Book Review: ‘The Singularity Is Nearer,’ by Ray Kurzweil

[Pelican Press 0]

Book Review: ‘The Singularity Is Nearer,’ by Ray Kurzweil

“The Singularity Is Nearer” follows Kurzweil’s 2005 “The Singularity Is Near,” and several other heraldic works of tech futurism that have become sacred texts to the current generation of A.I. utopians. In his latest, Kurzweil boasts of his greatest hits: his prediction, in the late 1980s, that a global information network would be universally accessible by the late 1990s, and that mobile devices linked to this network would appear by the turn of the century; his 2018 prediction that, within two years, a neural net would be able to analyze radiology images as well as human doctors, a feat accomplished by Stanford researchers two weeks later; and his 1999 prediction that an A.I. capable of convincingly impersonating a human being would appear by 2029 — which now may seem *************.

In “The Singularity Is Nearer,” Kurzweil promises that, by 2029, A.I. will be “better than all humans” in “every skill possessed by any human.” During the 2030s, solar power, enhanced by A.I.-driven advances in 3-D printing, will come to dominate the global energy supply, most consumer goods will be free, and the “dramatic reduction of physical scarcity” will “finally allow us to easily provide for the needs of everyone.” Sounds rad!

Enter the blood robots. Have no doubt: “The long-term goal is nanorobots.” One day next decade, Kurzweil believes, you and I will feed nanobots through our capillaries. The little busybodies will swim to our brains, where they will connect our neocortex to the cloud, allowing us to expand our intelligence “millions-fold.” This is “the Singularity.”

Nanobots will connect us directly to virtual worlds, so that we will be able to scale Mount Everest, attend an opera or take “a sensory-rich virtual beach vacation for the whole family” in our minds. Why bother with damp bathing suits and sunscreen when you can enjoy abundant “natural beauty” from your own bed — or cryo-capsule?

By 2040, nanobots will cure most ******** and arrest the aging process. (Kurzweil believes that the first person to live 1,000 years has been born.) By the early 2040s, you will be able to upload your entire brain to the cloud — or into the skull of a “Blade Runner”-style replicant. You might elect to clone yourself, or recreate a ***** person.

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