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How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed Paperback – Illustrated, August 27, 2013

by Ray Kurzweil (Author)

4.5 1,556 ratings

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The bold futurist and renowned author of The Singularity Is Near explores the limitless potential of reverse-engineering the human brain.

“This book is a Rosetta Stone for the mystery of human thought.”—Martine Rothblatt, chairman and CEO, United Therapeutics, and creator of Sirius XM Satellite Radio

“Kurzweil’s vision of our super-enhanced future is completely sane and calmly reasoned, and his book should nicely smooth the path for the earth’s robot overlords, who, it turns out, will be us.”—The New York Times

In How to Create a Mind, Ray Kurzweil presents a provocative exploration of the most important project in human-machine civilization: reverse-engineering the brain to understand precisely how it works and using that knowledge to create even more intelligent machines.

Kurzweil discusses how the brain functions, how the mind emerges, brain-computer interfaces, and the implications of vastly increasing the powers of our intelligence to address the world’s problems. He also thoughtfully examines emotional and moral intelligence and the origins of consciousness and envisions the radical possibilities of our merging with the intelligent technology we are creating.

Drawing on years of advanced research and cutting-edge inventions in artificial intelligence, How to Create a Mind is an incredible synthesis of neuroscience and technology and provides a road map for the future of human progress.

Print length

352 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Penguin Books
Publication date

August 27, 2013
Dimensions

0.9 x 5.4 x 8.4 inches
ISBN-10

9780143124047
ISBN-13

978-0143124047
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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

Review

“Kurzweil's vision of our super-enhanced future is completely sane and calmly reasoned, and his book should nicely smooth the path for the earth's robot overlords, who, it turns out, will be us.”—The New York Times

“Kurzweil writes boldly and with a showman’s flair, expertly guiding the lay reader into deep thickets of neuroscience.”—Kate Tuttle, Boston Globe

“This book is a breath of fresh air . . . . Kurzweil makes an argument for optimism.”—Laura Spinney, New Scientist

“A fascinating exercise in futurology.”—Kirkus Reviews

“It is rare to find a book that offers unique and inspiring content on every page. How to Create a Mind achieves that and more. Ray has a way of tackling seemingly overwhelming challenges with an army of reason, in the end convincing the reader that it is within our reach to create nonbiological intelligence that will soar past our own. This is a visionary work that is also accessible and entertaining.”—Rafael Reif, president, MIT

“Kurzweil’s new book on the mind is magnificent, timely, and solidly argued! His best so far!”—Marvin Minsky, MIT Toshiba Professor of Media Arts and Sciences; cofounder of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab; widely regarded as “the father of artificial intelligence”

“If you ever wondered about how your mind works, read this book. Kurzweil’s insights reveal key secrets underlying human thought and our ability to recreate it. This is an eloquent and thought-provoking work.”—Dean Kamen, physicist; inventor of the first wearable insulin pump, the HomeChoice dialysis machine, and the IBOT mobility system; founder of FIRST; recipient of the National Medal of Technology

“One of the eminent AI pioneers, Ray Kurzweil, has created a new book to explain the true nature of intelligence, both biological and nonbiological. The book describes the human brain as a machine that can understand hierarchical concepts ranging from the form of a chair to the nature of humor. His important insights emphasize the key role of learning both in the brain and in AI. He provides a credible road map for achieving the goal of super-human intelligence, which will be necessary to solve the grand challenges of humanity.”—Raj Reddy, founding director, Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University; recipient of the Turing Award from the Association for Computing Machinery

“Ray Kurzweil pioneered artificial intelligence systems that could read print in any type style, synthesize speech and music, and understand speech. These were the forerunners of the present revolution in machine learning that is creating intelligent computers that can beat humans in chess, win on Jeopardy!, and drive cars. His new book is a clear and compelling overview of the progress, especially in learning, that is enabling this revolution in the technologies of intelligence. It also offers important insights into a future in which we will begin solving what I believe is the greatest problem in science and technology today: the problem of how the brain works and of how it generates intelligence.”—Tomaso Poggio, Eugene McDermott Professor, MIT Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences; director, MIT Center for Biological and Computational Learning; former chair, MIT McGovern Institute for Brain Research; one of the most cited neuroscientists in the world

