Ray Kurzweil

The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence

by Ray Kurzweil  · 31 Dec 1998  · 696pp  · 143,736 words

the next few decades may well hold ... Kurzweil’s broad outlook and fresh approach make his optimism hard to resist.” —Kirkus Reviews ABOUT THE AUTHOR Ray Kurzweil’s inventions include reading machines for the blind, music synthesizers used by Stevie Wonder and many others, and marketing leading speech-recognition technology. He is

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Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc. 1999 Published in Penguin Books 2000 19 20 Copyright © Ray Kurzweil, 1999 All rights reserved Illustrations credits Pages 24, 26-27, 104, 156: Concept and text by Ray Kurzweil. Illustration by Rose Russo and Robert Brun. Page 72: © 1977 by Sidney Harris. Pages 167-168: Paintings

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suited only for problems in which we have crisply defined rules and objectives. But it has also shown promise in computer generation of artistic creations. Ray Kurzweil’s Cybernetic Poet, for example, uses a recursive approach.19 The program establishes a set of goals for each word—achieving a certain rhythmic pattern

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authors are not yet capable of achieving.6 The Cybernetic Poet Another example of a computerized author is a computer program that I designed called Ray Kurzweil’s Cybernetic Poet (RKCP). RKCP is a computer-generated poetry system, which uses language-modeling techniques to automatically generate completely original poetry based on poems

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discourage itself from plagiarizing. You can download a free copy of RKCP at www.kurzweiltech.com. Following is a small sampling of poems written by Ray Kurzweil’s Cybernetic Poet after it had “read” poems by several famous poets, as well as lesser-known contemporary poets. Poems by

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Ray Kurzweil’s Cybernetic Poet PAGE A haiku written by Ray Kurzweil’s Cybernetic Poet after reading poems by Wendy Dennis Sashay down the page through the lioness nestled in my soul. IMAGINE NOW

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AND SING A poem written by Ray Kurzweil’s Cybernetic Poet after reading poems by Wendy Dennis and Ray Kurzweil and love poems by various authors Imagine now and sing, creating myths forming jewels from the falling snow. SOUL A

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haiku written by Ray Kurzweil’s Cybernetic Poet after reading poems by John Keats and Wendy Dennis You broke my soul the juice of eternity, the spirit of my lips.

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I THINK I’LL CRASH A poem written by Ray Kurzweil’s Cybernetic Poet after reading poems by Ray Kurzweil, Robert Frost, and Wendy Dennis I think I’ll crash. Just for myself with God peace on a curious sound for

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boughs bending such paths of them, of boughs bending such paths of breeze knows we’ve been there THE STIFLING STUFFY A haiku written by Ray Kurzweil’s Cybernetic Poet after reading poems by Patricia Camarena Rose and Wendy Dennis The stifling stuffy Catholic schoolroom, where I cannot be real. WONDERED A

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poem written by Ray Kurzweil’s Cybernetic Poet after reading poems by Dave Gitomer today i wondered if i mused today i saw you i learned in awe and you

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i mused today i had one wish if i saw you if i saw you if had one wish MOON CHILD A haiku written by Ray Kurzweil’s Cybernetic Poet after reading poems by Kathleen Frances Wheeler Crazy moon child Hide from your coffin To spite your doom. ANGEL A poem written

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by Ray Kurzweil’s Cybernetic Poet after reading poems by Patricia Camarena Rose and Sue Klapes Kelly Beams of the dawn at the angel with a calm, silent

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a chance we can open up a steady rhythm in his face silent room desolate beach, Scattering remains of love. TOMCAT A haiku written by Ray Kurzweil’s Cybernetic Poet after reading poems by Randi and Kathryn Lynn An old yellow tomcat lies sleeping content, he rumbles a heart LONG YEARS HAVE

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PASSED A poem written by Ray Kurzweil’s Cybernetic Poet after reading poems by Randi and Kathryn Lynn Long years have passed. I think of goodbye. Locked tight in the night I

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life watching the joy shattered pieces of love My shattered pieces of love gone stale. SANDALS A haiku written by Ray Kurzweil’s Cybernetic Poet after reading poems by Kimberly McLauchlin and Ray Kurzweil Scattered sandals a call back to myself, so hollow I would echo. The Visual Arts The visual arts lie in

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. RAM can be used as the working memory of a computer into which applications and programs can be loaded and run. Ray Kurzweil’s Cybernetic Poet A computer program designed by Ray Kurzweil that uses a recursive approach to create poetry. The Cybernetic Poet analyzes word sequence patterns of poems it has “read” using

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. Scanning and copying a human brains salient computational methods into a neural computer of sufficient capacity is a future example of reverse engineering. RKCP See Ray Kurzweil’s Cybernetic Poet. Robinson The world’s first operational computer, constructed from telephone relays and named after a popular cartoonist who drew “Rube Goldberg” machines

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, “Backgammon Computer Program Beats World Champion,” Artificial Intelligence 14, no. 1 (1980). Also see Hans Berliner, “Computer Backgammon,” Scientific American, June 1980. 19 To download Ray Kurzweil’s Cybernetic Poet (RKCP), go to: <http://www.kurzweiltech.com>. RKCP is further discussed in the section The Creative Machine in chapter 8, “1999.” 20

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. 1 Story Generator and its inventors can be found at <http://www.rpi.edu/dept/ppcs/BRUTUS/brutus.html>. 7 Ray Kurzweil’s Cybernetic Poet (RKCP) is a software program designed by Ray Kurzweil and developed by Kurzweil Technologies. You can download a copy of the program at <http://www.kurzweiltech.com>. 8 For

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Web site for the book The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence by Ray Kurzweil: <http://www.penguinputnam.com/kurzweil> To e-mail the author: raymond@kurzweiltech.com To download a copy of Ray Kurzweil’s Cybernetic Poet: < http://wwwkurzweiltech.com> This book’s publisher, Viking: <http://www.penguinputnam.com> For

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publications of Ray Kurzweil: Go to <http://www.kurzweiltech.com> or <http://www.kurzweiledu.com> and then select “Publications” WEB

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SITES FOR COMPANIES FOUNDED BY RAY KURZWEIL Kurzweil Educational Systems, Inc. (creator of print-to-speech reading systems for persons with reading

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disabilities and visual impairment): <http://www.kurzweiledu.com> Kurzweil Technologies, Inc. (creator of Ray Kurzweil’s Cybernetic Poet and other software projects): <http://www.kurzweiltech.com> The dictation division of Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products (formerly Kurzweil Applied Intelligence, Inc.), creator

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.com/Entertainment/Music/Software/> An OBS Cyberspace Extension of Being Digital, by Nicholas Negroponte: <http://www.obs-us.com/obs/english/books/nn/bdintro.htm> Ray Kurzweil’s Cybernetic Poet: <http://www kurzweiltech.com> Recommended Reading, Computer Art: <http://ananke.advanced.org/3543/resourcessites.html> Virtual Muse: Experiments in Computer Poetry: <http

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and in human brain liquid mirror analogy uses of quantum entanglement quantum mechanics logic in quarks qu-bits Random Access Memory (RAM) randomness Ray, Thomas Ray Kurzweil’s Cybernetic Poet (RKCP) reading machines: for blind for children recursion combined with other methods knowledge and Reddy, Raj relativity Relaxation Response religion see also

The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology

by Ray Kurzweil  · 14 Jul 2005  · 761pp  · 231,902 words

claims are so outrageous that if true, it would mean ... well ... the end of the world as we know it, and the beginning of utopia. Ray Kurzweil has taken all the strands of the Singularity meme circulating in the last decades and has united them into a single tome which he has

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consequences for the humans who are creating it, this is certainly a book you should read.” —JOHN WALKER, inventor of Autodesk, in Fourmilab Change Log "Ray Kurzweil is the best person I know at predicting the future of artificial intelligence. His intriguing new book envisions a future in which information technologies have

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portable dialysis machine, the IBOT Mobility System, and the Segway Human Transporter; recipient of the National Medal of Technology "One of our leading AI practitioners, Ray Kurzweil, has once again created a 'must read' book for anyone interested in the future of science, the social impact of technology, and indeed the future

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the shackles of it genetic legacy and achieves inconceivable heights of intelligence, material progress, and longevity. For over three decades, the great inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil has been one of the most respected and provocative advocates of the role of technology in our future. In his class The Age of Spiritual

