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Summary: This one will open up your eyes big time
Review: Ray Kurzweil is one of the true visionaries of our time. The Age of Spiritual Machines is a unique, exciting and frightening look at what could be on the way....I'm not talking wild speculation. Ray has the inside track on what's happening. He's a true techno-cognoscente and he writes this stuff because he want's you to feel and think about where we are all headed. Machines smarter than us? There is little doubt about it, but what is that going to mean to you? Read the book. Ray doesn't need the money, trust me this book was a labor of love. Consequently it has a deep, meaningful texture that leaves you wondering long after you put it down.
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Summary: Deep thoughts from a brilliant practical visionary
Review: Kurzweil's forecasts for super-exponential growth in computing technology and his investigation of the results will seem outlandish to many readers. But Kurzweil's vision is backed by a history of successful predictions and businesses and a roster of substantial inventions (from a reading machine for the blind, to voice recognition technology, to the first digital music synthesizer). He also backs his forecasts with plenty of data. Agree or not, this highly stimulating book helps stretch your imagination to see the possible full extent of the IT revolution. If Kurzweil is anywhere near correct, we've only just begun the revolution.
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Summary: Same again
Review: I think Kurzweil used up most of his good ideas on his first book about intelligent machines.
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Summary: Take the timeline w/ a grain of salt
Review: Back in the '50s artificial intelligence researchers Newell, Shaw, and Simon created a program called the General Problem Solver which succeeded in finding solutions to some hard problems in mathematics, to include a completely original proof to a theorem from Principia Mathematica that had never previously been solved. This led Simon and Newell to predict that by 1985 that machines would be able to perform any task that humans can do. Simon and Newell were brilliant thinkers, but also were gravely mistaken in their predictions. Their optimism has ever since embarrassed the AI field. Fast forward to 1999, the year in which Kurzweil wrote The Age of Spiritual Machines. Deep Blue has defeated chess champion Gary Kasparov, the world wide web is everywhere, and virtual reality image technology has improved. All marvelous technological achievements, but reading this book I can't help but think that Kurzweil is falling into the same trap into which Simon and Newell fell half a century ago. Extrapolating current progress to predict the future is a tricky business. Kurzweil is at his most persuasive when he discusses the recent past and present. Spiritual Machines is filled with interesting insights on how we think and how our brains work, and his discussions on emerging technologies strike the right balance between technical detail and general readability. His predictions for the future, however, come across as outlandish. Kurzweil predicts that within 100 years that machines themselves will claim to be human, that humans will universally use neural implant technology that will allow them to immediately understand information, and that those humans that don't use this technology will be unable to meaningfully participate in dialogues with those who do. I'm puzzled by readers who find this outlook to be optimistic, and I recognize that it is possible that I reject Kurzweil's predictions simply because I find them unpleasant. I'm no technophobe, but I do find that I enjoy holding a book in my hand, struggling to learn a new language, and assimilating information and communicating using the carbon-based brain that I was born with. That said, Spiritual Machines is interesting and thought provoking, and often entertaining. The reader simply needs to consider the author's enthusiasm for AI when evaluating his conclusions. At any rate, seeing that Kurzweil is at the cutting edge of the technology that he discusses in this book, perhaps it's not reasonable to expect him to keep his enthusiasm in check.
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Summary: Finally Someone With A Optimistic and Positive Outlook!!!
Review: For once someone has written a book full of predictions for the future that are positive, optimistic and most importantly realistic--for the moment anyway. This book does not preach the usual science fiction rhetoric of what the future will be. Gratifyingly absent are the cliche predictions such as the rise of souless, menacing machines and the gradual destruction of human compassion. Instead Kurzweil ingeniously employs the help of a fictional human "reader" to demostrate his predictions as she, in time, experiences them all. In doing so, Kurzweil unfolds his vision of the future where human emotions and feelings continue to exist as the human race and its technology head toward the ever blurring line that exists between them.
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Summary: Provocative Economics
Review: If you look at total intelligence on planet earth, what percent is accounted for by humans? What percent is accounted for by machines? Most of us would say that machines account for a relatively small percent--I would say far less than one percent. But as Satchel Paige famously warned, "Don't look back. It might be gaining on you." Kurzweil looks at the rate at which computers are gaining on humans, and he projects that machine intelligence will increase in significance until it becomes the dominant form of intelligence by the end of the 21st century. Kurzweil points out that Moore's law is a highly nonlinear process. Exponential growth implies that the future can be radically different from the past. He makes a convincing case that *if* Moore's Law continues to hold and *if* machine intelligence is correlated with Moore's Law, then some very dramatic things are going to happen to the human race, even within our lifetimes. Although his description of this scenario may sound like science fiction, it is plausible in light of his assumptions. I myself am not sold on Kurzweil's assumptions. Maybe I spent too many years as a student of economics, but I still believe in diminishing returns. In an essay on my site called "Autoregressive Models," I explicitly question Kurzweil's forecasting method. Nonetheless, Kurzweil has staked out an interesting position. Just as Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel" offers a more provocative view of economic history than anything economists have written, Kurzweil offers a more provocative view of the economic future than anything economists have written.
