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Customer Review
Reviewed in the United States on July 4, 2024
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.
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.
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.
Great follow up and confirmation of where we are now
Reviewed in the United States on July 4, 2024
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.Reviewed in the United States on July 4, 2024
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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