The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence

By Ray Kurzweil

Ray Kurzweil is the inventor of the main leading edge and compelling know-how of our period, a global authority on man made intelligence, and certainly one of our best residing visionaries. Now he deals a framework for envisioning the twenty-first century--an age during which the wedding of human sensitivity and synthetic intelligence essentially alters and improves the best way we are living. Kurzweil's prophetic blueprint for the longer term takes us throughout the advances that inexorably bring about pcs exceeding the reminiscence potential and computational skill of the human mind by means of the yr 2020 (with human-level functions no longer some distance behind); in relationships with computerized personalities who could be our lecturers, partners, and fans; and in details fed immediately into our brains alongside direct neural pathways. confident and hard, thought-provoking and fascinating, The Age of religious Machines is the final word consultant on our highway into the following century.

Show description

Quick preview of The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence PDF

Similar Technology books

Effective Ruby: 48 Specific Ways to Write Better Ruby (Effective Software Development Series)

If you’re an skilled Ruby programmer, powerful Ruby may also help you harness Ruby’s complete energy to put in writing extra powerful, effective, maintainable, and well-performing code. Drawing on approximately a decade of Ruby adventure, Peter J. Jones brings jointly forty eight Ruby most sensible practices, professional counsel, and shortcuts—all supported via real looking code examples.

The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology

For over 3 a long time, Ray Kurzweil has been some of the most revered and provocative advocates of the function of expertise in our destiny. In his vintage The Age of non secular Machines, he argued that pcs might quickly rival the total diversity of human intelligence at its most sensible. Now he examines your next step during this inexorable evolutionary procedure: the union of human and laptop, within which the data and talents embedded in our brains can be mixed with the greatly higher skill, velocity, and knowledge-sharing skill of our creations.

Return From the Stars

Hal Bregg is an astronaut who returns from an area project during which basically 10 organic years have handed for him, whereas 127 years have elapsed in the world. He reveals that the Earth has replaced past attractiveness, choked with humans who've been medically neutralized. How does an astronaut sign up for a civilization that shuns danger?

The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History since 1900

From the books of H. G. Wells to the clicking releases of NASA, we're awash in clichéd claims approximately excessive technology's skill to alter the process historical past. Now, within the surprise of the outdated, David Edgerton deals a startling new and clean frame of mind concerning the historical past of know-how, notably revising our rules concerning the interplay of expertise and society long ago and within the current.

Additional info for The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence

Show sample text content

Now think convinced difficulties that this Universe-sized supercomputer will be not able to unravel whether we ran that machine until eventually both the following large bang or till all of the stars within the Universe died—about ten to thirty billion years. there are various examples of such hugely intractable difficulties; for instance, cracking encryption codes that use one thousand bits, or fixing the traveling-salesman challenge with 1000 towns. whereas very significant electronic computing (including our theoretical Universe-sized machine) is not able to resolve this category of difficulties, a quantum computing device of microscopic measurement may clear up such difficulties in lower than a billionth of a moment. Are quantum pcs possible? contemporary advances, either theoretical and sensible, recommend that the answer's convinced. even if a pragmatic quantum machine has now not been equipped, the ability for harnessing the considered necessary decoherence has been established. Isaac Chuang of Los Alamos nationwide Laboratory and MIT's Neil Gershenfeld have truly outfitted a quantum machine utilizing the carbon atoms within the alanine molecule. Their quantum machine was once merely in a position to upload one and one, yet that is a commence. we have now, in fact, been counting on sensible functions of alternative quantum results, corresponding to the electron tunneling in transistors, for many years. [14] A Quantum computing device in a Cup of espresso One of the problems in designing a pragmatic quantum desktop is that it has to be tremendous small, essentially atom or molecule sized, to harness the fragile quantum results. however it is particularly tricky to maintain person atoms and molecules from relocating round as a result of thermal results. in addition, person molecules are quite often too risky to construct a competent laptop. For those difficulties, Chuang and Gershenfeld have get a hold of a theoretical leap forward. Their resolution is to take a cup of liquid and examine each molecule to be a quantum desktop. Now rather than a unmarried risky molecule-sized quantum computing device, they've got a cup with a couple of hundred billion trillion quantum pcs. the purpose this is no more great parallelism, yet relatively vast redundancy during this method, the unavoidably erratic habit of a few of the molecules his no impression at the statistical habit of all of the molecules within the liquid. This procedure of utilizing the statistical habit of trillions of molecules to beat the inability of reliability of a unmarried molecule is identical to Professor Adleman's use of trillions of DNA strands to beat the related factor in DNA computing. This method of quantum computing additionally solves the matter of studying out the reply little by little with out inflicting these qu-bits that experience now not but been learn to decohere in advance. Chuang and Gershenfeld topic their liquid laptop to radio-wave pulses, which reason the molecules to reply with signs indicating the spin country of every electron. each one pulse does reason a few undesirable decoherence, yet, back, this decoherence doesn't have an effect on the statistical habit of trillions of molecules. during this manner, the quantum results turn into sturdy and trustworthy.

Download PDF sample

Rated 4.75 of 5 – based on 12 votes