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Summary: magical science
Review: If you are interested in hard scientific stuff, this is not your book. If you like Star Trek, and science is more an outlet for fantacy than a quest for knowledge, you should be happy with this one.
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Summary: Dreaming about the big upload
Review: Homo Sapiens - it was fun as long as it lasted. Enter Robo Sapiens. Humanity is doomed and is going to be replaced ! In Kurzwells words:"Within 100 years there will be a strong trend toward the merger of human thinking with the world of machine intelligence. Most conscious entities will end up having no permanant physical presence". Starting from Moores law of ever more powerful computers, Kurzweil takes us through the steps towards the big upload, where human brains are scanned and uploaded as software to conscious computers. Starting with direct neural pathways for high bandwidth connections between the human brain and intelligent computers - the final step where the brain is moved inside the computer wont seem so immense. And obviously everybody will want the to take the steps before, where perception and interpretation are enhanced, as well as memory and reasoning etc. Kurzweil quotes Arthur C. Clarke: "When a scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong". If I wasn't convinced before - I am now, after reading Kurzweils book - we are just waiting for the upload ! And considering the Clarke quote I wont pay to much attention to those who will be sceptical of Kurzweils claims. The upload story is reason enough for reading the book. But the book gives more. I.e. a good introduction to a lot of the "almost present day" technologies, that definitely will become real within the next 10 to 20 years. Plus, a number of good insights into the highly interesting subject "what is intelligence". -Simon
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Summary: Sheer optimism at its very best...
Review: That the future of thinking, self-aware machines is closer in the future than one realizes is the main point of this book, which is written primarily for the curious and the optimistic, but also those interested in developments in artificial intelligence from a commercial point of view. In the book, the author unashamedly embraces a future inhabited by beings whose intelligence is much greater than what humans now possess. But also, in his future humans are not left behind, but instead stand chin-to-chin with the robust, brilliant machines that have created. Not content with being mere passive spectators whose needs are being serviced by these silicon geniuses, they become hybrids of the organic and inorganic, a combination which makes the human mind even more efficacious and powerful. The author attempts to justify his predictions starting in the first part of the book. In chapter one, called "The Law of Time and Chaos", the author attempts to show that time is changing its "speed". The examples he gives are not really convincing from a scientific point of view, and he does not give any recommendations for any empirical tests of his assertions. And even though his arguments are plausible, one could deny them and still believe in the predictions he makes later in the book. His view of artificial intelligence is in terms of neural networks and genetic algorithms, with the former being around for some time now, and the later making its presence known rapidly. There is no doubt, and the author addresses this many times, that any type of machine intelligence will have to be able to mimic the creativity of the human mind and its ability to make unexpected connections with concepts that can appear at first glance to be completely unrelated. The author gives though convincing arguments as to the ability of even current computers to perform acts of creativity and automatic knowledge acquisition and discrimination, such as in the arts. The author discusses many strategies for building this new form of intelligence, including optical technology, nanotubes, and DNA computing. The later however will probably not be the way to go, as astronomical quantities are needed to perform some of the feats of calculation, such as the traveling salesman problem, which is mentioned by the author in the book as one that can be tackled using DNA computing. Quantum computing however is also mentioned in the book, and this approach holds much promise, and will be extremely powerful if realized. Current strategies in quantum computing are usually based on the experimentally unjustified notion of entanglement, but it looks hopeful that other ones will be developed that will bring out this quantum coup de etat in programming power. The social ramifications of the new age of intelligent machines is not ignored however in the book. He predicts, with ample justification I think, a growing "Luddite" challenge to the explosion of technology. Thankfully though, the author remains optimistic, and predicts events and technologies that would make today's computer scientists drool with anticipation. All of this is going to happen according to the author, within the next 30 years, and he gives a dramatic overview of the hypothetical decades ahead. Those readers basking in the current optimism, which can with confidence be called a technological Enlightment, will read these pages with great excitement and a longing to be part of what is ahead. Sure, the book is only a prediction, but lets keep our fingers crossed.........
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Summary: incredible relevent
Review: this is becomming the book that first dared to look the future in the eye and share it with the puplic and will be a classic over time its not a filosofical book and thats not his job to be. All he does is predicting the future based on logical knowlogde on the nowadays tecnology and a birdperspective look on history not a litteraly masterpiece but thats inrelevent because of the very relevent subject
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