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Summary
Summary
The Age of Spiritual Machines is no mere list of predictions but a framework for envisioning the 21st century in which one advance or invention leads inexorably to another. After establishing that technology is growing exponentially, Kurzweil forecasts that computers will exceed the memory capacity and computing speed of the human brain by 2020, with the other attributes of human intelligence not far behind. By that time paraplegics will be able to walk by using a combination of nerve stimulation and robotic devices.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Kurzweil's reasoned scenarios of a "post-biological future" are as harrowing as any science fiction. That's the appeal of listening on tape to the inventor and MIT professor's provocative speculations on what could occur once computers reach or surpass human-level intelligenceÄthen start to self-replicate. Computers, with their integrated circuit chip complexity, are sneaking up on us on an accelerated curve, he argues, citing the example of chess master Gary Kasparov's shocking loss to IBM's machine Deep Blue in 1997. Do computers represent "the next stage of evolution"? Will technology create its own next generations? Kurzweil suggests a timeline inhabited by "neural-nets," "nanobot" robots and scenarios of virtual reality where sexuality and spirituality become completely simulated. It's bracing and compelling stuff, propelled by the author's own strong egotistical will to prove his version of the future. Reader Sklar is thoughtful, if at times overly heavy on the ironies. Simultaneous release with the Viking hardcover. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
What will the world look like when computers are smarter than their owners? Kurzweil, the brains behind some of today's most brilliant machines, offers his insights. Kurzweil (The Age of Intelligent Machines, not reviewed) posits that technological progress moves at exponential rates. If we apply that standard to the future of computer evolution, another 20 years or so will give us machines with as much memory and intelligence as ourselves. This projection involves a certain faith in as yet unforeseeable technical breakthroughs. There is no obvious way to reduce the size of an electrical circuit beyond a few atoms' width, for example'but the speed of circuits is a function of their size. Kurzweil gets around this limit (known in the computer industry as Moore's Law) by suggesting a relationship between the pace of time and the degree of chaos in a system; as order increases, the interval between meaningful events decreases. In other words, a more highly evolved system will continue to evolve at increasing speed. While this seems more a matter of faith than an inevitable law of nature, the history of technology (as Kurzweil summarizes it) seems to bear out the relationship. He extrapolates the future of computer technology, offering both a detailed time line and imaginary dialogues with a fully intelligent computer from a hundred years in our future. (This sort of imaginative exercise inevitably partakes to some degree of science fiction.) The book's deliberately nonlinear organization offers a variety of paths through the subject matter, as well, and Kurzweil encourages the reader to take whichever approach is attractive. While much of the material (Turing tests, AI research) will be familiar to readers who have followed the growth of computer science, Kurzweil's broad outlook and fresh approach make his optimism hard to resist. Heavy going in spots, but an extremely provocative glimpse of what the next few decades may well hold.
Booklist Review
After finishing Kurzweil's prognostication of the computer's next century, one can venture this corollary prediction: end-of-the-world sandwich boards will eventually proclaim--Instantiate Your Brain Now, Before It's Too Obsolete! Although necessarily daunting, even frightening, Kurzweil's contention is that artificial intelligence will surpass human intelligence by 2100, and this work outlines the incipient technical developments, such as quantum computing and nanobots (atom-sized robots), that will enable it. But technology is not Kurzweil's sole justification for his soothsayings: he invokes a "law" of accelerating returns, meaning an exponential spiral of technology's ability to organize itself on evolutionary principles. A techno-optimist (and entrepreneur, having created and sold software companies), Kurzweil discusses the milestones on the way to the supersentient computer with a skeptical reader named Molly. Eventually Molly converts to Kurzweil's arguments, and why not? Her mind has been "instantiated" (scanned and downloaded) and enjoys an immortal "life." In another age Kurzweil would be an sf fantasist, but the underlying facts of the computer revolution's next stages compel readers to take him seriously. Kurzweil is articulate and sardonic, which makes his work highly readable, if no less uncomfortable concerning the ethics and fate of human identity. --Gilbert Taylor
Library Journal Review
A heavyweight in the computer world who for several years wrote a column for LJ called "The Futurecast," Kurzweil predicts that computers will outstrip human intelligence by 2020. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
| A Note to the Reader | p. V |
| Acknowledgments | p. XI |
| Prologue: An Inexorable Emergence | p. 1 |
| Part 1 Probing the Past | |
| Chapter 1 The Law of Time and Chaos | p. 9 |
| Chapter 2 The Intelligence of Evolution | p. 40 |
| Chapter 3 Of Mind and Machines | p. 51 |
| Chapter 4 A New form of Intelligence on Earth | p. 66 |
| Chapter 5 Context and Knowledge | p. 89 |
| Part 2 Preparing the Present | |
| Chapter 6 Building New Brains ... | p. 101 |
| Chapter 7 ... and Bodies | p. 133 |
| Chapter 8 1999 | p. 157 |
| Part 3 To Face the Future | |
| Chapter 9 2009 | p. 189 |
| Chapter 10 2019 | p. 202 |
| Chapter 11 2029 | p. 220 |
| Chapter 12 2099 | p. 234 |
| Epilogue: the Rest of the Universe Revisited | p. 253 |
| Time Line | p. 261 |
| How to Build an Intelligent Machine in Three Easy Paradigms | p. 281 |
| Glossary | p. 298 |
| Notes | p. 315 |
| Suggested Readings | p. 344 |
| Web Links | p. 369 |
| Index | p. 377 |
