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The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence Paperback – January 1, 2000

by Ray Kurzweil (Author)

4.4 501 ratings

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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 GATES

Imagine 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, the“restless 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, Kurzweil’s 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 pathways

Eventually, the distinction between humans and computers will have become sufficiently blurred that when the machines claim to be conscious, we will believe them.

Print length

388 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Penguin Books
Publication date

January 1, 2000
Grade level

12 and up
Reading age

18 years and up
Dimensions

9.24 x 6.02 x 0.89 inches
ISBN-10

9780140282023
ISBN-13

978-0140282023
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From the Publisher


	The Singularity Is Near	How to Create a Mind	The Age of Spiritual Machines	Fantastic Voyage	The Singularity is Nearer

Customer Reviews	1,887	1,556	501	271	224
Price	$14.39	$16.64	$16.34	$15.05	$21.99
More Books from Ray Kurzweil	✓	✓	✓	✓

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

How much do we humans enjoy our current status as the most intelligent beings on earth? Enough to try to stop our own inventions from surpassing us in smarts? If so, we'd better pull the plug right now, because if Ray Kurzweil is right we've only got until about 2020 before computers outpace the human brain in computational power. Kurzweil, artificial intelligence expert and author of The Age of Intelligent Machines, shows that technological evolution moves at an exponential pace. Further, he asserts, in a sort of swirling postulate, time speeds up as order increases, and vice versa. He calls this the "Law of Time and Chaos," and it means that although entropy is slowing the stream of time down for the universe overall, and thus vastly increasing the amount of time between major events, in the eddy of technological evolution the exact opposite is happening, and events will soon be coming faster and more furiously. This means that we'd better figure out how to deal with conscious machines as soon as possible--they'll soon not only be able to beat us at chess, but also likely demand civil rights, and might at last realize the very human dream of immortality.

The Age of Spiritual Machines is compelling and accessible, and not necessarily best read from front to back--it's less heavily historical if you jump around (Kurzweil encourages this). Much of the content of the book lays the groundwork to justify Kurzweil's timeline, providing an engaging primer on the philosophical and technological ideas behind the study of consciousness. Instead of being a gee-whiz futurist manifesto, Spiritual Machines reads like a history of the future, without too much science fiction dystopianism. Instead, Kurzweil shows us the logical outgrowths of current trends, with all their attendant possibilities. This is the book we'll turn to when our computers first say "hello." --Therese Littleton

Review

“The Age of Spiritual Machines will blow your mind. Kurzweil lays out a scenario that might seem like science fiction if it weren’t coming from a proven entrepreneur.”—San Francisco Chronicle

“From the arrowhead to the jackhammer, toolmakers like Kurzweil have changed the world we live in. . . . This is a book for anyone who likes to think about where current trends are taking us.”—Christian Science Monitor

“Tantalizing—sometimes terrifying. . . . a welcome challenge to beliefs we hold dear.”—Boston Globe

“Kurzweil’s broad outlook and fresh approach make his optimism hard to resist.”—Kirkus Reviews

“This is a book for computer enthusiasts, science fiction writers in search of cutting-edge themes and anyone who wonders where human technology is going next.”—The New York Times

From the Back Cover

Step into the world of Ray Kurzweil, the "restless genius" (Wall Street Journal) and "ultimate thinking machine" (Forbes), whose predictions for an age in which man and machine are interchangeable are startling, provocative -- and closer to realization than you think.

Imagine 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, the 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, Kurzweil's 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 by the year 2020 (with human-level capabilities not far behind); relationships with automated personalities who will be our teachers, companions, and lovers; and information fed straight into our brains along direct neural pathways. Eventually, the distinction between humans and computers will have become sufficiently blurred that when the machines claim to be conscious, we will believe them.

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 artificial intelligence for more than six decades—longer than any other living person. He was the principal inventor of the first CCD flat-bed scanner, omni-font optical character recognition, print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, text-to-speech synthesizer, 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 books including The Singularity Is Near and How to Create a Mind, both New York Times bestsellers, and Danielle: Chronicles of a Superheroine, winner of multiple young adult fiction awards. He is a Principal Researcher and AI Visionary at Google.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ 0140282025
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Books; Penguin Bks 2000 Publishing edition (January 1, 2000)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 388 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780140282023
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0140282023
Reading age ‏ : ‎ 18 years and up
Grade level ‏ : ‎ 12 and up
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 12.8 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 9.24 x 6.02 x 0.89 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #110,114 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #23 in Human-Computer Interaction (Books)
- #98 in Social Aspects of Technology
- #216 in Artificial Intelligence & Semantics

Customer Reviews:
4.4 501 ratings

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Ray Kurzweil

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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 artificial intelligence for 61 years – longer than any other living person. He was the principal inventor of the first CCD flat-bed scanner, omni-font optical character recognition, print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, text-to-speech synthesizer, 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 best-selling books including The Singularity Is Near and How To Create A Mind, both New York Times best sellers, and Danielle: Chronicles of a Superheroine, winner of multiple young adult fiction awards. His forthcoming book, The Singularity Is Nearer, will be released June 25, 2024. He is a Principal Researcher and AI Visionary at Google.