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is both a dramatic culmination of the centuries of technological ingenuity and a genuinely inspiring vision of our ultimate destiny. ABOUT THE AUTHOR (BACK FLAP) Ray Kurzweil is one of the world's leading inventors, thinkers, and futurists, with a twenty-year track record of accurate predictions. Called "the restless genius" by

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.D.), The Age of Spiritual Machines, The 10% Solution for a Healthy Life, and The Age of Intelligent Machines. The Singularity Is Near ALSO BY RAY KURZWEIL The Age of Intelligent Machines The 10% Solution for a Healthy Life The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceeds Human Intelligence Fantastic Voyage: Live

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Long Enough To Live Forever (with Terry Grossman, M.D.) RAY KURZWEIL The Singularity Is Near WHEN HUMANS TRANSCEND BIOLOGY VIKING VIKING Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New

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First Published in 2005 by Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Copyright © Ray Kurzweil, 2005 All rights reserved Photograph on p. 368 by Helene DeLillo, 2005 Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint excerpts from the following copyrighted

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. Watt Ltd on behalf of Michael B. Yeats. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Kurzweil, Ray. The singularity is near: when humans trascend biology / Ray Kurzweil. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ). ISBN 0-670-03384-7 1. Brain—Evolution. 2. Human evolution. 3. Genetics. 4. Nanotechnology. 5. Robotics. I. Title

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is overall levels of hormones, not the precise location of each hormone molecule. Confirmation of the uploading milestone will be in the form of a "Ray Kurzweil" or "Jane Smith" Turing test, in other words convincing a human judge that the uploaded re-creation is indistinguishable from the original specific person. By

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have crisply defined rules and objectives. But it has also shown promise in computer generation of artistic creations. For example, a program I designed called Ray Kurzweil's Cybernetic Poet uses a recursive approach.178 The program establishes a set of goals for each word—achieving a certain rhythmic pattern, poem structure

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body and brain to a sufficiently high degree of accuracy that the copy is indistinguishable from the original. (That is, the copy could pass a "Ray Kurzweil" Turing test.) The copy, therefore, will share my pattern. One might counter that we may not get every detail correct, but as time goes on

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didn't want to turn on the radio one day and hear about a disaster, with the perpetrators saying that they got the idea from Ray Kurzweil. Partly as a result of this decision I faced some reasonable criticism that the book emphasized the benefits of future technology while ignoring its pitfalls

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the University of California at Berkeley, had built a career of defending the deep mysteries of human consciousness from apparent attack by materialists such as Ray Kurzweil (a characterization I reject in the next chapter). Searle and I had just finished debating the issue of whether a machine could be conscious during

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different person? Perhaps I am, but if one captured my state a minute ago, an upload based on that information would still successfully pass a "Ray Kurzweil" Turing test. ·The "criticism from the Church-Turing thesis": We can show that there are broad classes of problems that cannot be solved by any

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like stones in a stream, the flow of progress rushing around them . ·The "criticism from theism": According to William A. Dembski, "contemporary materialists such as Ray Kurzweil ... see the motions and modifications of matter as sufficient to account for human mentality." But materialism is predictable, whereas reality is not. Predictability [is] materialism

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among his followers for what they believe is a staunch defense of the deep mystery of human consciousness against trivialization by strong-AI "reductionists" like Ray Kurzweil. And even though I have always found Searle's logic in his celebrated Chinese Room argument to be tautological, I had expected an elevating treatise

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of any of the things I am conscious of. Probably none of them is conscious at all. But the entire system of them—that is, Ray Kurzweil—is conscious. At least I'm claiming that I'm conscious (and so far, these claims have not been challenged). So if we scale up

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nothing about whether or not such a system is conscious. Kurzweil's Chinese Room. I have my own conception of the Chinese Room—call it Ray Kurzweil's Chinese Room. In my thought experiment there is a human in a room. The room has decorations from the Ming dynasty, including a pedestal

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by objective means. William A. Dembski, a distinguished philosopher and mathematician, decries the outlook of such thinkers as Marvin Minsky, Daniel Dennett, Patricia Churchland, and Ray Kurzweil, whom he calls "contemporary materialists" who "see the motions and modifications of matter as sufficient to account for human mentality."44 Dembski ascribes "predictability [as

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views in this regard. I regard Dembski's "things" as patterns. Money, for example, is a vast and persisting pattern of agreements, understandings, and expectations. "Ray Kurzweil" is perhaps not so vast a pattern but thus far is also persisting. Dembski apparently regards patterns as ephemeral and not substantial, but I have

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today's knowledge so that you can be in good health and spirits when the biotechnology and nanotechnology revolutions are fully mature. Contacting the Author Ray Kurzweil can be reached at ray@singularity.com. APPENDIX The Law of Accelerating Returns Revisited The following analysis provides the basis of understanding evolutionary change as

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Hole," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 100.20 (September 30, 2003): 11216–18. 19. Vernor Vinge, "First Word," Omni (January 1983): 10. 20. Ray Kurzweil, The Age of Intelligent Machines (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1989). 21. Hans Moravec, Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard

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, sponsored by the NASA Lewis Research Center and the Ohio Aerospace Institute, March 1993. The text is available at http://www.KurzweiW.net/vingesing. 23. Ray Kurzweil, The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence (New York: Viking, 1999). 24. Hans Moravec, Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind (New York

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or algorithms that would allow a machine to pass a properly designed Turing test without actually possessing intelligence at a fully human level. Also see Ray Kurzweil, "A Wager on the Turing Test: Why I Think I Will Win," http://www.KurzweilAI.net/turingwin. 31. See John H. Byrne, "Propagation of the

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is that it is more like a chip with thousands of logical-gates-equivalents rather than a single threshold element," Tomaso Poggio, private communication to Ray Kurzweil, January 2005. See also T. Poggio and C. Koch, "Synapses That Compute Motion," Scientific American 256 (1987): 46–52. C. Koch and T. Poggio, "Biophysics

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Increases Cell Proliferation and Neurogenesis in the Adult Mouse Dentate Gyrus," Nature Neuroscience 2.3 (March 1999): 266–70. 73. Minsky and Papert, Perceptrons. 74. Ray Kurzweil, The Age of Spiritual Machines (New York: Viking, 1999), p. 79. 75. Basis functions are nonlinear functions that can be combined linearly (by adding together

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Control Division), vol. 59, pp. 333–38. 118. W. French Anderson, "Genetics and Human Malleability," Hastings Center Report 23.20 (January/February 1990): 1. 119. Ray Kurzweil, "A Wager on the Turing Test: Why I Think I Will Win," KurzweilAI.net, April 9, 2002, http://www.KurzweilAI.net/meme/frame.html?main

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.org/NanoRev/Letter.html, and reprinted here: http://www.KurzweilAI.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0560.html. The full story can be found at Ray Kurzweil, "The Drexler-Smalley Debate on Molecular Assembly," http://www.KurzweilAI.net/meme/frame.htrnl?main=/articles/art0604.html. 101. K. Eric Drexler and Richard E

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clear definition of the problem is not always so easy to come by. 178. See Kurzweil CyberArt, http://www.KurzweilCyberArt.com. for further description of Ray Kurzweil's Cybernetic Poet and to download a free copy of the program. See U.S. Patent No. 6,647,395, "Poet Personalities," inventors

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: Ray Kurzweil and John Keklak. Abstract: "A method of generating a poet personality including reading poems, each of the poems containing text, generating analysis models, each of

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Mind (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988). 214. Hans Moravec, "When Will Computer Hardware Match the Human Brain?" Journal of Evolution and Technology 1 (1998). 215. Ray Kurzweil, The Age of Spiritual Machines (New York: Viking, 1999), p. 156. 216. See chapter 2, notes 22 and 23, on the International Technology Roadmap for

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Turing Test," http://www.loebner.net/Prizef/loebner-prize.html. 218. Douglas R. Hofstadter, "A Coffeehouse Conversation on the Turing Test," May 1981, included in Ray Kurzweil, The Age of Intelligent Machines (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1990), pp. 80–102, http://www.KurzweilAI.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0318.html. 219

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. Ray Kurzweil, "Why I Think I Will Win," and Mitch Kapor, "Why I Think I Will Win," rules: http://www.KurzweilAI.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/

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://www.KurzweilAI.net/meme/frame.html?m=9. 35. I. Fried et al., "Electric Current Stimulates Laughter," Nature 391.6668 (February 12, 1998): 650. See Ray Kurzweil, The Age of Spiritual Machines (New York: Viking, 1999). 36. Robert A. Freitas Jr., Nanomedicine, vol. 1, Basic Capabilities, section 7.3, "Communication Networks" (Georgetown

