{"product_id":"the-singularity-is-nearer-isbn-9780399562785","title":"The Singularity Is Nearer","description":"\u003cb\u003e\u003cb\u003eAN INSTANT \u003ci\u003eNEW YORK TIMES\u003c\/i\u003e BESTSELLER\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eONE OF TIME’S 100 MOST INFLUENTUAL PEOPLE IN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe noted inventor and futurist’s successor to his landmark book \u003ci\u003eThe Singularity Is Near\u003c\/i\u003e explores how technology will transform the human race in the decades to come\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSince it was first published in 2005, Ray Kurzweil’s \u003ci\u003eThe Singularity Is Near\u003c\/i\u003e and its vision of an exponential future have spawned a worldwide movement. Kurzweil's predictions about technological advancements have largely come true, with concepts like AI, intelligent machines, and biotechnology now widely familiar to the public.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn this entirely new book Ray Kurzweil brings a fresh perspective to advances toward the Singularity—assessing his 1999 prediction that AI will reach human level intelligence by 2029 and examining the exponential growth of technology—that, in the near future, will expand human intelligence a millionfold and change human life forever. Among the topics he discusses are rebuilding the world, atom by atom with devices like nanobots; radical life extension beyond the current age limit of 120; reinventing intelligence by connecting our brains to the cloud; how exponential technologies are propelling innovation forward in all industries and improving all aspects of our well-being such as declining poverty and violence; and the growth of renewable energy and 3-D printing. He also considers the potential perils of biotechnology, nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence, including such topics of current controversy as how AI will impact employment and the safety of autonomous cars, and \"After Life\" technology, which aims to virtually revive deceased individuals through a combination of their data and DNA.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe culmination of six decades of research on artificial intelligence, \u003ci\u003eThe Singularity Is Nearer\u003c\/i\u003e is Ray Kurzweil’s crowning contribution to the story of this science and the revolution that is to come.\u003cb\u003e\u003cu\u003ePraise for \u003ci\u003eThe Singularity is Nearer\u003c\/i\u003e:\u003c\/u\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A fascinating exploration of our future, which raises the most profound philosophical questions.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Yuval Noah Harari, \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e bestselling author of \u003ci\u003eSapiens\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Few people have shaped how the world thinks about AI like Ray Kurzweil. Now, with \u003ci\u003eThe Singularity Is Nearer\u003c\/i\u003e, he has written an updated, expansive and hopeful guide to a fast-approaching future that will once again set the terms of debate. Grounded in decades of meticulous research, and written with impressive clarity across an immense canvas, it's essential reading for anyone wanting to understand our exponential times.” \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e—\u003c\/i\u003eMustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“No one is more optimistic about technology than Ray Kurzweil.” \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003ci\u003e—\u003c\/i\u003eThe Boston Globe\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“The acclaimed futurist demonstrates how a revolutionary future is closer than you might think. . . . Kurzweil’s capacity for predictive thinking should not be underestimated. . . . This book brims with ideas about what lies ahead, and Kurzweil presents his vision with clarity and passion.” \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e—Kirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e (starred review)\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Ray Kurzweil’s Moore’s Law abstraction is the most important thing ever graphed. It’s continuity—over his lifetime of writing—is the greatest take-away for the future of humanity, and the future of intelligence.\"\u003cbr\u003e—\u003cb\u003eSteve Jurvetson, Managing Director of Future Ventures\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e“Ray Kurzweil’s \u003ci\u003eThe Singularity Is Nearer\u003c\/i\u003e is to information technology what Charles Darwin’s \u003ci\u003eOrigin of the Species\u003c\/i\u003e was to life science—a cogent, fact-based, clear-eyed, multi-disciplinary exposition of a fundamental truth about the world. Just as Darwin demonstrated that all life branched from eons of antecedent roots, Kurzweil shows that epochs of compounding information processing is resulting in a merger of humanity and computational software. \u003ci\u003eThe Singularity Is Nearer \u003c\/i\u003ereads like a thriller because it honestly presents each of the perils of accelerating AI, but then, like an aircraft coming out of a storm, exquisitely lands the reader at a hopeful future filled with economic opportunity and ever-longer life. Kurzweil leaves no stone unturned in his examination of the employment, national security and personal well-being aspects of the coming “singularity” of AI, and the book is packed with directly relevant graphs, statistics and references. Best of all, Ray has given each of us in this book an observatory into the human mind—a \u003ci\u003epersonal\u003c\/i\u003e telescope that lets \u003ci\u003eeach of us\u003c\/i\u003e see better than ever just how our own minds work, what our own consciousness really is, why our merger with AI is inevitable, how it will practically occur and why humanity will be by far the better off as a result. There can be no more salient guide to the next two decades of life than \u003ci\u003eThe Singularity Is Nearer\u003c\/i\u003e.”