The Singularity Is Nearer: When We Merge with AI

Great book!

I waited for the publication of this book for over a year. The result is amazing. Ray is a genius when it comes to explaining with logic and simplicity a future unimaginable to many people. He has been often right in his predictions and now reading about such transformations in the next 20 years gives me so much food for thought. I was aware of many technological advancements and theories presented, but what stroked me most is how Ray connects the dots and logically creates the future in which we probably live in. Everybody should be aware of the concepts, developments, and theories within this book. I look forward to dig deeper on these topics.

boken levererades ej i nyskick utan var tydligt att den var använd och hade lånats/lästs av någon annan.

What a disappointment. The Singularity is Near has a proud place in my book collection, so I was thrilled to see Ray Kurzweil had written a follow-up. In reality, this is more of a reprint of the original with only the first (very short) part feeling like genuinely new material. Moreover, much of the rest of the book is full of meandering waffle that gets incredibly irritating after a while. At some point Ray starts going on about the proliferation of flushing toilets in the 20th century. I kid you not. Just too many tangents like this. At that point I requested a refund. If you haven't read the first book, this may be worth a look still for some of the nice insights into the speed of technological progress. And I like the fact that Ray emphasises how much good progress has happened over the years in eg. crime reduction, which most of the public don't seem to realise (presumably, otherwise they wouldn't be voting for loonies like Trump).

Parfait !

Kurzweil envisions scanning and uploading the human brain to digital substrates, leading to digital consciousness and non-biological evolution. He argues that humanity is rapidly approaching a point—the Singularity—when artificial intelligence will match and then surpass human intelligence, leading to an era of profound transformation. He predicts this will happen by 2045, maintaining the same timeline from his earlier work. His prediction that humans and machines will be more integrated with humans connecting their brains to Cloud (with the help of nanobots), expanding their intelligence, processing power and data storage capacity, is fascinating! I don't know if this is something happening any time soon but he thinks this is not too far in the future. I enjoyed reading this book.