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.com/article.cfm?articleID=000AF072-4891-1F0A-97AE80A84189EEDF. Chapter Seven: Ich bin ein Singularitarian 1. In Jay W. Richards et al., Are We Spiritual Machines? Ray Kurzweil vs. the Critics of Strong A.I. (Seattle: Discovery Institute, 2002), introduction, http://www.KurzweilAI.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0502.html. 2

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, M.D., Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever (New York: Rodale Books, 2004). 3. Ibid. 4. Ibid. 5. Max More and Ray Kurzweil, "Max More and Ray Kurzweil on the Singularity," February 26, 2002, http://www.KurzweilAI.net/articles/art0408.html. 6. Ibid. 7. Ibid. 8. Arthur Miller, After the Fall (New

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about this issue outweighs this concern. Moreover, the availability of this type of information has been widely discussed in the media and other venues. 5. Ray Kurzweil, The Age of Intelligent Machines (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1990). 6. Ken Alibek, Biohazard (New York: Random House, 1999). 7

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. Ray Kurzweil, The Age of Spiritual Machines (New York: Viking, 1999). 8. Bill Joy, "Why the Future Doesn't Need Us," Wired, April 2000, http://www.wired.

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Problem," KurzweilAI.net, 20 March 2002, http://www.KurzweilAI.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0142.html. 35. Robert A. Freitas Jr., private communication to Ray Kurzweil, January 2005. Freitas describes his proposal in detail in Robert A. Freitas Jr., "Some Limits to Global Ecophagy by Biovorous Nanoreplicators, with Public Policy Recommendations

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Nanotechnology," http://www.house.gov/science/hearings/full03/index.htm, and "Hearing Transcript," http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/science/hsy86340.000/hsy86340_0f.htm. For Ray Kurzweil's testimony, see also http://www.KurzweilAI.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0556.html. Also see Amara D. Angelica, "Congressional Hearing Addresses Public Concerns

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.net/articles/art0558.html. Chapter Nine: Response to Critics 1. Michael Denton, "Organism and Machine," in Jay W. Richards et al., Are We Spiritual Machines? Ray Kurzweil vs. the Critics of Strong A.I. (Seattle: Discovery Institute Press, 2002), http://www.KurzweilAI.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0502.html. 2. Jaron

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Have Wheels?" Sunday Times, November 24, 1996, http://www.simonyi.ox.ac.uk/dawkins/WorldOfDawkins-archive/Dawkins/Work/Articles/1996-11-24wheels.shtml. 16. Thomas Ray, "Kurzweil's Turing Fallacy," in Richards et al., Are We Spiritual Machines? 17. Ibid. 18. Anthony J. Bell, "Levels and Loops: The Future of Artificial Intelligence

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of a large class of noncomputable functions, as seen in Tibor Rado, "On Noncomputable Functions," Bell System Technical Journal 41.3 (1962): 877–84. 32. Ray, "Kurzweil's Turing Fallacy." 33. Lanier, "One Half of a Manifesto." 34. A human, that is, who is not asleep and not in a coma and

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). 37. Hans Moravec, Letter to the Editor, New York Review of Books, http://www.kurzweiltech.com/Searle/searle_response_letter.htm. 38. John Searle to Ray Kurzweil, December 15, 1998. 39. Lanier, "One Half of a Manifesto." 40. David Brooks, "Good News About Poverty," New York Times November 27, 2004, A35. 41

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Good for the Environment and Human Welfare," Greenspirit (February 2004), http://www.greenspirit.com/logbook.cfm?msid=62. 43. Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld, private communication to Ray Kurzweil, February 2005. 44. William A. Dembski, "Kurzweil's Impoverished Spirituality," in Richards et al., Are We Spiritual Machines? 45. Denton, "Organism and Machine." Epilogue 1

How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed

by Ray Kurzweil  · 13 Nov 2012  · 372pp  · 101,174 words

will fulfill Kurzweil’s own prophecies about it.” —Dileep George, AI scientist; pioneer of hierarchical models of the neocortex; cofounder of Numenta and Vicarious Systems “Ray Kurzweil’s understanding of the brain and artificial intelligence will dramatically impact every aspect of our lives, every industry on Earth, and how we think about

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chairman, Singularity University; author of the New York Times bestseller Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think HOW TO CREATE A MIND ALSO BY RAY KURZWEIL Transcend: Nine Steps to Living Well Forever (with Terry Grossman) The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live

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Human Intelligence The 10% Solution for a Healthy Life The Age of Intelligent Machines HOW TO CREATE A MIND THE SECRET OF HUMAN THOUGHT REVEALED RAY KURZWEIL VIKING VIKING Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. • Penguin Group (Canada

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First published in 2012 by Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 Copyright © Ray Kurzweil, 2012 All rights reserved “Red” by Amoo Oluseun. Used by permission of the author. “The picture’s pretty bleak, gentlemen…” from The Far Side by

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License). 134 (two): Images by Marvin Minsky. Used by permission of Marvin Minsky. Some credits appear adjacent to the respective images. Other images designed by Ray Kurzweil, illustrated by Laksman Frank. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kurzweil, Ray. How to create a mind : the secret of human thought revealed

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/ Ray Kurzweil. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN: 978-1-101-60110-5 1. Brain—Localization of functions. 2. Self-consciousness (Awareness) 3. Artificial intelligence.

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.”1 People are often surprised to see these quotations because they assume that Searle is devoted to protecting the mystery of consciousness against reductionists like Ray Kurzweil. The Australian philosopher David Chalmers (born in 1966) has coined the term “the hard problem of consciousness” to describe the difficulty of pinning down this

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Impact…] on the Intelligent Destiny of the Cosmos: Why We Are Probably Alone in the Universe” in chapter 6 of The Singularity Is Near by Ray Kurzweil (New York: Viking, 2005). 5. James D. Watson, Discovering the Brain (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 1992). 6. Sebastian Seung, Connectome: How the Brain’s

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–79, http://www.sciencemag.org/content/298/5598/1569.short. 5. The following passage from the book Transcend: Nine Steps to Living Well Forever, by Ray Kurzweil and Terry Grossman (New York: Rodale, 2009), describes this lucid dreaming technique in more detail: I’ve developed a method of solving problems while I

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List.” Chapter 9: Thought Experiments on the Mind 1. John R. Searle, “I Married a Computer,” in Jay W. Richards, ed., Are We Spiritual Machines? Ray Kurzweil vs. the Critics of Strong AI (Seattle: Discovery Institute, 2002). 2. Stuart Hameroff, Ultimate Computing: Biomolecular Consciousness and Nanotechnology (Amsterdam: Elsevier Science, 1987). 3. P

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12, 2011, http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/guest/27206/. 2. ITRS, “International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors,” http://www.itrs.net/Links/2011ITRS/Home2011.htm. 3. Ray Kurzweil, The Singularity Is Near (New York: Viking, 2005), chapter 2. 4. Endnote 2 in Allen and Greaves, “The Singularity Isn’t Near,” reads as follows

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Criticism from Ontology: Can a Computer Be Conscious?” (pp. 458–69). 10. Michael Denton, “Organism and Machine: The Flawed Analogy,” in Are We Spiritual Machines? Ray Kurzweil vs. the Critics of Strong AI (Seattle: Discovery Institute, 2002). 11. Hans Moravec, Mind Children (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988). Epilogue 1. “In U

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, nonbiological but convincingly conscious minds as discussed in chapter 9. 5. The following excerpt from The Singularity Is Near, chapter 3 (pp. 133–35), by Ray Kurzweil (New York: Viking, 2005), discusses the limits of computation based on the laws of physics: The ultimate limits of computers are profoundly high. Building on

The Singularity Is Nearer: When We Merge with AI

by Ray Kurzweil  · 25 Jun 2024

Also by Ray Kurzweil The Age of Intelligent Machines The 10% Solution for a Healthy Life The Age of Spiritual Machines Fantastic Voyage (with Terry Grossman, MD) The Singularity

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Create a Mind Danielle: Chronicles of a Superheroine A Chronicle of Ideas VIKING An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC penguinrandomhouse.com Copyright © 2024 by Ray Kurzweil Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized

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by Michael J. Ermarth. library of congress cataloging-in-publication data Names: Kurzweil, Ray, author. Title: The singularity is nearer : when we merge with AI / Ray Kurzweil. Description: [New York] : Viking, [2024]. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2023051391 (print) | LCCN 2023051392 (ebook) | ISBN 9780399562761 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780399562778 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593489413

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technologies of the Singularity also compel us to ask what it means to be a particular human. Where does Ray Kurzweil fit into all this? Now, you may not care all that much about Ray Kurzweil; you care about yourself, so you can pose the same question about your own identity. But for me

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, why is Ray Kurzweil the center of my experience? Why am I this particular person? Why wasn’t I born in 1903 or 2003? Why am I a male

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of identity are tightly interconnected with issues of consciousness, free will, and determinism. In light of these ideas, I could say that this particular person—Ray Kurzweil—is both the result of incredibly precise prior conditions and the product of my own choices. As a self-modifying information pattern, I have certainly

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body that is gradually aging—although I work hard to slow this process—and is biologically programmed to eventually destroy the information pattern that is Ray Kurzweil. The promise of the Singularity is to free us all from those limitations. For thousands of years, humans have gradually been gaining greater control over

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the long-term trajectory of corporate commitment to AI. See Maslej et al., AI Index 2023 Annual Report, 171, 184. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 9 Ray Kurzweil, The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence (New York: Penguin, 2000; first published by Viking, 1999), 313; Dale Jacquette, “Who’s Afraid

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NOTE REFERENCE 11 For more on the reasoning behind my prediction and how it compares with a wide range of opinions by AI experts, see Ray Kurzweil, “A Wager on the Turing Test: Why I Think I Will Win,” KurzweilAI.net, April 9, 2002, https://www.kurzweilai.net/a-wager-on-the

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), https://doi.org/10.3389/fneur.2013.00210. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 144 “Neuron Firing Rates in Humans,” AI Impacts. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 145 Ray Kurzweil, The Singularity Is Near (New York: Viking, 2005), 125; Hans Moravec, Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence (Cambridge, MA; Harvard University Press

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.uk/brain-emulation-roadmap-report.pdf. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 150 Sandberg and Bostrom, Whole Brain Emulation. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 151 Mitch Kapor and Ray Kurzweil, “A Wager on the Turing Test: The Rules,” KurzweilAI.net, April 9, 2002, http://www.kurzweilai.net/a-wager-on-the-turing-test-the-rules

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podcast interview with Chris Anderson, see Google AI, “Talk to Books,” Experiments with Google, September 2018, https://experiments.withgoogle.com/talk-to-books; Chris Anderson, “Ray Kurzweil on What the Future Holds Next,” in The Ted Interview podcast, December 2018, https://www.ted.com/talks/the_ted_interview

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_ray_kurzweil_on_what_the_future_holds_next/transcript. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 166 For an explainer on fMRI technology, see Mark Stokes, “What Does fMRI Measure?,”

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of Brain Emulations,” Journal of Experimental & Theoretical Artificial Intelligence 26, no. 3 (April 14, 2014): 439–57, https://doi.org/10.1080/0952813X.2014.895113; Ray Kurzweil, How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed (New York: Viking, 2012). BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 91 Michael Merzenich, “Growing Evidence of

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Progress on Household Drinking Water, Sanitation and Hygiene 2000–2020, 9. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 6 Ray Kurzweil, The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence (New York: Viking, 1999). BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 7 Ray Kurzweil, The Singularity Is Near (New York: Viking, 2005). BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 8 Peter H

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describe the fourth bridge—extending our consciousness into digital mediums where it can be backed up and expanded—in more detail throughout this book. See Ray Kurzweil and Terry Grossman, Transcend: Nine Steps to Living Well Forever (Emmaus, PA: Rodale, 2009). BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 106 Lindgren, “Life Expectancy at Birth.” BACK

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TO NOTE REFERENCE 147 For the sources used in this graph, see note 145 above. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 148 To watch our exchange, see Ray Kurzweil and Chris Anderson, “Ray Kurzweil on What the Future Holds Next,” The TED Interview podcast, December 2018, https://www.ted.com/talks/the_ted_interview

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_ray_kurzweil_on_what_the_future_holds_next. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 149 For more on the growing movement to establish a universal basic income (or a

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Potential of AI,” Biopharma Dealmakers 15, no. 2 (May 27, 2021), https://doi.org/10.1038/d43747-021-00045-7. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 25 Ray Kurzweil, “AI-Powered Biotech Can Help Deploy a Vaccine in Record Time,” Wired, May 19, 2020, https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-ai-powered-biotech-can

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.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/199332/intel-core-i910900k-processor-20m-cache-up-to-5-30-ghz.html. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 48 Ray Kurzweil, The Singularity Is Near (New York: Viking, 2005), 125; Moravec, Mind Children, 59. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 49 “June 2022,” Top500.org, accessed October 20

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Implications,” Review of Scientific Instruments 89, no. 1, article 013701 (January 2, 2018), https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5003851. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 68 Ray Kurzweil, “The Drexler-Smalley Debate on Molecular Assembly,” KurzweilAI.net, December 1, 2003, https://www.kurzweilai.net/the-drexler-smalley-debate-on-molecular-assembly [inactive]. BACK

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, November 16, 2017, https://www.wsj.com/articles/leonardo-da-vinci-painting-salvator-mundi-sells-for-450-3-million-1510794281. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 92 Ray Kurzweil and Terry Grossman, Transcend: Nine Steps to Living Well Forever (Emmaus, PA: Rodale, 2009). BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 93 For further resources on recent biogerontology

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/watch?v=MjdpR-TY6QU; “Daphne Koller, Chief Computing Officer, Calico Labs,” CB Insights, YouTube video, January 18, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EIZ8wJYAEA; “Ray Kurzweil—Physical Immortality,” Aging Reversed, YouTube video, January 3, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUExzREe9oo; Peter H. Diamandis, “Nanorobots: Where We Are Today and

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How Vaccines Work,” Centers for Disease Control, July 2018, https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/hcp/conversations/understanding-vacc-work.html. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 33 Ray Kurzweil, “AI-Powered Biotech Can Help Deploy a Vaccine in Record Time,” Wired, May 19, 2020, https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-ai-powered-biotech-can

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weapons, 270 I IBM Deep Blue, 41–42, 63–64 Project Debater, 64 Watson, 64–65 IBM 7094, 167, 168, 211 identity, 90–94 of Ray Kurzweil, 75, 108–9 replicants and, 103 talking to dad bot, 105–8 “Who am I?”, 75–76 “If it bleeds, it leads,” 119–20 if

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E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z About the Author Ray Kurzweil is a world class inventor, thinker, and futurist, with a thirty-five-year track record of accurate predictions. He has been a leading developer in

Singularity Rising: Surviving and Thriving in a Smarter, Richer, and More Dangerous World

by James D. Miller  · 14 Jun 2012  · 377pp  · 97,144 words

to a Singularity. There are around 10 trillion trillion atoms in a 1-kilogram (2.2-pound) rock, and as inventor and leading Singularity scholar Ray Kurzweil writes: Despite the apparent solidity of the object, the atoms are all in motion, sharing electrons back and forth, changing particle spins, and generating rapidly

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, if one does not take care to follow its trajectory. —Ray Kurzweil29 CHAPTER 1 EXPONENTIALLY IMPROVING HARDWARE If, as the title of the book by Ray Kurzweil proclaims, The Singularity Is Near, then why doesn’t it appear so? An ancient story about the Hindu God Krishna partially illuminates the answer:30

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smart enough to revolutionize civilizations will also require the right software. Let’s consider four possibilities for how this software might arise. 1.Kurzweilian Merger Ray Kurzweil believes that our brains will provide the starter software for a Singularity. Kurzweil predicts that the Singularity will come through a merger of man and

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to raise our kids. Although our children are born barbarians, with eighteen years of hard work, parents can usually make them safe for society. If Ray Kurzweil is right (and I desperately hope he is) and the Singularity comes about through a steady merger of man and machines, then we will have

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of its events. These include: •Peter Thiel—self-made tech billionaire and key financier behind Face-book. Donated $1.1 million to the Institute;91 •Ray Kurzweil—famed investor and Singularity writer; •Justin Rattner—Intel’s chief technology officer; •Eric Drexler—the father of nanotechnology; •Peter Norvig—Director of Research at Google

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and robot working together can’t accomplish anything extra. Scenario B Human and robot working together can accomplish something neither can do alone. KURZWEILIAN MERGER Ray Kurzweil, recall, believes that humanity has a decent chance of taking a golden path to a utopia in which man and machines merge. Under this Kurzweilian

