The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence

ISBN: 0140282025

Author: Kurzweil, Ray

Condition: New

NATIONAL BESTSELLER Bold futurist Ray Kurzweil, author of The Singularity Is Near, offers a framework for envisioning the future of machine intelligence-a book for anyone who wonders where human technology is going next (The New York Times Book Review).Kurzweil offers a thought-provoking analysis of human and artificial intelligence and a unique look at a future in which the capabilities of the computer and the species that invented it grow ever closer.-BILL GATESImagine a world where the difference between man and machine blurs, where the line between humanity and technology fades, and where the soul and the silicon chip unite. This is not science fiction. This is the twenty-first century according to Ray Kurzweil, therestless genius (The Wall Street Journal), ultimate thinking machine (Forbes), and inventor of the most innovative and compelling technology of our era. In his inspired hands, life in the new millennium no longer seems daunting. Instead, it promises to be an age in which the marriage of human sensitivity and artificial intelligence fundamentally alters and improves the way we live.More than just a list of predictions, Kurzweils prophetic blueprint for the future guides us through the inexorable advances that will result in: Computers exceeding the memory capacity and computational ability of the human brain (with human-level capabilities not far behind) Relationships with automated personalities who will be our teachers, companions, and lovers Information fed straight into our brains along direct neural pathwaysEventually, the distinction between humans and computers will have become sufficiently blurred that when the machines claim to be conscious, we will believe them.

• Ray Kurzweil is the inventor of the most innovative and compelling technology of our era, an international authority on artificial intelligence, and one of our greatest living visionaries. Now he offers a framework for envisioning the twenty-first century--an age in which the marriage of human sensitivity and artificial intelligence fundamentally alters and improves the way we live.