Customer reviews

501 global ratings

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Customers say

Customers find the book interesting, clear, and easy to understand. They also appreciate the excellent insight and well-researched content. Overall, customers describe it as an extremely interesting book to read that's comforting, entertaining, and well researched.

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28 customers mention "Writing quality"28 positive0 negative

Customers find the writing quality of the book interesting, elegant, thoughtful, and fascinating. They also say it's a fascinating portrait of life.

"...I think that this is an important book that everyone should be familiar with, particularly the dire end of MOSHs (Mostly Original Substrate Humans.)..." Read more

"...All in all, this is an extremely interesting book to read...." Read more

"I find this book thoroughly interesting. As a mathematician, I have found many books on the subject of AI lacking in content. This one surprised me...." Read more

"...a lot of that stuff in this book, but Kurzweil is also a readable and prolific philosopher, and whether you agree with his philosophy or not, did I..." Read more

21 customers mention "Content"16 positive5 negative

Customers find the book's content excellent, relevant, and a perfect introduction to the future. They also say it's a great resource for AI, and fascinating to learn how these models work. Readers also mention the book is very comprehensive and right in its time.

"Written in 1999, this book is very comprehensive and generally right in its predictions...." Read more

"...A truly explosive increase in machine intelligence is described, up to unimaginable levels only 100 years from now...." Read more

"...This book is a perfect introduction for a future that will be somewhat alien for some...." Read more

"...virtually all of his assumptions and analogies have an excessive technological zeal and don't hold up to any real questioning; it is, after all,..." Read more

12 customers mention "Readability"10 positive2 negative

Customers find the book interesting, with a Platonic dialog approach to some chapters. They also say the prose is clear and easy to understand. Readers also mention the book is frightening as well as inspiring.

"...It helps to know a little physics, but his prose is clear and easy to understand...." Read more

"This is an immensely interesting & provocative little book by Ray Kurzweil...." Read more

"...whether the scenarios he predicts are really plausible, but it's certainly interesting. By 2099, humanity has effectively acheived immortality...." Read more

"Kurzweil is an interesting writer, he has some fascinating ideas...." Read more

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Kurzweil was uncannily accurate: It is best to read this, though it has a most depressing ending

Reviewed in the United States on May 12, 2024

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Ray Kurzweil can rightfully claim the title of "prophet", because his predictions of 1998 have proven to be uncannily accurate here in 2024. While he missed some things, he also certainly made an amazing amount of correct guesses. His work is thoroughly worth reading in 2024, unlike almost all other books attempting prophecy.

On the misses: he assumed that there would be continuing value to intellectual property, which now appears to be wrong. That particular miss mars some of his other guesses based on that assumption, particularly ones about structuring future economies on the continuing value of intellectual property. (Also, for the computer science types, he also seems to have missed on guesses about genetic algorithms being a key component of AI; that does not seem to have panned out, or, at least, not up to this point.)

The spoiler is that he predicted the end of humanity at the hands of our AI progeny. Let's strongly hope that he got that one wrong, too.

It's not a great pleasure to read this book. Ray Kurzweil is good at writing prose, but his technique of a conversation with an imaginary "Molly" over the decades of the 21st century isn't one that I liked. These imagined conversations make up a fair percentage of the page count (roughly 65 pages of the total 260 pages in the main body of the book, which is over 20%), and I personally found those wearying to wade through.

His timeline in the appendix is excellent, and it is worth skipping to it first, before tackling the text.

I think that this is an important book that everyone should be familiar with, particularly the dire end of MOSHs (Mostly Original Substrate Humans.) We can always hope that we escape that fate!

5 people found this helpful

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Chad M

An optimistic appraisal of the Internet, computing, and how these support a better quality of life

Reviewed in the United States on May 1, 2020

Verified Purchase

Written in 1999, this book is very comprehensive and generally right in its predictions. Technology has advanced substantially, has reached many middle-class families here and abroad, and computer programs that simulate thinking and planning are being used effectively by corporations and governments.
One area where the book may have been less accurate is that Kurzweil's idea of AI being one computer or a group of computers that has human-like intelligence or superintelligence appears to have been displaced by networking of people, universities, corporations, and government departments (social media and the Cloud). The Cloud would seem to be more or less something like the Singularity he predicts. A good summary of Kurzweil's and AI researcher ideas can be seen in the documentary film "Transcendent Man".
Two other recent topics are worth noting: energy and public health. While there may be some exploration of energy sources for large-scale AI in his other books and in the film, this title does not explain how much solar energy, nuclear reactors, or hydropower would be required for global scale AI networks. If the energy system is not sustainable the AI dream would be quite limited. On public health, specifically disease outbreaks, it is now clear in 2020 that highly infectious diseases like the coronavirus are a challenge that government can respond better to when government uses internet technology, databases, Cloud computing, and "AI", not to mention high-tech manufacturing.
The internet pioneers were optimists about technology's future. Ultimately, we invented and developed modern technology to improve the quality of life. Today, as technology has grown more powerful our choices about how to use technology are more consequential. The knowledge and experience of our leaders and the fairness and decency of leaders overseas will be tested severely by this newly found power.