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once this test is passed, we could eventually speed up the AI a millionfold, make a million copies of the computer, and produce a Singularity. Ray Kurzweil has bet $20,000 that a computer will pass a Turing test by 2029.320 Or maybe within twenty years, brain/computer interfaces will be

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castrated men were found to live on average 14 years longer than their uncastrated fellows. To the best of my knowledge, no Singularitarian, not even Ray Kurzweil or bullet-eater Robin Hanson, is following the castration path to long life. WHAT HAPPENS WHEN MANY THINK IMMORTALITY IS NEAR? Businesses selling safety-enhancing

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. Energy companies might also make fewer investments if they start to expect that artificial intelligence will come to play a big role in their industry. Ray Kurzweil has written that precursor Singularity technologies will do much to create and conserve energy.322 A utility firm considering a huge long-term investment in

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being alive a thousand years from now. At least six people mentioned in this book have signed up with either Alcor or the Cryonics Institute: •Ray Kurzweil, inventor and leading Singularity intellectual357 •Peter Thiel, self-made technology billionaire358 •Robin Hanson, economist •Eliezer Yudkowsky, leading friendly-AI theorist •Michael Anissimov, Media Director for

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, I would be grateful to receive an e-mail explaining which of my arguments you found convincing. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS A big thank you to Robin Hanson, Ray Kurzweil, Vernor Vinge, and Eliezer Yudkowsky—whose ideas and scholarship form the base on which this book stands. Debbie Felton—for spending so much time helping

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/wartime/images/ProjectYBadges/v/vonneumann-john_r.gif 24. Ulam (1958). 25. Vinge (1993). 26. Singularity Institute (2011). 27. Vinge (2010). 28. Rumsfeld (2002). 29. Ray Kurzweil (2005). 30. Legend of the Ambalappuzha Paal Paayasam. This telling of the story is in my words. 31. Kurzweil (2005). 32. Kurzweil (2005). 33. Kurzweil

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. 2005. “A Brain Is a Terrible Thing to Waste.” Mensa Bulletin, November/December. http://www.cryonicssociety.org/articles_mensajournal.html. Philipkoski, Kristen. November 18, 2002. “Ray Kurzweil’s Plan: Never Die.” Wired. http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2002/11/56448. Polizzi, Eric. Interview with James D. Miller, July 8, 2010

Live Work Work Work Die: A Journey Into the Savage Heart of Silicon Valley

by Corey Pein  · 23 Apr 2018  · 282pp  · 81,873 words

true that suffering builds character, I owe many thanks to Airbnb. In the same spirit, I must thank those who declined to be interviewed, especially Ray Kurzweil, Peter Thiel, and Curtis Yarvin—my three muses. I’m genuinely grateful to everyone who was interviewed, as well as all those pseudonymous people—roommates

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dollars on “funsultants” who provided advice on “enterprise gamification”—filling the most menial wage labor with “fun” Pavlovian rewards and punishments. According to the futurist Ray Kurzweil, there soon “won’t be a clear distinction between work and play.” If that seems far-fetched, consider how successfully Facebook gamified friendship. Sex, too

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for an allegedly inevitable and willful transformation of the species. The person most closely associated with this concept is the author, inventor, and tech executive Ray Kurzweil. Kurzweil is now known primarily as a purveyor of far-out ideas, of which the Singularity is only one, but his early pronouncements are remarkably

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“intriguing” book: “Kurzweil is the best person I know at predicting the future of artificial intelligence.” Others viewed Kurzweil’s transformation in a different light. “Ray Kurzweil is a genius. One of the greatest hucksters of the age,” biologist and blogger PZ Myers declared. Kurzweil maintained that if his critics in academia

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be, apparently. No one who graced the stage at the Summit spoke more directly to this underlying money lust than SU cofounder Peter Diamandis. Although Ray Kurzweil was the university “chancellor,” he seemed to be more of a figurehead. It was Diamandis who had pitched the idea for SU to Kurzweil, who

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state religion, Singularitarianism must be seen as its most extreme and fanatical sect. It is the Opus Dei of the postwar church of gadget worship. Ray Kurzweil may be the best-known prophet of this order, but he was not the first. The true father of Singularitarianism is a sci-fi author

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’re lucky, pets. Like many creative types, Vinge lacked the business savvy to fully exploit the market potential of his ideas. That task fell to Ray Kurzweil. A consummate brand builder, Kurzweil turned Vinge’s frown upside-down and recast the Singularity as a great big cosmic party, to great commercial success

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willing to overlook clear expressions of lunacy among their own. Consider young Mike Anissimov, who, before coming out as a Hitler fanboy, ingratiated himself with Ray Kurzweil, whose parents fled Austria shortly before Kristallnacht. (I have no evidence that either Kurzweil or Thiel knew about Anissimov’s anti-Semitism while they were

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seek. We live in a world that’s getting stranger by the day—and certainly more volatile. I’m not inclined to play prophet like Ray Kurzweil, but I’m sure we will endure further “disruptions” at the hands of the Silicon Valley tech companies. Which is why, as much as I

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Far Right,” March 5, 2014, amormundi.blogspot.com. Chapter VIII: Onward, Robot Soldiers Page invited Kurzweil to join the company David J. Hill, “Exclusive Interview: Ray Kurzweil Discusses His First Two Months at Google,” March 19, 2013, singularityhub.com. I applied for a press ticket See my report, “Cyborg Soothsayers of the

Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era

by James Barrat  · 30 Sep 2013  · 294pp  · 81,292 words

was running out. * * * For more than twenty years I’ve been a documentary filmmaker. In 2000, I interviewed science-fiction great Arthur C. Clarke, inventor Ray Kurzweil, and robot pioneer Rodney Brooks. Kurzweil and Brooks painted a rosy, even rapturous picture of our future coexistence with intelligent machines. But Clarke hinted that

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become a very popular word to throw around, even though it has several definitions that are often used interchangeably. Accomplished inventor, author, and Singularity pitchman Ray Kurzweil defines the Singularity as a “singular” period in time (beginning around the year 2045) after which the pace of technological change will irreversibly transform human

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Ng, former director of Stanford University’s Artificial Intelligence Lab, and a world-class roboticist. Finally, late in 2012, Google hired esteemed inventor and author Ray Kurzweil to be its director of engineering. As we’ll discuss in chapter 9, Kurzweil has a long track record of achievements in AI, and has

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achieving AGI. It doesn’t take Google glasses to see that if Google employs at least two of the world’s preeminent AI scientists, and Ray Kurzweil, AGI likely ranks high among its moon-shot pursuits. Seeking a competitive advantage in the marketplace, Google X and other stealth companies may come up

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moment, what’s called the “technological Singularity.” It refers to the time in history when we humans share the planet with smarter-than-human intelligence. Ray Kurzweil proposes that we’ll merge with the machines, ensuring our survival. Others propose the machines will enhance our lives, but we’ll continue to live

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. But, as I was soon to learn, Good had a surprising change of heart later in life. I had always grouped him with optimists like Ray Kurzweil, because he’d seen machines “save” the world before, and his essay hangs man’s survival on the creation of a superintelligent one. But Good

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technological change thirty-five years earlier, in 1958. But Vinge’s coinage was public, deliberate, and set the singularity ball rolling into the hands of Ray Kurzweil and what is today a Singularity movement. With that street cred, why doesn’t Vinge work the lecture and conference circuits as the ultimate Singularity

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’s possible, Vinge says, to consider how mankind’s greatest problems—hunger, disease, even death itself—may be conquered. That’s the vision espoused by Ray Kurzweil and promulgated by “Singularitarians.” Singularitarians are those who anticipate that mostly good things will emerge from the accelerated future. Their “singularity” sounds too rosy for

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its essence, and it was named that way on purpose. Then suddenly, all that changed. To the idea of a singularity as espoused by Vinge, Ray Kurzweil added a dramatic catalyst that shifts this whole conversation into hyperdrive, and brings into sharper focus the catastrophic danger ahead: the exponential growth of computer

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three combined. —Paul Otellini, CEO of Intel With his books The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence and The Singularity Is Near, Ray Kurzweil commandeered the word “singularity” and changed its meaning to that of a bright, hopeful period of human history, which his tools of extrapolation let him