\u003cbr\u003e—\u003cb\u003eMartine Rothblatt, Ph.D., Creator of SiriusXM, United Therapeutics, electric helicopters and the Bina48 robot\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\"Ray explores mounting evidence that we are—right now—on the brink of a new human civilization. We’ll experience life in a whole new way. Ray shows us how it’s all coming together, today. His evidence overwhelms and inspires. It’s shocking, hopeful, scary, disruptive, poignant, personal, industrial, positive, global, cosmic, and—ultimately—indisputable. Everyone seriously concerned about the future should read this book.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Dean Kamen, Inventor, entrepreneur, youth educator, award-winning mechanical engineer, recipient of the U.S. National Medal of Technology, inductee in the National Inventors Hall of Fame\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“My view of the future has been forever impacted by Ray Kurzweil. Twenty-four years ago, he predicted AI would reach human-level intelligence by 2029. His vision seemed like a dream and yet here we are, right on track. This book will challenge everything you know about technology, life, and death. It will light you up with answers to today’s most pressing questions about artificial intelligence and the future of humanity.”\u003cbr\u003e—\u003cb\u003eTony Robbins, Global Entrepreneur, Investor, \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e #1 Bestselling Author, Philanthropist, and the world’s #1 Life and Business Strategist\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Kurzweil makes a compelling case with data and persuasive logic that technological advances give us reason for optimism. It is only 2023 and already the world he envisioned years ago is taking shape. Curious about the Future? Read this book!\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e —Vint Cerf, a Father of the Internet and Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist, Google\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“If you want to know where artificial intelligence—and our society—will be in 20 years, read \u003ci\u003eThe Singularity Is Nearer\u003c\/i\u003e today. The implications that visionary genius Ray Kurzweil describes in this book are so extraordinary and far-reaching, we must begin understanding these and planning now. Highly recommended!”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Dean Ornish, MD, founder and president, Preventive Medicine Research Institute; clinical professor of medicine, University of California, San Francisco; author, \u003ci\u003eUndo It!: How Simple Lifestyle Changes Can Reverse Most Chronic Diseases, The Spectrum\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eDr. Dean Ornish’s Program for Reversing Heart Disease\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Ray Kurzweil is the greatest oracle of our digital age. \u003ci\u003eThe Singularity Is Nearer\u003c\/i\u003e is more than just a book—it's a survival guide for the technological renaissance we're about to experience. Ray’s accurate projections of what is likely to happen and when, makes the difference between surfing atop the tsunami of change, versus being crushed by it.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Peter H. Diamandis, MD, \u003ci\u003eNew York Times \u003c\/i\u003eBestselling author, Founder, XPRIZE, Singularity\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Kurzweil’s predictions have come true in spades. His methodology in tracking the exponential growth of technology is right on the money and I have benefited tremendously from it. \u003ci\u003eThe Singularity Is Nearer\u003c\/i\u003e is a worthy addition to his remarkable series of books; an ambitious feat, laying out the next 20+ years in business, health, jobs, creativity, and humanity, all from the common foundation of his Law of Accelerating Returns.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Lloyd Watts, Technologist, Entrepreneur, and Author\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"\u003ci\u003eThe Singularity Is Nearer\u003c\/i\u003e may be the single most important contribution to understanding the valuable roles of AI and nanotechnology. With clarity, Ray Kurzweil tells a tale of evolving information processes that are reinventing intelligence. This captivating sequence of historical events and rigorously researched facts are a worthy and positive ethos for humanity’s future.