Rating: 
Summary: Well speculative and thought provoking insight
Review: I feel this book gives a very well view of one of the many possibilities computer can give to our future. I also found that the last chapter departed from the whole realm of computers to our own since of being. Moravec has expanded and open new doors to many possibilities. Like any great thinker some of the thought seem odd. But given the current state of thing he give view on the possible good and bad for the ultimate computer for a materialistic society which will drive this market.
Rating: 
Summary: fantasy run amok
Review: I used to enjoy Morvac, good sci-fi, downloading human minds to machines, instant immortality...cool! But after reading this book I've come to two conclusions, he seems to view humans as a waste of space, which since I'm human object to, robots are to be used by us not replace us. Second, he seems to have such faith in technology, particularily software. I develop software and know better. Look around we can't even develop a decent, crash-resistant, easy to use operating system that the average person can use...AI...same boring promises since the 50's.
Rating:
Summary: Awful
Review: I was a little disappointed in this book. Although Hans Moravec is a leading thinker in the field of artificial intelligence and a true pioneer of robotic research, he is not an especially talented writer. Nevertheless, his knowledge is prodigious and the quality of his ideas makes the book worth reading.One thing that annoyed me was that Moravec overuses the word "robot". He goes to pains to apply the name even to other forms of artificial intelligence that have little resemblance to what we normally think of as robots. I also found his writing style somewhat tedious, a bit like sitting through a long lecture by a brilliant but boring professor. There are other books I would recommend ahead of this one, most notably "The Age of Spiritual Machines" by Ray Kurzweil. But if you've already devoured the others and you're still hungry for more, Hans Moravec will certainly give you plenty to chew on.
Rating: 
Summary: Worth reading
Review: I was a little disappointed in this book. Although Hans Moravec is a leading thinker in the field of artificial intelligence and a true pioneer of robotic research, he is not an especially talented writer. Nevertheless, his knowledge is prodigious and the quality of his ideas makes the book worth reading. One thing that annoyed me was that Moravec overuses the word "robot". He goes to pains to apply the name even to other forms of artificial intelligence that have little resemblance to what we normally think of as robots. I also found his writing style somewhat tedious, a bit like sitting through a long lecture by a brilliant but boring professor. There are other books I would recommend ahead of this one, most notably "The Age of Spiritual Machines" by Ray Kurzweil. But if you've already devoured the others and you're still hungry for more, Hans Moravec will certainly give you plenty to chew on.
Rating: 
Summary: Highly speculative but thought-provoking.
Review: In his latest book, Hans Moravec predicts that robots will take over Earth sometime in the next century. Although his predictions appear highly speculative and implausible, he grounds his speculation in current research and technology. When followed step by step, his predictions make internal sense, though many readers are sure to argue with some of the critical steps. Moravec, for example, insists that computers have, or at least will have, intelligence and something akin to consciousness. These assumptions are not central, however, to his predictions about the future of robotics. Although readers may disagree with his conclusions, Moravec's thoughts are worth reading for their insights into technology policy making and some of the possibilities of robotics. As a robotics researcher, he has valuable background knowledge, and he provides crisp reasoning behind his philosophical arguments.
Rating:
Summary: Go Robots GO!
Review: Like danny hillis once said, if you gave me the chance to upload my brain into a robot, i'd do it in a minute. This book takes a while to get going. It takes you on a tour of the authors trevails with primitive robots. but when it hits the future, and lays our the next one hundred years, you can't help but feel excited and giddy with anticipation. I wish he spent more time on nanotechnology, but what there was was excellent. I thought I had just about read it all, but he turned many of my notions about the future inside out. a powerful vision of the future.
Rating:
Summary: Good ideas, bad writing
Review: Moravec's book is a well reasoned extrapolation of the future of artificial intelligence. He is incredibly knowledgable, and very passionate about his field. Unfortunately his prose reminds one of a bad university text book. I would give it an "A+" for content, and a "D" for style. Hopefully Moravec's publisher will discover the ghost writer in time for his next book.
Rating:
Summary: Good extrapolation! Interconnectivity is missing
Review: Moravecs schedule for the next 40years is a question of belief - for me a *good* suggestion! One negative point: He sticks to not interconnected robots. Internet is not his world. The minds of his robots have no link to each other.
Rating:
Summary: Ready for a leap of faith?
Review: Reading the prologue of Moravec's first book (MIND CHILDREN) introduced me to his unique perspective on humanity's goals. If you look at his work as being like the Bible (which isn't such a stretch, we'll see in a hundred years or so I guess) then this is simply his version of Revelation. The beginning is slow going, but the middle and end build up beautifully to an engrossing idea of what society has been all about from the start. Humans of the Earth, don't be afraid to pass along the baton of culture, when the time comes!!
Rating:
Summary: Very optimistic but realistic
Review: Robots are now pervasive in all areas of human activity, and they are still primitive compared to what was envisioned two decades ago, at which time independent thinking machines and military-capable robots were predicted by the late 1990s.These predictions were very optimistic and way off their mark, but this book aims to set the record straight on A.I. and to make accurate predictions on the future of robotics. The author is very convincing in his arguments that artificial intelligence will accelerate rapidly in the next few decades. He backs up his predictions with empirical evidence from activities and research currently being done in A.I. and robotics, and extrapolates these into the future. Such predictions of course have been made before, and so the author inserts an elment of caution in his analysis, but he does, in his own words, consider intelligent machines an inevitability. The tone of the book is optimistic, and this is good since many books and movies display an attitude that is threatened by robotics and artificial intelligence. The author does however predict the end of the dominance of biological humans, such beings to be replaced by highly intelligent robots. He is probably wrong here in the sense that humans will not be mere passive spectators in the upcoming age of robots. They will hybridize themselves with the chips invented for the robots, enabling them to stand toe-to-toe with these metal/silicon geniuses. Ever-growing technology implies ever-growing enhancement for the human, visual, muscular, and auditory capabilities. Karl Marx would raise an eyebrow to the author's prediction of the end of private ownership of the means of production. Hypercompetitiveness, the author argues, will eliminate owners, replacing them by better robot decision makers. But to hold Switzerland up as an example of things to come? Hardly. The end resulof the robotic evolution, will, the author argues, be the "Exes", beings with awesome intelligence that are able to arrange spacetime and energy for computation. The physics of time trave; os discussed in the context of general relativity, with its nonlinear field equations being solved by "Instant NP" machines, and winning chess games in the process. Some metaphysical speculation is of course included: after all, the strong AI problem is one of the most provocative in philosophical circles. Conscious robots are indeed possible in the author's eyes, or at best possible given our current understanding of it. The robots themselves, with their enhanced capabilities, will have their own arguments about this......
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