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Amazon.com: The Singularity Is Nearer: When We Merge with AI (Audible Audio Edition): Ray Kurzweil, Adam Barr, Penguin Audio: Books
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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.
* This audiobook edition includes a downloadable PDF with illustrations and graphs from the book.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
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Amazon.com: The Singularity Is Nearer: When We Merge with AI (Audible Audio Edition): Ray Kurzweil, Adam Barr, Penguin Audio: Books
Jerry E. Stephens –
Great entertainment. I’l start this later today. I’m very happy with the purchase.
Ken –
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.
Jarek –
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.
David J. Brown –
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!
Mehmet Akif Şimşek –
I always felt dopamine surge when I ve been reading Ray.
What I want to say is that the stats are not corrected against inflation or there is no information about that. That’s a very wrong method to compare prices of different epochs.
Secondly, in the second photo I shared there is a miswriting of mathematical formula. That must be (2 to the power n) – 1. I wrote about that mistake to publisher via instagram and they did not respond.
Anyway, I was expecting a much more technological and futuristic book but this one is like just coming from the stoves of statistics department of treasury. I am not disappointed cause I am an economist. I like the way technology is related to the economics. I have been just surprised the way Ray wrote the book.
And I totally disagree with him about the statement that information technology is making world more democratic. No it’s not. At extremes, information technology will make us a data mine and control us like a robot. That’s a technofeodalism and technodictatorship. The technology soon will be our prison.
Amir –
Ray Kurzweil is a prophet with a future to defend. In his 2005 book The Singularity Is Near, he predicted, by means of an argument massively buttressed by hard facts and scientific extrapolations, that we would have developed artificial general intelligence to human levels and beyond by 2029. That prophecy still looks eminently feasible.
He also predicted the “Singularity” by 2045, by which he meant the moment when AI extends our powers so far that further prediction, from 2005 at least, became effectively impossible. That vision was widely seen as a wild hostage to fortune, despite his sober argument for it, yet now it still seems possible. Given his general credibility as a technology evangelist (for Google, no less), we should take his claims seriously.
First, let’s consider the new book. It’s clearly an update of the first, with the same general concept, a similar style, and the same argument rehashed, with what now seems an excess of cited facts and graphic extrapolations. It’s also clearly the work of an older man, with less exuberance and less desire to push out the boat further with more predictions. But it’s still well worth reading.
For my money, the added value comes with its increased philosophical depth and its enhanced specificity about how the Singularity will become manifest. The philosophy centers on his attempt to come to terms with issues like personal identity and the impact on it of high-tech brain extensions, issues on which he’s taken on board the work of David Chalmers and others.
Kurzweil’s new specificity concerns how we might connect with AI before we hit the Singularity. Like Elon Musk and others, he sees implanted brain electrodes as the way to go. Imagine a broadband cable through the skull that branches inside the brain into a million nanofibers connecting to individual neurons. We could work with the AI at the other end of the cable as if it were a direct extension of our neocortex and become, as Kurzweil puts it, millions of times more intelligent. This is heady stuff.
Let me not spoil the plot for you. I’ve been thinking about these ideas for decades and agree with much of what Kurzweil says. But he’s way too optimistic about how glorious all these changes will be. A lot of grief lies behind the stage show here. You may want to read the book in that light.
Donald W. Weikle –
More than AI and more than Futurist. This is philosophy and meaning and whole societal epoch change exploration.
emkeane –
One of the best books I’ve read in 2024. Kurzweil has a marvelous way of making complex issues understandable for someone who is not a professional in AI. Since I first read Asimov’s books, AI and robotics have fascinated me and this book discusses the latest trends as well as relating Kurzweil’s marvelous ability to see where those trends could take us. Highly recommended.
Amazon Customer –
A most thought provoking book,perhaps too long on statistics.
Mehmet Akif Şimşek –
I should like this latest book from Ray Kurzweil. His original writing has long proven to be so thoughtful. His visions for the future have long proven to be remarkable guides for those of us concerned about the very future we face. His ideas of the application of technology for human-machine communication have been so informative and instructive. The singularity, as Kurzweill set it out many years ago, remains one of the most influential information ideas that any writer has proposed. Yet, this latest book seems so flat and incomplete. The book seems less a clarion call for The Singularity as a hastily drawn up supplement for his earlier writing. One of the book’s first sentences — “my theory that convergent exponential technological trends are leading to a transition that will be utterly transformative for humanity” — seems such an overwhelmingly bland statement even when meant to excite the reader for the technological dawn about to occur. Was this book written and published in a hurry to capitalize on the rapid emergence of Artificial intelligence technologies? Perhaps that is too strong a conclusion for any book reviewer. Especially a reviewer and reader who has long admired Ray Kurzweil’s inventiveness and creative thinking. But that is where I am today after my reading of this book. It is still, however, a Ray Kurzweil vision for humanity’s future. It does deserve to be read if only for that singular reason.
Andrew Ross –
Took a long time to come but worth the wait!
Geoffrey Charles Bond –
Great read. Some of his predictions seem outta pocket but overall its worth the buy. We’ll see how it all pans out I guess.