The Singularity Is Near

When Humans Transcend Biology

By: Ray Kurzweil

Narrated by: George Wilson

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Celebrated futurist Ray Kurzweil presents an “elaborate, smart, and persuasive” (The Boston Globe) view of the future course of human development.

“Artfully envisions a breathtakingly better world.”—Los Angeles Times
“Startling in scope and bravado.”—Janet Maslin, The New York Times
“An important book.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer

At the onset of the twenty-first century, humanity stands on the verge of the most transforming and thrilling period in its history. It will be an era in which the very nature of what it means to be human will be both enriched and challenged as our species breaks the shackles of its genetic legacy and achieves inconceivable heights of intelligence, material progress, and longevity.

While the social and philosophical ramifications of these changes will be profound, and the threats they pose considerable, The Singularity Is Near presents a radical and optimistic view of the coming age that is both a dramatic culmination of centuries of technological ingenuity and a genuinely inspiring vision of our ultimate destiny.

The Singularity is NOT near

I love Ray's analysis and optimism. If it wasn't clear on 2005, it's certainly clear today that machine learning, deep learning, neutral nets, transformers, and other AI technologies (great courses on all of these at pyimagesearch.com btw) prove we will successfully reverse engineer the brain.

Then exceed it.

However, since 2005 we've learned that our intelligence does not solely come from our brain. About half of hydrocephalic patients with >95% of their brain replaced with cerebrospinal fluid, have IQs greater than 100.

One student with greater than 97% of a normal brain replaced with cerebrospinal fluid, had an IQ of 126, was socially normal, and graduated with honors with a degree in mathematics.

How could be do that without the neural connections, data storage, and processing power Ray describes? We have no idea.

But it proves that the brain alone is not the source of human intelligence and so reverse engineering it won't create the greater than human level intelligence necessary for the singularity.

Terminal lucidity, Alzheimer patients whose brains haven't functioned for years suddenly becoming completely coherent days or hours before death is another proof that there's more to intellect than a functioning brain.

Aged fairly well

Great narration and discussion of topics that are still current. Interested to see what changes in his new book, The Singularity is Nearer.

uggghhh

I could not get past the terrible narration. I couldn't even finish this audiobook due to the disjointed and emotionless narration.

Interesting subject. Boring delivery.

I thought this book would be very interesting given the subject. However, the reader and author do not complement each other.

Lot’s of great detail and very valuable information

While the delivery of the information lacks flare, it’s very important for anyone who would like to understand and mentally prepare for what’s ahead. Almost everyone is going to be caught entirely by surprise repeatedly and far too many will fight because they simply can’t understand. It’s just too bad that we didn’t do all of this a very long time ago as a species.