2 people found this helpful

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Dianelos Georgoudis

The future will be swamped by intelligence

Reviewed in the United States on June 23, 2001

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The argument here starts with the observation that intelligent machines are already a reality. In the future we will be able to create ever more intelligent machines. A truly explosive increase in machine intelligence is described, up to unimaginable levels only 100 years from now.
As far as hardware is concerned, the author insists that Moore's law, according to which computing power at a given cost doubles every 18 months, will continue unabated. Current computer technology will hit fundamental physical constrains in about 10 years, but the author insists that intelligence will find a way to grow explosively without slowing down because of mere physics. He describes several potential avenues through which computer power can increase. The most intriguing one is the possibility of building quantum computers. According to theory these can have immense computing power, because quantum phenomena allow for a huge number of calculations to be done in parallel. Nature does never give something for nothing, and, for my taste, quantum computers come too close to the edge - but who knows?
More interesting is the question of software. When I was a student I was taught that hardware power is not very significant for defining the reach of computers, because algorithmic complexity almost always grows exponentially when related to the size of the problem to be solved. So fundamental advances will come from better algorithms, not from increased hardware power. The current state of affairs seems to agree with this view. After all, word processing 20 years ago using an Apple II is not fundamentally different from word processing today using computers a thousand times more powerful. Algorithmic design is a very costly process that few humans can do well, and this fact, it seems, would necessarily frustrate the rapid increase in machine intelligence. The author produces two solutions: One, to dissect a human brain and copy its "algorithm". To me this sounds rather similar to Da Vinci's idea of dissecting birds in order to build a flying machine. The second solution refers to methods where the algorithm builds itself, i.e. learns how to work. Two methodologies are mentioned here, genetic algorithms and neural nets. Many examples are given about the successful use of these to solve surprisingly difficult problems. These are powerful ideas. Certainly if we come to a point where an intelligent machine can design and maybe build an even more intelligent machine, then indeed we have the ingredients for a runaway explosion of intelligence.
The author paints a rather scary near future. First we use machines to broaden our own minds, but we also build independent machines that become more and more powerful. The war between conscious machines and humans never happens, because it is won by the machines before it even starts: Human minds migrate into machines and lead a fruitful life within the more expansive means that this new medium offers. A few biological humans remain at a much lower level of intelligence, and presumably wilt away without remorse or bitterness. The next level of evolution is achieved by beings that are unimaginably more intelligent than we are now. At this stage it is not meaningful to talk about machines, they are just our offspring living in bodies that are not DNA based. In fact these immortal beings include persons originally born as humans, including, it is stated, Microsoft's Bill Gates. Again, all of this will happen in the next 100 years.
Now, what is wrong in this picture, apart from the idea of having Bill Gates around for all eternity?
For starters, for this vision to work the whole world should be like California, which it is not. On most places of this planet misery rather than intelligence rules. The book was written before the techno-bubble burst, an event not predicted in the book, and also before the recent power failures in California itself. The earth is in such bad working order that one must wonder if ever intelligence will take hold.
Also, if the explosion of intelligence is a necessary natural phenomenon, something like an unstoppable supernova, then by now the universe should be full of manifestations of intelligence, it should be infused, drenched, saturated by intelligence. Why, entire suns would be cloaked in order to harvest their energy needed for the huge amount of computations going on. (Maybe this explains the mystery of the dark matter, i.e. the fact that most matter in the universe is not visible.) Also, why hasn't this cosmic intelligent fabric reached us? Well, maybe they wanted to leave part of the universe in its natural state, you know like we keep protected nature parks. Our corner of the universe may be just such a place. We do not listen to the noise created by intelligence elsewhere, but maybe this only shows our low level of development.
Now, if we assume that the universe is not really intelligent, this leaves us with three possibilities: First, for some reason there may exist intrinsic limits to the growth of intelligence. This does not seem probable, particularly after reading this book. Second, depressingly, the explosive growth of intelligence may always bring about its demise, the same way that the uncontrolled growth of cancer kills the organism that creates it. This sounds rather plausible if we observe the way humanity manages the world today. The third possibility is that the growth of intelligence reaches a level where it decides to stop, where it understands that the "law of accelerating returns" is not conducive to happiness. So maybe the universe is filled not only by intelligent, but also by wise races, that look after their own small garden without disturbing the rest of creation, and live meaningful, biological, limited lives.
All in all, this is an extremely interesting book to read. I withhold one star, only because I find that the catchy title has little relevance to its content.

16 people found this helpful

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Jean Benoit Dubé

A must

Reviewed in Canada on December 24, 2022

Verified Purchase

Great book which made me think and take a step back. A new perspective on tech and society is refreshing. An opinion more nuanced and educated than « society is trash, tech is bad, future is screwed » that we usually hear and see in sci fi movies.