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The Singularity Is Nearer: When We Merge with AI Kindle Edition

by Ray Kurzweil (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
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AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

The noted inventor and futurist’s successor to his landmark book The Singularity Is Near explores how technology will transform the human race in the decades to come

Since it was first published in 2005, Ray Kurzweil’s The Singularity Is Near 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.

In 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.

The culmination of six decades of research on artificial intelligence, The Singularity Is Nearer is Ray Kurzweil’s crowning contribution to the story of this science and the revolution that is to come.
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  6. Publication date
    June 25, 2024
  7. File size
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From the Publisher

Ray Kurzweil is the best person... at predicting the future of artificial intelligence — Bill Gates
Ray Kurzweil shows how human minds will merge with AI within the next two decades
Explore the coming future as Kurzweil discusses topics including: exponential technologies

Few people have shaped how the world thinks about AI like Ray Kurzweil, says Mustafa Suleyman

This book will challenge everything. You know about technology, life, and death, says Tony Robbins

Ray Kurzweil is the greatest oracle of our digital age, says Peter H. Diamandis, MD.

A fascinating exploration of our future, which raises the most profound questions —Yuval Noah Harari

The greatest take-away for the future of humanity, and the future of intelligence — Steve Jurvetson

Read THE SINGULARITY IS NEARER today. Highly recommended! says Dean Ornish, MD.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Praise for The Singularity is Nearer:

“A fascinating exploration of our future, which raises the most profound philosophical questions.”
—Yuval Noah Harari, New York Times bestselling author of Sapiens

“Few people have shaped how the world thinks about AI like Ray Kurzweil. Now, with The Singularity Is Nearer, 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.”
—Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI 

“No one is more optimistic about technology than Ray Kurzweil.”
—The Boston Globe

“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.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"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."
—Steve Jurvetson, Managing Director of Future Ventures

“Ray Kurzweil’s The Singularity Is Nearer is to information technology what Charles Darwin’s Origin of the Species 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. The Singularity Is Nearer reads 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 personal telescope that lets each of us 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 The Singularity Is Nearer.”
—Martine Rothblatt, Ph.D., Creator of SiriusXM, United Therapeutics, electric helicopters and the Bina48 robot

"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."
—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

“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.”
—Tony Robbins, Global Entrepreneur, Investor, New York Times #1 Bestselling Author, Philanthropist, and the world’s #1 Life and Business Strategist

"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!"
  —Vint Cerf, a Father of the Internet and Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist, Google

“If you want to know where artificial intelligence—and our society—will be in 20 years, read The Singularity Is Nearer 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!”
—Dean Ornish, MD, founder and president, Preventive Medicine Research Institute; clinical professor of medicine, University of California, San Francisco; author, Undo It!: How Simple Lifestyle Changes Can Reverse Most Chronic Diseases, The Spectrum and Dr. Dean Ornish’s Program for Reversing Heart Disease

"Ray Kurzweil is the greatest oracle of our digital age. The Singularity Is Nearer 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."
—Peter H. Diamandis, MD, New York Times Bestselling author, Founder, XPRIZE, Singularity

"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. The Singularity Is Nearer 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."
—Lloyd Watts, Technologist, Entrepreneur, and Author

"The Singularity Is Nearer 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."
—Natasha Vita-More, PhD, Author Transhumanist Manifesto, Co-creator of the Transhumanist Movement, Founder, Center for Transhumanist Studies
"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."
—Harry George, entrepreneur, venture capitalist, Cofounder of Interleaf, Inc., Cofounder and Managing Partner, Solstice Capital

"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.'"
—Suzanne Somers, actress, singer, comedienne, NYTimes bestselling author, entrepreneur, and lecturer

 “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.”
—Booklist

Praise for Ray Kurzweil
 
"Ray Kurzweil is the best person I know at predicting the future of artificial intelligence."
 —Bill Gates
  
"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."
 —The Philadelphia Inquirer
  
"[Ray Kurzweil] has a way of tackling seemingly overwhelming challenges with an army of reason."
 —Rafael Reif, president, MIT
  
"Kurzweil paints a tantalizing—and sometimes terrifying—portrait of a world where the line between humans and machines has become thoroughly blurred."
 —The Boston Globe
  
"The restless genius."
 —The Wall Street Journal
  
"The ultimate thinking machine."
 —Forbes

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 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. He is a Principal Researcher and AI Visionary at Google.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B08Y6FYJVY
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Viking (June 25, 2024)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ June 25, 2024
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 30282 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 432 pages
  • Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 0593489411
  • Customer Reviews:

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Ray Kurzweil

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

4.4 out of 5 stars
224 global ratings

Customers say

Customers find the writing style engaging with clarity and context. They also describe the book as brilliant and fantastic. However, some readers feel the content is incomplete with very little new information and repetition.