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live forever. Standing astride all the factions is the Colossus of the Singularity, a cofounder of the Singularity Summits, and the star of each gathering, Ray Kurzweil. The 2011 summit’s theme was IBM’s DeepQA (question answering) computer Watson, and Kurzweil gave a rote presentation on the history of chatbots and

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) architecture called NELL, claimed the conference changed his mind. “I went in very optimistic about the future of AI and thinking that Bill Joy and Ray Kurzweil were far off in their predictions. The meeting made me want to be more outspoken about these issues.” In The Singularity Is Near Kurzweil pitches

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have just escaped, the nuclear arms race. We’ll follow policy makers and technology’s cheerleaders to our doom, in Good’s phrase, “like lemmings.” Ray Kurzweil’s positive Singularity doesn’t require an intelligence explosion—the Law of Accelerating Returns guarantees the continued exponential growth of information technologies, including world-changing

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of Research, who as we discussed, doesn’t care to speculate beyond saying AGI is too distant to speculate about. Meanwhile, his colleagues, led by Ray Kurzweil, are proceeding with its development. At the other end, Ben Goertzel, who, as Good did, thinks achieving AGI is merely a question of cash, says

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that before 2020 isn’t too soon to anticipate it. Ray Kurzweil, who’s probably the best technology prognosticator ever, predicts AGI by 2029, but doesn’t look for ASI until 2045. He acknowledges hazards but devotes

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, though notably not yours and mine. Despite Google’s repeated demurrals through its spokespeople, who doubts that the company is developing AGI? In addition to Ray Kurzweil, Google recently hired former DARPA director Regina Dugan. Maybe researchers will wake up in time and learn to control AGI, as Ben Goertzel asserts. I

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as a species survive them, chastened and reformed. Psychologically and commercially, the stage is set for a disaster. What can we do to prevent it? * * * Ray Kurzweil cites something called the Asilomar Guidelines as a precedent-setting example of how to deal with AGI. The Asilomar Guidelines came about some forty years

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and loss of life when they do. That’s because computer malware is growing so capable that it can already be considered narrowly intelligent. As Ray Kurzweil told me, “There are software viruses that do exhibit AI. We’ve been able to keep up with them. It’s not guaranteed we can

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path that mirrors the evolution of humans. Ultimately, however, self-aware, self-improving machines will evolve beyond humans’ ability to control or even understand them. —Ray Kurzweil, inventor, author, futurist In the game of life and evolution there are three players at the table: human beings, nature, and machines. I am firmly

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/technology/google-is-fined-for-impeding-us-inquiry-on-data-collection.html (accessed May 3, 2012). It doesn’t take Google glasses: In December 2012, Ray Kurzweil joined Google as Director of Engineering to work on projects involving machine learning and language processing. In the development of AGI, this is a landmark

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4, 2011, http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2384897,00.asp (accessed September 5, 2011). Recently Google’s cofounder Larry Page: Feeney, Lauren, “Futurist Ray Kurzweil isn’t worried about climate change,” PBS.ORG Need to Know, February 16, 2011, http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/environment/futurist

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-ray-kurzweil-isnt-worried-about-climate-change/7389/ (accessed September 5, 2011). We now have the actual means: Ibid. Kurzweil writes that the brain has about 100:

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much faster, it’s computer equivalent in speed is farther away. But, considering LOAR, not a lot farther. That makes about 100 trillion interneuronal connections: Ray Kurzweil, The Age of Spiritual Machines (New York: Viking Penguin, 1999), 103. The title of fastest supercomputer: Bodkin, John, “With 16 petaflops and 1.6M cores

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February 28, 2013). We can’t just say, “we’ll put in this little software code”: Kurzweil, Ray, “Ray Kurzweil: The H+ Interview,” H+ Magazine, December 30, 2009, http://hplusmagazine.com/2009/12/30/ray-kurzweil-h-interview/ (accessed March 1, 2011). our most sensitive systems, including aircraft avionics: Ukman, Jason, and Ellen Nakashima

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-cyber-breach-official-says/2011/07/14/gIQAsaaVEI_blog.html (accessed September 28, 2011). There’s a lot of talk about existential risk: Kurzweil, Ray, “Ray Kurzweil: The H+ Interview.” exhibit unethical decision-making tendencies: Kiff, Paul, Daniel Stancato, Stephane Cote, Rodolfo Mendoza-Denton, and Dacher Keltner, “Higher social class predicts increased

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, especially those at MIRI: Some Singularitarians want to get to AGI as soon as possible, owing to its potential to alleviate human suffering. This is Ray Kurzweil’s position. Others feel achieving AGI will move them closer to ensuring their own immortality. MIRI’s founders, including Eliezer Yudkowsky, hope AGI takes a

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Issues in Advanced Artificial Intelligence,” last modified 2003, http://www.nickbostrom.com/ethics/ai.html (accessed April 24, 2011). Basically, we are looking for: Kurzweil, Ray, “Kurzweil Responds: Don’t Underestimate the Singularity,” Technology Review, October 19, 2011, http://www.technologyreview.com/view/425818/kurzweil-responds-dont-underestimate-the/ (accessed November 1

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,” AI Magazine (Fall 2010), http://www.aaai.org/ojs/index.php/aimagazine/article/view/2303 (accessed August 18, 2011). A lot has been written: Kurzweil, Ray, “Kurzweil Responds: Don’t Underestimate the Singularity.” Searle said: Blumenthal, Andy, “Watson Can Swim,” The Total CIO (blog), March 14, 2011, http://andyblumenthal.posterous.com/watson

Immortality, Inc.

by Chip Walter  · 7 Jan 2020  · 232pp  · 72,483 words

Suozzi, a 23-year-old suffering from terminal brain cancer, is among them. She had learned about cryonics when she came across the writings of Ray Kurzweil, then raised some of the money needed for her preservation through the website Reddit. She became Alcor member A-2643. Ted Williams, probably the greatest

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women; the other 112 were men. Another 1,116 had already signed on to join the current tenants at some future date, including people like Ray Kurzweil, PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, biogerontologist Aubrey de Grey, nanotechnology pioneer Eric Drexler, and, of course, Ralph Merkle. The average age of the currently vitrified

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a start-up designed to cure aging—even death itself. Levinson had been aware, vaguely, of various efforts to extend life. He had heard of Ray Kurzweil’s prescriptions for radical life extension, had come across Aubrey de Grey’s work on abolishing aging here and there, and suspected the National Institute

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FDA trials, why would anyone develop any serious science or even a single useful drug therapy? In the midst of all these contemplations, Maris met Ray Kurzweil. He had already heard about the celebrated futurist’s inventions, documentaries, and lectures, and had read his books, including The Singularity Is Near; Fantastic Voyage

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stop the clock and keep you young and healthy…forever. And, Maris reminded him, it’s not insane that this could happen. His conversations with Ray Kurzweil had reminded him that computing was revolutionizing the life sciences. The fact that Craig Venter and his team at Celera had completed sequencing the human

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you care to save a few million lives, and utterly transform the course of human history?” 8 | KURZWEIL It was still winter in 2012 when Ray Kurzweil decided to send an early manuscript of his latest book, How to Create a Mind, to Larry Page. The book described Kurzweil’s methods for

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in transhumanism too and was planning on becoming an Alcor member like Kurzweil, once he completed all the paperwork. There was, in fact, nothing about Ray Kurzweil that any right-minded person could possibly describe as normal. Eccentric maybe; quirky, brilliant, nerdy, even rebellious in a quiet, mannerly sort of way. But

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the stage: the junk kid from Queens who makes music with artificially intelligent machines. * * * — IT WASN’T LONG AFTER his debut on national television that Ray Kurzweil found his way to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. While in high school he had sought out and written to Marvin Minsky, then considered one

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that everyone could live forever. That idea hadn’t yet fully formed in his mind. Not yet. But it would. 9 | VENTER Around the time Ray Kurzweil was hand-building a computer that would show the world what a genius he was, John Craig Venter was honing his surfing skills at “the

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of the way through boot camp in San Diego, President Johnson (the very same president who had so graciously stuck his hand out to greet Ray Kurzweil) escalated the war in Vietnam, and said that all armed services sports teams were canceled. Still, surely he wouldn’t be among the unlucky destined

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it on with the likes of James Watson. But now, 10 years later, while Art Levinson was busily moving up Genentech’s corporate ranks, and Ray Kurzweil was making a national name for himself as one of the country’s most promising inventors, Venter’s career had advanced too. The big leap