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Natasha Vita-More, PhD, Author \u003ci\u003eTranshumanist Manifesto\u003c\/i\u003e, Co-creator of the Transhumanist Movement, Founder, Center for Transhumanist Studies\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\"Wow! Without question, this is Ray Kurzweil’s best book to date. It’s a page-turner with unimpeachable gravitas and authority on genetics, nanotechnology, robotics, and the future. He handles the pluses and minuses of the near-term impact of the coming singularity on jobs with great skill and tact. The book is a towering accomplishment.\"\u003cbr\u003e—\u003cb\u003eHarry George, entrepreneur, venture capitalist, Cofounder of Interleaf, Inc., Cofounder and Managing Partner, Solstice Capital\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Ray Kurzweil has one of the great American minds. It's a beautiful experience to talk back and forth with Ray because if you don't listen carefully, you could miss out on his 'pearls of wisdom.'\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Suzanne Somers, actress, singer, comedienne, NYTimes bestselling author, entrepreneur, and lecturer\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e “Drawing on scientific reports, research studies, and interviews with experts, Kurzweil observes the long term trends in order to ponder the promises and perils of AI when it comes to nuclear weapons and genetic engineering. To readers interested in AI and biotechnology, Kurzweil offers insight as he breaks down the complex topic and addresses the ethical issues surrounding its use and place in society.” \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e—Booklist\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cu\u003e\u003cb\u003ePraise for Ray Kurzweil\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/u\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\"Not everything that Kurzweil predicts may come to pass, but a lot of it will, and even if you don't agree with everything he says, it's all worth paying attention to.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e —\u003ci\u003eThe Philadelphia Inquirer\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\"[Ray Kurzweil] has a way of tackling seemingly overwhelming challenges with an army of reason.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e —Rafael Reif, president, MIT\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\"Kurzweil paints a tantalizing—and sometimes terrifying—portrait of a world where the line between humans and machines has become thoroughly blurred.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e —\u003ci\u003eThe Boston Globe\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\"The restless genius.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e —\u003ci\u003eThe Wall Street Journal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\"The ultimate thinking machine.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e —\u003ci\u003eForbes\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003eRay 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 artificial intelligence for sixty-one years―longer than any other living person. He was the principal inventor of the first CCD flatbed scanner, omni-font optical character recognition, the print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, the text-to-speech synthesizer, the music synthesizer capable of recreating the grand piano and other orchestral instruments, and commercially marketed large-vocabulary speech recognition software. Ray received a GRAMMY® Award for outstanding achievement in music technology. He is the recipient of the National Medal of Technology and was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. He has written five bestselling books including \u003ci\u003eThe Singularity Is Near\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eHow to Create a Mind\u003c\/i\u003e. He is a Principal Researcher and AI Visionary at Google.\u003cb\u003eIntroduction\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e In my 2005 book \u003ci\u003eThe Singularity Is Near\u003c\/i\u003e, I set forth my theory that convergent, exponential technological trends are leading to a transi­tion that will be utterly transformative for humanity. There are several key areas of change that are continuing to accelerate simultaneously: computing power is becoming cheaper, human biology is becoming better understood, and engineering is becoming possible at far smaller scales. As artificial intelligence grows in ability and information be­comes more accessible, we are integrating these capabilities ever more closely with our natural biological intelligence. Eventually nanotech­nology will enable these trends to culminate in directly expanding our brains with layers of virtual neurons in the cloud. In this way we will merge with AI and augment ourselves with millions of times the compu­tational power that our biology gave us. This will expand our intelli­gence and consciousness so profoundly that it’s difficult to comprehend. This event is what I mean by the Singularity.