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Writing styleReading experienceContent completeness
11 customers mention "Writing style"11 positive0 negative

Customers find the writing style engaging, clear, and accurate. They also say the author is a visionary, well-grounded, and accurately describes humanities using strong logic and reliable resources. Readers also mention the book is extremely important and recommend it highly.

"...The combination of technological genius, visionary imagination, and high optimism is giving me so much hope and excitement for the future!..." Read more

"...The uploading of minds was way cool. Kurzweil explains the world is getting better with lots of supporting graphs...." Read more

"...Ray is a master storyteller, engaging readers with clarity and context...." Read more

"An easy read full of facts and well thought out possible results to the phenomenal growth of computing power. Another great book by Ray." Read more

9 customers mention "Reading experience"9 positive0 negative

Customers find the book fantastic and brilliant.

"I’ve been loving this fantastic and brilliant book so incredibly much!..." Read more

"...Over all, the book is fascinating.However, there’s a few little problems with this book:..." Read more

"...Another great book by Ray." Read more

"...A really interesting read, and an encouraging one." Read more

3 customers mention "Content completeness"0 positive3 negative

Customers find the book has very little new information and no updated charts from the 2005 work.

"...and there is very little new information - much of the book is just repetition of content in the..." Read more

"...My biggest gripe is that it has almost no updated charts from the 2005 work...." Read more

"...There's nothing new, and no discussion of the few of his earlier predictions where he was wrong...." Read more

Great follow up and confirmation of where we are now
5 out of 5 stars
Great follow up and confirmation of where we are now
Just finished and overall love this book. Ray has his intuition but seems to have stayed open-minded about both the promises and perils of our future, both long-term and short-term. Full disclosure: I was a huge skeptic of Ray's in 2005, and it wasn't until 2016 when AlphaGo beat Lee Sedol in Go that I took him seriously. Since then, I have calibrated my calendar to match his Law of Accelerating Returns, with AGI in 2029 as my primary focus for the next few years.My favorite takeaway perhaps is how he frames the challenges of defining AGI. I must admit, I sometimes get too optimistic about reaching AGI in 2029. As he points out, this does not mean an AI/AGI will master all domains of human thought by that time, and there are likely to be some that are much harder, if ever, to achieve.There are two concepts that still haunt me as I try to grok this and Ray's perspective overall with regards to uploading our minds to silicon. One from Sadhguru on how our mind is "ours" but not "us". In Sadhguru's and many yogic traditions' perspective, our minds are part of our body's brain/memory and ability to imagine based on these conscious memories that, like our body in general, we accumulated since birth. But our DNA contains billions of years worth of memories that we subconsciously access at every moment; for instance, how to eat any suitable plant or animal and convert its DNA into our own. Also, I have never met my great-grandfather, yet I am told I look a lot like him. The second, more controversial concept (according to my AI assistants ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini) is from Timothy Leary, who suggested that Crick & Watson were likely correct in their assumption that life on Earth was seeded here and did not evolve here in the less than 4 billion years Earth had conditions friendly enough (something that Ray seems to puzzle with in Chapter 3). Leary took it beyond even directed panspermia and suggested that the DNA "seeds" had preprogrammed into the code everything to build not only humans, but that the process was only half done, and that our future as space-faring creatures is also dormant in all of us. In the last chapter, Dialogue with Casandra, Ray does leave open the door to such ideas, as he does not suggest replacing us with technology but merging with our biological selves. A very reasonable approach, methinks (~_^)Great book and I am sure I will go back to reference it often. For any Kurzweil fans, a must. And if you're interested in AGI, ditto.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​
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Top reviews from the United States

David J. Brown
5.0 out of 5 stars An Absolutely Fantastic & Brilliant Book!
Reviewed in the United States on July 7, 2024
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I’ve been loving this fantastic and brilliant book so incredibly much! I can’t rave about it enough; if you’re at all interested in the future and AI, I suspect you will love this. The last time that I read a book about technological innovation that was this inspiring was in 1987, when I read Eric Drexler’s Engines of Creation about nanotechnology. The combination of technological genius, visionary imagination, and high optimism is giving me so much hope and excitement for the future! Ray has been involved in AI longer than anyone else alive, and he has an absolutely incredible track record for predicting computer developments. This is an extremely important book and I couldn’t recommend it more highly!
7 people found this helpful
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Jarek
4.0 out of 5 stars Nearer … So Hurry Up
Reviewed in the United States on July 23, 2024
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This book is enjoyable because it’s more hopeful about the future than most books. Kurzweil revisits his Six Stages of computer-human evolution and the historically relevant development of AI to modern times—most interesting. The uploading of minds was way cool. Kurzweil explains the world is getting better with lots of supporting graphs. And the large print version of the book was a blessing. Over all, the book is fascinating.