“This book is a Rosetta stone for the mystery of human thought. Even more remarkably, it is a blueprint for creating artificial consciousness that is as persuasive and emotional as our own. Kurzweil deals with the subject of consciousness better than anyone from Blackmore to Dennett. His persuasive thought experiment is of Einstein quality: It forces recognition of the truth.”—Martine Rothblatt, chairman and CEO, United Therapeutics; creator of Sirius XM Satellite Radio

“Kurzweil’s book is a shining example of his prodigious ability to synthesize ideas from disparate domains and explain them to readers in simple, elegant language. Just as Chanute’s Progress in Flying Machines ushered in the era of aviation over a century ago, this book is the harbinger of the coming revolution in artificial intelligence that 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 our future. If you care about any of these, read this book!”—Peter H. Diamandis, chairman and CEO, X PRIZE; executive chairman, Singularity University; author of the New York Times bestseller Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think

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 ‏ : ‎ 0143124048
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Books; Illustrated edition (August 27, 2013)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 352 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780143124047
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0143124047
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 0.9 x 5.4 x 8.4 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #297,151 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2 in Computer Localization
- #493 in Artificial Intelligence & Semantics
- #1,224 in Biology (Books)

Customer Reviews:
4.5 1,556 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.

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1,556 global ratings

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Customers say

Customers find the book's content valuable and well-founded. They also say it lays a good conceptual foundation and is organized. Opinions are mixed on the technical level, with some finding it laying a conceptual foundation, while others say it's not complete and not a definitive description. Readers also have mixed feelings about readability, with others finding the explanations well-written and interesting, while still others find it difficult to understand.

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Content Informative Value Readability Technical level Writing style

100 customers mention "Content"100 positive0 negative

Customers find the book contains valuable information that can help them put together the story. They also say it's engagingly told, comprehensive, and better structured than other books. Readers also find it interesting to see the predictions the author has made and his reason as to why they came true.

"...Ray Kurzweil's range of knowledge is almost overwhelming...." Read more

"...are structured in such a way that they are capable of learning from the environment...." Read more

"...What I liked most was about the book was how it changed my understanding of how the brain works...." Read more

"...successes make this an important story; furthermore, it is engagingly told.I cover neuroscience and AI at bobblum.com ...." Read more

9 customers mention "Informative"9 positive0 negative

Customers find the book very well-founded and convincing. They also say the book was in great condition.

"...help anyone who has little understanding of it and will be an excellent reinforcer for those with previous knowledge...." Read more

"...Quick delivery. Perfect condition." Read more

"...His arguments remain the same and for me are convincing enough...." Read more

"Kurzweil provides a convincing argument on how the brain works, clarifying its capabilities as well as its biological-evolutionary limitations...." Read more

5 customers mention "Value"5 positive0 negative

Customers find the book worth every penny. They also say the rewards are significant.

"...some effort, but it is well within the range of most, and the rewards are significant...." Read more

"...Anyway, very good book for the price." Read more

"...50% of the book a re-hash of old content, and the other 50% worth every penny." Read more

"...This is a book is well worth buying especially for the price." Read more

54 customers mention "Readability"31 positive23 negative

Customers are mixed about the readability. Some find the explanation very well written, clear, and simple enough. They also say the book has an adequate and pragmatic vision corresponding to the contemporary level of human. However, some find it very hard to read, with unnecessary obtuse language and opaque sentence structure. They say the chapters in some areas are not always easy to follow and the book does not summarize that literature or move it forward.