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. In early spring the weather grew mild with the cherry blossoms on the cusp. But that wasn’t the case on March 14, 2000, as Ray Kurzweil blithely made his way to the East Room of the White House wearing a dark suit and a muted red tie. Today it was cool

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Age of Spiritual Machines. That was 29 years after his father’s death and 32 years after he created his first computer. Apparently, even for Ray Kurzweil, big ideas took time to percolate. Kurzweil wouldn’t be alone that day when he received his medal, of course. He would be joining 16

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Clinton had just mentioned and substituted only one: aging. Had they done that, they would have glimpsed an insight that had already begun simmering in Ray Kurzweil’s mind five years earlier, in 1995. The insight was simply this: Unless a meteor struck Earth, the human genome was, one way or another

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finally getting it. And of course they had to because the Law of Accelerating Returns made it so. * * * — THE LAW OF ACCELERATING RETURNS, or what Ray Kurzweil came to call LOAR, had begun to dawn on him as early as the 1980s, but wasn’t really codified until the publication of The

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going binary, and that would create a new world. And that, in turn, would lead, one step at a time, to life everlasting. * * * — PART OF RAY KURZWEIL’S BELIEF in his vision of a supremely long life began one year before his visit to the White House. He was in the lunch

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his hands up and rail. We are talking about millions of lives here! In 2007, this was a radically different view of aging. Even as Ray Kurzweil was honing his ideas on age prevention with Terry Grossman, even while Art Levinson continued to grow Genentech into a bigger, more successful biotechnology juggernaut

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little was really known about how to do it. Later—though Levinson would never say so outright—these views had to include the thinking of Ray Kurzweil and Aubrey de Grey—and, in December 2015, Harvard genetics professor George Church, who announced at an international summit in Washington, D.C., that he

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“radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity” is the phrase Diamandis likes to use. These successes, together with the inception of Singularity University (created with Ray Kurzweil) in 2008, cemented Diamandis’s reputation as a mover and shaker in Silicon Valley. Unlike Diamandis, Bob Hariri was a newcomer to Silicon Valley, although

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business, he grew focused and quiet. He had grown up in Queens, raised with his older brother by a single mother, not far from where Ray Kurzweil had lived and wandered during his youth in Jackson Heights. The family wallet had been pretty thin at times, but his mother had always felt

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stem cells held enormous healing and regenerative promise on a whole range of levels. But then one day he and Diamandis found themselves talking with Ray Kurzweil and Bill Maris at GV. That was when the idea of tackling aging came up. This was very near the time when Maris was rolling

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up like little brown mushrooms. Companies with high-tech names like Verily (founded by Bill Maris’s friend Andy Conrad), Unity Biotechnology, Navitor, United Therapeutics (Ray Kurzweil was on the board), Alkahest, ZeroCater, Stemcentrx, Nootrobox, and Bulletproof, all now existed on California’s corporate rolls. These also included Venter’s Human Longevity

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that what he, or Calico, was up to was anyone’s business. This was vexing—not only to journalists, but also to Levinson’s peers. Ray Kurzweil was listed as an adviser to Levinson, through his connections with Larry Page and Alphabet, but Kurzweil knew only that Art seemed to be playing

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creates, in the machines and their algorithms, a kind of symbiosis: digits and molecules, biology and technology coming together in a strange and unexpected harmony. * * * — RAY KURZWEIL COULD HAVE told you this was going to happen. More than 50 years ago, when he was 14 years old, he wrote a paper that

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endless tales we do, imagining ways to outmatch death, generating explanations for heaven or reincarnation, Elysium or Nirvana. It may even be the reason for Ray Kurzweil’s vision of a time and place where everyone is rejuvenated and their minds expanded, like angels on the Last Day—a nice sci-fi

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day Craig Venter, Peter Diamandis, and Bob Hariri launched Human Longevity, Inc. And those ventures emerged—whether or not anyone believes it—because decades earlier Ray Kurzweil began ardently plowing the longevity road, with some serious help from Aubrey de Grey. They were the catalysts that set the grand endeavor into motion

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and closest friends, learn from our mistakes, and get our lives right: fulfilled and happy at last. It may even happen that the heavenly future Ray Kurzweil imagines will abide, with the human race not only upgraded like flights of angels but released to live in whatever amplified mind we can imagine

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machines as intelligent as we are. Whatever happens, it’s not going to be boring. EPILOGUE: THE END OF THE END I was sitting with Ray Kurzweil one Friday afternoon when I asked him how he felt about the passage of time…and the idea of running out of it. He didn

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Levinson had neither developed cancer nor had his heart opened for inspection. But he was as lucky to be alive as either Craig Venter or Ray Kurzweil. Two different diseases had killed his mother in her 30s and father in his 60s, but so far he had managed to elude those particular

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harangued and pestered and tracked down for the interviews needed to write this book. These include many hours of meetings, phone calls, and emails with Ray Kurzweil, Arthur Levinson, Craig Venter, Aubrey de Grey, Robert Hariri, as well as long sessions with Bill Maris, David Botstein, Hal Barron, Cynthia Kenyon, Daphne Koller

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-More, and many others. A special thanks to Aimee Markey at Calico Labs for arranging so many meetings. In the earliest days of this quest, Ray Kurzweil was especially helpful, not only in making himself available, but by providing initial access to Art Levinson and Craig Venter. All of these people helped

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-reverse-the-aging-process. Asian Scientist Newsroom. “Removing Old Cells Could Prevent Arthritis.” Asian Scientist, June 14, 2017. Baer, Drake. “5 Amazing Predictions by Futurist Ray Kurzweil That Came True—and 4 That Haven’t.” Business Insider, October 20, 2015. www.businessinsider.com.au/15-startling-incredible-and-provactive-predictions-from-googles

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?” Smithsonian, June 2017. Kirkwood, Thomas. “Why Can’t We Live Forever?” Scientific American, September 2010. Kurzweil, Ray. “How My Predictions Are Faring: An Update by Ray Kurzweil.” Kurzweil Accelerating Intelligence (blog), October 1, 2010. www.kurzweilai.net/images/How-My-Predictions-Are-Faring.pdf. Lamming, Dudley W., and Sabatini, David M. “A

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, Tomoaki Hishida, Mo Li, David Lam, et al. “In Vivo Amelioration of Age-Associated Hallmarks by Partial Reprogramming.” Cell, December 15, 2016. O’Keefe, Brian. “Ray Kurzweil—The Smartest (or the Nuttiest) Futurist on Earth.” Fortune, May 14, 2007. Park, Alice. “Alzheimer’s from a New Angle.” Time, February 11, 2016. ———. “In

Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans

by Melanie Mitchell  · 14 Oct 2019  · 350pp  · 98,077 words

, and this quest has become a major focus at Google. In the last decade, the company has hired a profusion of AI experts, most notably Ray Kurzweil, a well-known inventor and a controversial futurist who promotes the idea of an AI Singularity, a time in the near future when computers will

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, speech recognition, natural-language understanding, translation between languages, computer-generated art, music composition, and more. Hofstadter’s worries were underlined by Google’s embrace of Ray Kurzweil and his vision of the Singularity, in which AI, empowered by its ability to improve itself and learn on its own, will quickly reach, and

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the test still be a useful indicator of actual intelligence if the conversation time is extended and the required expertise of the judges is raised? Ray Kurzweil, who is now director of engineering at Google, believes that a properly designed version of the Turing test will indeed reveal machine intelligence; he predicts

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that a computer will pass this test by 2029, a milestone event on the way to Kurzweil’s forecasted Singularity. The Singularity Ray Kurzweil has long been AI’s leading optimist. A former student of Marvin Minsky’s at MIT, Kurzweil has had a distinguished career as an inventor

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(with y-axis showing hundreds of kilos); B, squares 24–64 (with y-axis showing tens of trillions of kilos) Exponential Progress in Computers For Ray Kurzweil, the computer age has provided a real-world counterpart to the exponential fable. In 1965, Gordon Moore, cofounder of Intel Corporation, identified a trend that

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the Turing Test Rank Order Test. * * * If a Computer passes the Turing Test, as described above, prior to the end of the year 2029, then Ray Kurzweil wins the wager. Otherwise Mitchell Kapor wins the wager.44 Wow, pretty strict. Eugene Goostman wouldn’t stand a chance. I’d have to (cautiously

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twenty-five, or “in a generation.” However, none of these predictions has come to pass. As I described in chapter 3, the “long bet” between Ray Kurzweil and Mitchell Kapor, as to whether a program will pass a carefully structured Turing test, will be decided in 2029. My bet is on Kapor

