The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence

Great! 2009-10-16

Reviewer: Hector G. Carrillo

Received the book pretty quick from the day it was ordered. In the future, I'll be really comfortable ordering from you guys again.

Thanks so much.

Should have been subtitled when computers exceed human feeling 2009-02-17

Reviewer: Steve Reina

This is a great, thought provoking book.

My only tiny quibble is that it should have been subtitled when computers exceed human feeling.

The reason is because in the book's lengthy treatment of computers and artificial intelligence past and future, the discussions about computer thought inevitably were discussions about human feeling.

To his credit, Kurzweil had an extremely difficult topic and he expertly rose to the challenge. In drafting his book, Kurzweil gave a history of the rise of both human and artificial intelligence. Then in segmented snippets, he discussed computers of the future...2009, 2019, 2029 etc into the distant future.

In so doing Kurzweil had to discuss topics covered by so many other writers like:

What is it that makes human reasoning so enigmatic?

Is it possible to artificially mimic that process?

What can we divine about the future of technology from its past?

First off, in dealing with human reasoning Kurzweil held court briefly and succinctly on many different issues that have sideswept lesser writers like the theological question of a soul and the free will debate. Focusing on what empirical findings can tell us about reasoning Kurzweil made the significant point that human reasoning is a physically manifested emergent process.

This last observation was very important in terms of his next discussion about our ability to mimic that process. Put another way, if we were talking back in 1890 and the question was: is heavier than air flight possible (viz. human flight in something other than a balloon)? The answer would be obvious: birds are heavier than air, they fly so therefore such flight is possible. The rest, so to speak, is just an engineering problem.

Applied to human reasoning, if the conclusion is that the processes that give rise to human reasoning are merely physical in nature, then it follows (like with our bird example) that allowing computers to achieve human reasoning is just an engineering issue (albeit again a complicated one).

Along the way in answering these first two questions, Kurzweil stopped here and there to discuss interesting topics and individuals along the way. One such individual, Alan Turing was significant because he first envisioned the idea of a modern computer and then in 1950 wrote a paper in which he posited the ways in which we might be able to establish a dialogue with computer intelligence to determine if it were merely a calculator with a voice or something more.

In answering that technology past says yes we can to human type reasoning from computers, Kurzweil was perhaps at his best. His exposition on Moore's law (the idea that computing capabilities double every one to two years) is so important that it deserves its own status as a law. Specifically, Kurzweil said that not just computer chip capabilities double but computing power itself doubles in predictable ways. Applying this "Kurzweil's Law" to the future, he predicted a time within our lifespans when the difference between our computers and ourselves would be undetectable.

For my part, the only fly in the ointment is the consistency of human prejudice. It's taken like over one hundred generations and we still haven't completely eliminated slavery. What that means to me is that we will always at some level be sensitive to the fact of whether the intelligence is human based or non human based. But that's a different issue from whether our computers will have the capacity to be offput by that prejudice.

Who knows? Maybe their angst over some future second rate status may be the moment when they really have attained human like reasoning.

Kurzweil says that they will and for my part I think he's made a great case for why.

Should be called The Age of Thinking Machines 2008-08-15

Reviewer: Glenn Gallagher

Ray Kurzweil has written a great book, but the title is very misleading. Mr. Kurzweil, as far as I can tell, is very much a humanistic/mechanistic person, not believing much in the spiritual as defined by traditional orthodox religion. Nevertheless, this book on the rise of artificial intelligence (what I would call the age of thinking machines) and our likely symbiotic relationship with them in the near future, is very thought-provoking, and makes for compelling reading.

The author makes a very good case that humans will inevitably merge with computers and machines to form a type of human-machine hybrid that is still human, but "enhanced" with neural implants to think faster and better, and replacement body parts (either biological or mechanical) that will allow us by the year 2040 to live easily to 120 or 150 years of age. After that, it gets even stranger, as humans will probably choose to abandon their bodies to be "down-loaded" into cyborg-android artificial bodies, or just live as pure thought without a physical presence in virtual reality. (A non-physical being could control nano-foglet particles to form a physical presence if required.) Brave new world indeed.

I have no idea if any of Kurzweil's predictions will come true, but he has a good track record. I highly recommend reading this book, then follow it up with the sequel titled "The Singularity Is Near" (an even better book than this one, although both are terrific).

Hell is where you find it 2007-11-19

Reviewer: Cecil Bothwell

In this volume, Ray Kurzweil offers a frighteningly detached blueprint for a digital future. (A better subject for this book might have been, "The age of dispirited humans: when humans cede intelligence to machines.") Before I launch into the following disquisition, I should note that the author is engaging, speaks clearly, and tells a good tale. Which makes it scarier still. Perhaps the undercurrent of virtual sexuality presented in SPIRITUAL MACHINES best embodies (or should I say "disembodies"?) the author's total disconnect from what I consider human and humane. He sees the present flood of sexual matter on the web as a pale harbinger of the future of virtual sex - a coming era when sexual experience with our computers will first be indistinguisable from physical relations, and then much better. He suggests that even when we are in the same room with someone with whom we wish to engage sexually we will opt for climbing into our units to get it on in cyberspace. (That is, while there are still rooms, and bodies - a condition he confidently predicts will end by the 22nd century.) He notes that there will be no STDs, no physcial awkwardnesses, hey, not even constrictions on body shapes, appendages, orifices, whatever...) And we will do it forever. The words "natural life span" will no longer have meaning. Looks like hell to me.

A Book that everybody should read. 2007-05-14

Reviewer: Mario Porto

Since I get into contact with the Vinge's singularity concept I developed a very great attraction for the matter.
Ray Kurzweil explains it in a easy, not alarming and optimistic way.
After reading The Age of Spiritual Machines and his later book the Singularity is near I can not understand how somebody can live without knowing about this potential threat and at the same time potential solution to mankind problems.