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The term “singularity” is borrowed from mathematics (where it refers to an undefined point in a function, like when dividing by zero) and physics (where it refers to the infinitely dense point at the center of a black hole, where the normal laws of physics break down). But it is important to remember that I use the term as a metaphor. My predic­tion of the technological Singularity does not suggest that rates of change will actually become infinite, as exponential growth does not imply infinity, nor does a physical singularity. A black hole has gravity strong enough to trap even light itself, but there is no means in quantum mechanics to account for a truly infinite amount of mass. Rather, I use the singularity metaphor because it captures our inability to compre­hend such a radical shift with our current level of intelligence. But as the transition happens, we will enhance our cognition quickly enough to adapt.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e As I detailed in \u003ci\u003eThe Singularity Is Near\u003c\/i\u003e, long-term trends suggest that the Singularity will happen around 2045. At the time that book was published, that date lay forty years—two full generations—in the future. At that distance I could make predictions about the broad forces that would bring about this transformation, but for most read­ers the subject was still relatively far removed from daily reality in 2005. And many critics argued then that my timeline was overopti­mistic, or even that the Singularity was impossible.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Since then, though, something remarkable has happened. Progress has continued to accelerate in defiance of the doubters. Social media and smartphones have gone from virtually nonexistent to all-day com­panions that now connect a majority of the world’s population. Algo­rithmic innovations and the emergence of big data have allowed AI to achieve startling breakthroughs sooner than even experts expected—from mastering games like \u003ci\u003eJeopardy! \u003c\/i\u003eand Go to driving automobiles, writing essays, passing bar exams, and diagnosing cancer. Now, power­ful and flexible large language models like GPT‑4 and Gemini can trans­late natural-language instructions into computer code—dramatically reducing the barrier between humans and machines. By the time you read this, tens of millions of people likely will have experienced these capabilities firsthand. Meanwhile, the cost to sequence a human’s ge­nome has fallen by about 99.997 percent, and neural networks have begun unlocking major medical discoveries by simulating biology dig­itally. We’re even gaining the ability to finally connect computers to brains directly. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eUnderlying all these developments is what I call the law of acceler­ating returns: information technologies like computing get exponen­tially cheaper because each advance makes it easier to design the next stage of their own evolution. As a result, as I write this, one dollar buys about 11,200 times as much computing power, adjusting for inflation, as it did when \u003ci\u003eThe Singularity Is Near \u003c\/i\u003ehit shelves.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The following graph, which I’ll discuss in depth later in the book, summarizes the most important trend powering our technological civi­lization: the long-term exponential growth (shown as a roughly straight line on this logarithmic scale) in the amount of computing power a con­stant dollar can purchase. Moore’s law famously observes that transis­tors have been steadily shrinking, allowing computers to get ever more powerful—but that is just one manifestation of the law of accelerating returns, which already held true long before transistors were invented and can be expected to continue even after transistors reach their phys­ical limits and are succeeded by new technologies. This trend has de­fined the modern world, and almost all the coming breakthroughs discussed in this book will be enabled by it directly or indirectly.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSo we have kept on schedule for the Singularity. The urgency of this book comes from the nature of exponential change itself. Trends that were barely noticeable at the start of this century are now actively impacting billions of lives. In the early 2020s we entered the sharply steepening part of the exponential curve, and the pace of innovation is affecting society like never before. For perspective, the moment you’re reading this is probably closer to the creation of the first superhuman AI than to the release of my last book, 2012’s \u003ci\u003eHow to Create a Mind\u003c\/i\u003e. And you’re probably closer to the Singularity than to the release of my 1999 book \u003ci\u003eThe Age of Spiritual Machines\u003c\/i\u003e. Or, measured in terms of human life, babies born today will be just graduating college when the Singularity happens. This is, on a very personal level, a different kind of “near” than it was in 2005.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e That is why I’ve written this book now. Humanity’s millennia-long march toward the Singularity has become a sprint. In the introduction to \u003ci\u003eThe Singularity Is Near\u003c\/i\u003e, I wrote that we were then “in the early stages of this transition.” Now we are entering its culmination. That book was about glimpsing a distant horizon—this one is about the last miles along the path to reach it. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLuckily, we can now see this path much more clearly. Although many technological challenges remain before we can achieve the Sin­gularity, its key precursors are rapidly moving from the realm of theo­retical science to active research and development. During the coming decade, people will interact with AI that can seem convincingly human, and simple brain–computer interfaces will impact daily life much like smartphones do today. A digital revolution in biotech will cure diseases and meaningfully extend people’s healthy lives. At the same time, though, many workers will feel the sting of economic disruption, and all of us will face risks from accidental or deliberate misuse of these new capabilities. During the 2030s, self-improving AI and maturing nano­technology will unite humans and our machine creations as never before—heightening both the promise and the peril even further. If we can meet the scientific, ethical, social, and political challenges posed by these advances, by 2045 we will transform life on earth profoundly for the better. Yet if we fail, our very survival is in question. And so this book is about our final approach to the Singularity—the opportunities and dangers we must confront together over the last generation of the world as we knew it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTo begin, we’ll explore how the Singularity will actually happen, and put this in the context of our species’ long quest to reinvent our own intelligence. Creating sentience with technology raises important philosophical questions, so we’ll address how this transition affects our own identity and sense of purpose. Then we will turn to the prac­tical trends that will characterize the coming decades. As I will show, the law of accelerating returns is driving exponential improvements across a very wide range of metrics that reflect human well-being. One of the most obvious downsides of innovation, though, is unemploy­ment caused by automation in its various forms. While these harms are real, we’ll see why there is good reason for long-term optimism—and why we are ultimately not in competition with AI.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAs these technologies unlock enormous material abundance for our civilization, our focus will shift to overcoming the next barrier to our full flourishing: the frailties of our biology. So next, we’ll look ahead to the tools we’ll use over the coming decades to gain increasing mastery over biology itself—first by defeating the aging of our bodies and then by augmenting our limited brains and ushering in the Singularity. Yet these breakthroughs may also put us in jeopardy. Revolutionary new systems in biotechnology, nanotechnology, or artificial intelligence could possibly lead to an existential catastrophe like a devastating pan­demic or a chain reaction of self-replicating machines. We’ll conclude with an assessment of these threats, which warrant careful planning, but as I’ll explain, there are very promising approaches for how to mit­igate them.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThese are the most exciting and momentous years in all of history. We cannot say with confidence what life will be like after the Singular­ity. But by understanding and anticipating the transitions leading up to it, we can help ensure that humanity’s final approach will be safe and successful. \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e \u003cu\u003eChapter 1\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/u\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eWhere Are We in the Six Stages?\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e In \u003ci\u003eThe Singularity Is Near\u003c\/i\u003e, I described the basis of consciousness as information. I cited six epochs, or stages, from the beginning of our universe, with each stage creating the next stage from the information processing of the last. Thus, the evolution of intelligence works via an indirect sequence of other processes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe First Epoch was the birth of the laws of physics and the chem­istry they make possible. A few hundred thousand years after the big bang, atoms formed from electrons circling around a core of protons and neutrons. Protons in a nucleus seemingly should not be so close together, because the electromagnetic force tries to drive them vio­lently apart. However, there happens to be a separate force called the strong nuclear force, which keeps the protons together. “Whoever” designed the rules of the universe provided this additional force, oth­erwise evolution through atoms would have been impossible.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBillions of years later, atoms formed molecules that could represent elaborate information. Carbon was the most useful building block, in that it could form four bonds, as opposed to one, two, or three for many other nuclei. That we live in a world that permits complex chem­istry is extremely unlikely. For example, if the strength of gravity were ever so slightly weaker, there would be no supernovas to create the chemical elements that life is made from. If it were just slightly stron­ger, stars would burn out and die before intelligent life could form. Just this one physical constant had to be in an extremely narrow range or we would not be here. We live in a universe that is very precisely balanced to allow a level of order that has enabled evolution to unfold.