining speculation of the book rests; it's an awe-inspiring story, and even if slower growth pushes back some of the these dates a century or three, it is still worth understanding where augmenting human intelligence with machines may take us. Kurzweil's arguments for the development of real artificial intelligence in the relatively near future, given computational capabilities, seem sound enough. His commentary on the issue of subjectivity (if I get uploaded, which one is "me"?) is one of the most lucid I have ever seen. But he wastes far too much time on Searle's Chinese Room argument against AI; just a simple statement that the scale of complexity invalidates the comparison should have been enough.Kurzweil identifes three related revolutions underway: in genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics (strong AI). These enable the information technology revolution to be extended to the living, material and mental worlds; many wonders are to be expected. In particular, his outline for "brain uploading" depends on nanomachines capable of penetrating the brain and recording patterns there, a rather invasive (but believable) approach.At times, Kurzweil's book veers into millenial apocalypsism, at one point describing "Singularitarianism" as an almost religious belief in the ability to be uploaded and live forever, and listing several articles of faith. Kurzweil acknowledges the religious element but asserts that this is different: traditional religion is primarily a rationalization of death, while the Singularity makes death a thing of the past. How will existing religions respond to such notions?One very serious question is the possibility of threats from these new technologies - every individual will have vast power, beyond anything even nations have today. There is the "gray goo" threat from nanotechnology, as Bill Joy has articulated. Kurzweil acknowledges, yes there are dangers, in fact he agrees with Joy in many respects. Unfortunately we will have to keep several steps ahead, with "immune systems" deployed against the threats, before they wreak havoc. The most worrisome threat is from Strong AI itself - once they supercede human intelligence, what will prevent them from overcoming any bounds we may have set against harming us? Kurzweil's main response to this threat is that "they" will be "us", uploaded and greatly enhanced, so it doesn't much matter what happens to the old biological world. This is, to say the least, a little unsettling...In addition to the copious graphical illustrations, Kurzweil adds to the text some imaginary conversations with historical, present, and future persons, including Eric Drexler, Bill Gates, Darwin, and Freud. He seems to have obtained permission from the living for this; sometimes these conversations enlighten, but they seem oddly contrived.Kurzweil does have a fascinating view of our potential future. Whether near or far, this book is a useful guide to how the world will change at that point where humans transcend biology.