"...Kurzweil lays out his arguments very clearly, and he does have a knack for explaining some very difficult concepts in a very simple way...." Read more

"...imho this chapter can be shortened and most of the discussions are unnecessary and unclear." Read more

"...Kurzweil presents this topic in a beautifully comprehensible exposition.Kurzweil elaborates a story here that 1) the cortex is..." Read more

"...recognizer hierarchies and hierarchical Markov chain architecture, clearly done, detailed enough to see what is going on, I thought outstanding and..." Read more

30 customers mention "Technical level"17 positive13 negative

Customers are mixed about the technical level. Some mention that it lays a good conceptual foundation for where to start, provides clear explanations of the structures in the brain, and provides essential information for everyone wanting to understand the world today. However, others say that they have limited ability to understand such profound concepts, and that the book offers no constructive guidance to creating an intelligent.

"...His patient and clear explanation of the structures in the brain will help anyone who has little understanding of it and will be an excellent..." Read more

"...of the author's material however was due to my limited ability to understand such profound concepts; perhaps I would do better with a "For Dummies"..." Read more

"...The hierarchical structure is innate, but the specific categories and meta-categories are filled in by way of learning...." Read more

"...This is not "How To Create A Mind" ... the title is false advertising...." Read more

5 customers mention "Writing style"0 positive5 negative

Customers find the writing style of the book repetitive.

"...My only objection to the book is that there is a fair bit of repetition, and some of the philosophical arguments..." Read more

"...So I give it a 2 because it is a rehash of stuff that I think it close to an insult to Kurzweil's fans and followers and to those who pay good..." Read more

"...and not higher is that the book could be made shorter, some material is a little repetitive and I do not agree with quite a few of the arguments and..." Read more

"Extremely repetitive, not concrete enough with explanations, but on the whole very thought provoking...." Read more

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Robert A. Rose

RECOGNIZE the POWER of YOUR BRAIN

Reviewed in the United States on May 12, 2013

Verified Purchase

HOW TO CREATE A MIND

Ray Kurzweil's range of knowledge is almost overwhelming. His patient and clear explanation of the structures in the brain will help anyone who has little understanding of it and will be an excellent reinforcer for those with previous knowledge. As a parent and retired teacher I wish this information had been available when my younger brother at age 19 had an auto accident (1957) that left him with permanent aphasia and crippled on his right side. I learned about equipotentiality of brain function, but had no clue that the plasticity of the brain was so powerful. A guest on my radio show suffers from serious autism. The new data I gleaned from this book enabled me to help her in ways no one had in her 38 years. It will enable me to ask better questions to some of my guests. I also realized that my ability to give students the opportunities to try many new things, to fail and learn from their mistakes was now based on solid evidence on the brain's ability to be a pattern recognizer and - learning from its mistakes is learning. Instead our organizations look for error-proofing, like teacher-proofing, that demand mindless, coerced conformity, which crushes the brain's natural creativity. Ray, whose book on the Singularity, discussed his belief that computers will eventually be able to duplicate, even outdo human abilities. Or, we will become one with them, which could give us longer life - or immortality. At 81 I won't be around to see this, but I'm happy for my descendants. Between what the Japanese and others are doing with robotics it is very conceivable they will be our servants first, but why not our companions? Many of us are already cyborgs and when computers are the size of our red blood cells maybe we'll finally see that our heart, our "guts," every organ or system of our body can be read by us and keep us informed. If we can combine this with various types of implants, we could be the creators of our evolution. And, we do need help now as every institution of every society is partially to completely dysfunctional. Despite our often productive rule of law we have not learned to deal effectively with our aggression (necessary for individual survival) or our sexuality (necessary for our species survival.) Ray has given us a blueprint so we can begin to accept the fact that what can be created will be created. The sooner we start to see the potentials he discusses, the sooner we be able to meet many of the challenges our species faces. If Ray wants an uninterrupted hour conversation on my radio show - [...] - he can contact me at rewiringyourbrain@gmail.com.