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. 14.  The terms strong AI and weak AI have also been used to mean something more like general AI and narrow AI. This is how Ray Kurzweil uses them, but this differs from Searle’s original meaning. 15.  Searle’s article is reprinted in D. R. Hofstadter and D. C. Dennett, The

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Computers 6 (1966): 31–88. 22.  V. Vinge, “First Word,” Omni, Jan. 1983. 23.  Kurzweil, Singularity Is Near, 241, 317, 198–99. 24.  B. Wang, “Ray Kurzweil Responds to the Issue of Accuracy of His Predictions,” Next Big Future, Jan. 19, 2010, www.nextbigfuture.com/2010/01

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/ray-kurzweil-responds-to-issue-of.html. 25.  D. Hochman, “Reinvent Yourself: The Playboy Interview with Ray Kurzweil,” Playboy, April 19, 2016, www.playboy.com/articles/playboy-interview-ray-kurzweil. 26.  Kurzweil, Singularity Is Near, 136. 27.  A. Kreye, “A John Henry Moment

More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley's Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity

by Adam Becker  · 14 Jun 2025  · 381pp  · 119,533 words

nearly so. Bounded only by the laws of physics, there will be no practical limit to what a post-Singularity civilization can achieve. According to Ray Kurzweil, the most prominent exponent of the Singularity, the current rate of technological change strongly suggests that the Singularity is coming very soon indeed—no later

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purest expression of this ideology of perpetual growth, that fantastical vision of a perfect, unstoppable, inevitable technological utopia: the Singularity. 2 Machines of Loving Grace Ray Kurzweil is pretty sure his dad isn’t going to stay dead. “I have 50 boxes of his things at home, his letters and music and

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through his belongings and scan his frozen corpse—bringing a version of himself back to life, just like his father.17 * * * To understand exactly why Ray Kurzweil thinks he can resurrect his father and that anyone alive in 2029 will still be alive in 2529—and, more generally, to understand what the

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Solomonoff and Marvin Minsky (the latter of whom also contributed two essays to The Scientist Speculates and later mentored a young student at MIT named Ray Kurzweil). More generally, the concept of technological acceleration leading to a singularity was arguably developed by John von Neumann, the legendary mathematician and physicist. Von Neumann

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compatriots were profiled in magazines like Wired and in several books.47 By the end of the 1990s, Extropians and transhumanists like Hans Moravec and Ray Kurzweil had published nonfiction books of their own, expounding on the imminent approach of AGI and other transformative technologies as the Singularity purportedly loomed.48 Kurzweil

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technologists,” explains the computer scientist Jaron Lanier.62 Many leaders in tech—including Bill Gates and Elon Musk—think highly of Kurzweil and his ideas. “Ray Kurzweil’s Moore’s Law abstraction is the most important thing ever graphed,” says billionaire and tech venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson. “Its continuity—over his lifetime

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was signed by nearly seven hundred tech executives, AI scientists, and other assorted academics and luminaries, including Sam Altman, Bill Gates, Peter Singer, Dustin Moskovitz, Ray Kurzweil, David Chalmers, Eliezer Yudkowsky, and the musician Grimes. Ord signed too, as did a notable former member of the FTX Foundation team: one William MacAskill

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O’Gieblyn stopped believing in God—“without that narrative, my life lost its mooring”—and several years later encountered The Age of Spiritual Machines, by Ray Kurzweil. For a time, she was obsessed. “What makes transhumanism so compelling is that it promises to restore through science the transcendent—and essentially religious—hopes

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, CA Eliezer Yudkowsky, May 24, 2024, video call INTERVIEW REQUESTS Sam Altman (declined) Marc Andreessen (declined) Jeff Bezos (ignored) Nick Bostrom (declined) Eric Drexler (declined) Ray Kurzweil (declined) William MacAskill (canceled, ignored requests to reschedule) Elon Musk (ignored) Stuart Russell (declined) Scott Siskind (declined) Guillaume Verdon (ignored) USAGE PERMISSIONS AND IMAGE CREDITS

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Energy Too Cheap to Meter” © 2022 by Benjamin Reinhardt. Reprinted with the kind permission of Benjamin Reinhardt. Figure 2.1 adapted from “File:PPTCountdowntoSingularityLog.jpg,” © Ray Kurzweil and Kurzweil Technologies, Inc. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 1.0 Generic license (CC-BY-1.0). File has been modified from its original

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-the-singularity-will-happen-by-2045. 38 David Kushner, “When Humans and Machines Merge,” Rolling Stone, February 19, 2009, www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/ray-kurzweil-ai-david-kushner-1234779424/. 39 Mathias Döpfner, “Jeff Bezos Interview with Axel Springer CEO on Amazon, Blue Origin, Family,” Business Insider, April 28, 2018, www

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/sam-bankman-fried-dealbook-interview-transcript.html. 74 Lucianne Walkowicz, interview with the author. CHAPTER 2 1 Kushner, “When Humans and Machines Merge.” 2 “Futurist Ray Kurzweil Says He Can Bring His Dead Father Back to Life Through a Computer Avatar,” ABC News, August 9, 2011, https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/futurist

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-ray-kurzweil-bring-dead-father-back-life/story?id=14267712. 3 Peter Kirn, “That Time in 1965 When a Teen Ray Kurzweil Made a Computer Compose Music and Met LBJ,” CDM, March 3, 2020, https://cdm.link/2020

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/03/ray-kurzweil-ai-music-1965/; “Raymond Kurzweil,” Lemelson-MIT, accessed August 31, 2024, https://lemelson.mit.edu/resources

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/raymond-kurzweil; interview with Ray Kurzweil conducted by Dag Spicer on behalf of the Computer History Museum, July 13, 2009, Mountain

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, 57,” New York Times, August 13, 1970, https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1970/08/13/90616871.html. 5 Kushner, “When Humans and Machines Merge.” 6 Ray Kurzweil, The Age of Intelligent Machines (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990), 133. 7 AP, “Gates: Get Ready for Chip Implants,” CNN, July 5, 2005, archived July

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8, 2005, at the Wayback Machine, https://web.archive.org/web/20050708012222/http://edition.cnn.com/2005/TECH/07/04/gates.implants.ap/. 8 Ray Kurzweil, How My Predictions Are Faring, October 2010, www.thekurzweillibrary.com/images/How-My-Predictions-Are-Faring.pdf. For some independent estimates, see Alex Knapp

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, “Ray Kurzweil’s Predictions for 2009 Were Mostly Inaccurate,” Forbes, June 2, 2013, www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2012/03/20/ray-kurzweils-predictions-for-2009-were-mostly-inaccurate/; Daniel Lyons, “I, Robot,” Newsweek, May 16, 2009, archived

…

, “Futurist Prediction Methods and Accuracy,” September 2022, https://danluu.com/futurist-predictions/. 9 This specific quote comes from Kurzweil’s 2024 South by Southwest interview: Ray Kurzweil, “Featured Session: The Singularity Is Nearer” (South by Southwest, Austin, TX, March 10, 2024), https://schedule.sxsw.com/2024/events/PP1143806. He’s also made

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Intelligence’—Will Have Passed the Turing Test,” Long Bets, accessed June 13, 2024, https://longbets.org/1/. He also said the same thing in 2005: Ray Kurzweil, The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology (New York: Viking, 2005). And in 2017, in this interview: Christianna Reedy, “Kurzweil Claims That the Singularity

…

January 27, 2013, at the Wayback Machine, https://web.archive.org/web/20130127224419/http://research.nokia.com/news/11357. 61 David J. Hill, “Exclusive Interview: Ray Kurzweil Discusses His First Two Months at Google,” Singularity Hub, March 19, 2013, https://singularityhub.com/2013/03/19/exclusive-interview

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-ray-kurzweil-discusses-his-first-two-months-at-google/. 62 Jaron Lanier, “The First Church of Robotics,” New York Times, August 9, 2010, www.nytimes.com/2010/

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08/09/opinion/09lanier.html. 63 “The Singularity Is Nearer: When We Merge with AI,” Amazon, accessed June 13, 2024, www.amazon.com/Singularity-Nearer-Ray-Kurzweil-ebook/dp/B08Y6FYJVY. 64 Dylan Matthews, “This Oxford Professor Thinks Artificial Intelligence Will Destroy Us All,” Vox, August 19, 2014, www.vox.com/2014/8

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