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSeveral billion years ago, the Second Epoch began: life. Molecules became complex enough to define an entire organism in one molecule. Thus, living creatures, each with their own DNA, were able to evolve and spread.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn the Third Epoch, animals described by DNA then formed brains, which themselves stored and processed information. These brains gave evolutionary advantages, which helped brains develop more complexity over millions of years.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn the Fourth Epoch, animals used their higher-level cognitive ability, along with their thumbs, to translate thoughts into complex actions. This was humans. Our species used these abilities to create technology that was able to store and manipulate information—from papyrus to hard drives. These technologies augmented our brains’ abilities to perceive, recall, and evaluate information patterns. This is another source of evolution that itself is far greater than the level of progress before it. With brains, we added roughly one cubic inch of brain matter every 100,000 years, whereas with digital computation we are doubling price-performance about every sixteen months.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn the Fifth Epoch, we will directly merge biological human cognition with the speed and power of our digital technology. This is brain–computer interfaces. Human neural processing happens at a speed of several hundred cycles per second, as compared with several billion per second for digital technology. In addition to speed and memory size, augmenting our brains with nonbiological computers will allow us to add many more layers to our neocortices—unlocking vastly more complex and abstract cognition than we can currently imagine.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe Sixth Epoch is where our intelligence spreads throughout the universe, turning ordinary matter into computronium, which is mat­ter organized at the ultimate density of computation.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn my 1999 book \u003ci\u003eThe Age of Spiritual Machines\u003c\/i\u003e, I predicted that a Turing test—wherein an AI can communicate by text indistinguish­ably from a human—would be passed by 2029. I repeated that in 2005’s \u003ci\u003eThe Singularity Is Near. \u003c\/i\u003ePassing a valid Turing test means that an AI has mastered language and commonsense reasoning as pos­sessed by humans. Turing described his concept in 1950,1 but he did not specify how the test should be administered. In a bet that I have with Mitch Kapor, we defined our own rules that are much more diffi­cult than other interpretations.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMy expectation was that in order to pass a valid Turing test by 2029, we would need to be able to attain a great variety of intellectual achievements with AI by 2020. And indeed, since that prediction, AI has mastered many of humanity’s toughest intellectual challenges—from games like \u003ci\u003eJeopardy! \u003c\/i\u003eand Go to serious applications like radiol­ogy and drug discovery. As I write this, top AI systems like Gemini and GPT‑4 are broadening their abilities to many different domains of performance—encouraging steps on the road to general intelli­gence.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eUltimately, when a program passes the Turing test, it will actually need to make itself appear far less intelligent in many areas because otherwise it would be clear that it is an AI. For example, if it could correctly solve any math problem instantly, it would fail the test. Thus, at the Turing test level, AIs will have capabilities that in fact go far be­yond the best humans in most fields.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHumans are now in the Fourth Epoch, with our technology already producing results that exceed what we can understand for some tasks. For the aspects of the Turing test that AI has not yet mastered, we are making rapid and accelerating progress. Passing the Turing test, which I have been anticipating for 2029, will bring us to the Fifth Epoch.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA key capability in the 2030s will be to connect the upper ranges of our neocortices to the cloud, which will directly extend our think­ing. In this way, rather than AI being a competitor, it will become an extension of ourselves. By the time this happens, the nonbiological portions of our minds will provide thousands of times more cognitive capacity than the biological parts.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAs this progresses exponentially, we will extend our minds many millions-fold by 2045. It is this incomprehensible speed and magni­tude of transformation that will enable us to borrow the singularity metaphor from physics to describe our future.","brand":"Penguin Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48532209631461,"sku":"NP9780399562785","price":20.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780399562785.jpg?v=1773183075","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/the-singularity-is-nearer-isbn-9780399562785","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}