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A. D. Thibeault

A Brief Summary and Review

Reviewed in the United States on November 16, 2012

Verified Purchase

*A full executive summary of this book is available here: An Executive Summary of Ray Kurzweil's 'How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed'

When IBM's Deep Blue defeated humanity's greatest chess player Garry Kasparov in 1997 it marked a major turning point in the progress of artificial intelligence (AI). A still more impressive turning point in AI was achieved in 2011 when another creation of IBM named Watson defeated Jeopardy! phenoms Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter at their own game. As time marches on and technology advances we can easily envision still more impressive feats coming out of AI. And yet when it comes to the prospect of a computer ever actually matching human intelligence in all of its complexity and intricacy, we may find ourselves skeptical that this could ever be fully achieved. There seems to be a fundamental difference between the way a human mind works and the way even the most sophisticated machine works--a qualitative difference that could never be breached. Famous inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil begs to differ.

To begin with--despite the richness and complexity of human thought--Kurzweil argues that the underlying principles and neuro-networks that are responsible for higher-order thinking are actually relatively simple, and in fact fully replicable. Indeed, for Kurzweil, our most sophisticated AI machines are already beginning to employ the same principles and are mimicking the same neuro-structures that are present in the human brain.

Beginning with the brain, Kurzweil argues that recent advances in neuroscience indicate that the neocortex (whence our higher-level thinking comes) operates according to a sophisticated (though relatively straightforward) pattern recognition scheme. This pattern recognition scheme is hierarchical in nature, such that lower-level patterns representing discrete bits of input (coming in from the surrounding environment) combine to trigger higher-level patterns that represent more general categories that are more abstract in nature. The hierarchical structure is innate, but the specific categories and meta-categories are filled in by way of learning. Also, the direction of information travel is not only from the bottom up, but also from the top down, such that the activation of higher-order patterns can trigger lower-order ones, and there is feedback between the varying levels. (The theory that sees the brain operating in this way is referred to as the Pattern Recognition Theory of the Mind or PRTM).

As Kurzweil points out, this pattern recognition scheme is actually remarkably similar to the technology that our most sophisticated AI machines are already using. Indeed, not only are these machines designed to process information in a hierarchical way (just as our brain is), but machines such as Watson (and even Siri, the voice recognition software available on the iPhone), are structured in such a way that they are capable of learning from the environment. For example, Watson was able to modify its software based on the information it gathered from reading the entire Wikipedia file. (The technology that these machines are using is known as the hierarchical hidden Markov model or HHMM, and Kurzweil was himself a part of developing this technology in the 1980's and 1990's.)

Given that our AI machines are now running according to the same principles as our brains, and given the exponential rate at which all information-based technologies advance, Kurzweil predicts a time when computers will in fact be capable of matching human thought--right down to having such features as consciousness, identity and free will (Kurzweil's specific prediction here is that this will occur by the year 2029).

What's more, because computer technology does not have some of the limitations inherent in biological systems, Kurzweil predicts a time when computers will even vastly outstrip human capabilities. Of course, since we use our tools as a natural extension of ourselves (figuratively, but sometimes also literally), this will also be a time when our own capabilities will vastly outstrip our capabilities of today. Ultimately, Kurzweil thinks, we will simply use the markedly superior computer technology to replace our outdated neurochemistry (as we now replace a limb with a prosthetic), and thus fully merge with our machines (a state that Kurzweil refers to as the singularity). This is the argument that Kurzweil makes in his new book 'How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed'.

Kurzweil lays out his arguments very clearly, and he does have a knack for explaining some very difficult concepts in a very simple way. My only objection to the book is that there is a fair bit of repetition, and some of the philosophical arguments (on such things as consciousness, identity and free will) drag on longer than need be. All in all there is much of interest to be learned both about artificial intelligence and neuroscience. A full executive summary of the book is available here: An Executive Summary of Ray Kurzweil's 'How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed'

10 people found this helpful

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