However, there’s a few little problems with this book:
The Who I AM chapter is too philosophical for me. It tries to answer questions like self awareness, consciousness and qualia. All of which are known to be neural circuitry in the brain. Even emotional circuity has been discovered. And these sub-circuits and numerous sensors give rise to feelings of being an individual that knows oneself. The books The Archaeology of Mind and Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain explain these subprocesses in the brain.

Another issue was the lack of social and psychological descriptions in the post-singularity world. What happens to babies, young children, old people with Alzheimer’s, social structure and governments? The only book that explains this social science and technology is a science fiction book Playing for Eternity: A Utopian Novel. However, I’d like to read an actual non-fiction book that answers these social and psychological questions about what happens after the Singularity.
2 people found this helpful
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Ken
5.0 out of 5 stars Engaging!
Reviewed in the United States on July 21, 2024
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What an uplifting book with great storytelling! I'm encouraging my friends to read it now while this information on AI and Ray's perspective is still fresh and new. I've sent copies to my nephew and brother-in-law, both university professors. My recent reads from Ray include "Danielle" and "Chronicle of Ideas," and I see similar engaging writing here, with prose that flows beautifully. Ray is a master storyteller, engaging readers with clarity and context. I knew Ray's new "Singularity" book would give me a broad and authoritative perspective on where we are now and where we're headed with artificial intelligence. As I turned the final page, I realized the book had done exactly that.
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Thomas A. May
5.0 out of 5 stars Thoughtful view of the many possible futures
Reviewed in the United States on July 22, 2024
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An easy read full of facts and well thought out possible results to the phenomenal growth of computing power. Another great book by Ray.
One person found this helpful
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S. Rushworth
3.0 out of 5 stars Too short, and missing important information
Reviewed in the United States on July 9, 2024
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While the original ”The singularity is near” was overly long and repetitive, this book is the opposite. It’s short (more than half the book is a list of references) and there is very little new information - much of the book is just repetition of content in the original book. Kurzweil also spends far too much time summarizing Stephen Pinker’s 2018 book ”Enlightenment Now”. If you’ve read ”The singularity is near” and ”Enlightenment now” then there is very little new information for you in this book.

Additionally, there are key things missing. Firstly, Kurzweil doesn’t actually explain how he arrives at many of his predictions, such as that the singularity will happen around 2045. There are lots of charts showing that things are getting better and better, but there is no explanation of the dates chosen for the most important predictions in the book.

Secondly, he doesn’t discuss the many incorrect predictions he made in ”The singularity is near”, like his prediction that fully immersive virtual reality would be widely available and widely used in the second decade of the twenty first century, and his predictions that people would by now have nanobots in their clothes, furniture, and blood streams. I would have liked to see some humility concerning earlier incorrect predictions and a discussion of why he thinks these things didn’t happen as predicted.
24 people found this helpful
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BSA47
5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant & Informative
Reviewed in the United States on July 4, 2024
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Thank you for writing a book that explains (in terms I mostly understood) your interpretation of the future. I pray for a peaceful Singularity.
4 people found this helpful
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Rachel Gollub
4.0 out of 5 stars Optimistic and thought provoking
Reviewed in the United States on July 26, 2024
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I like Kurzweil’s books and view of the world, and this is no exception. He points out that his previous forecasts have been right, and supplies a lot of statistics to support his predictions. A really interesting read, and an encouraging one.
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Aaron Clark
5.0 out of 5 stars Great read.
Reviewed in the United States on July 14, 2024
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Loved the book. The manufacture quality of the book wasn't the best. The first 100 or so pages were stuck together.
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Top reviews from other countries

Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Much more than a futurist book.
Reviewed in Canada on June 30, 2024
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More than AI and more than Futurist. This is philosophy and meaning and whole societal epoch change exploration.
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Mr Charles Ritchie
5.0 out of 5 stars Just what my son wanted
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 9, 2024
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Took a long time to come but worth the wait!
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Amazon Customer
3.0 out of 5 stars Disapppointed
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 13, 2024
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Talked about too many things, but explained nothing deeply enough for me. Better to find a book on each topic. The book covers things such as autonomous driving, green energy, AI, 3D printing, vertical agriculture… each topic is huge, the author is too ambitious, he want to discuss everything, but didn’t explained anything well enough.
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