The Age Of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence (2000) - Plot & Excerpts
At times thought-provoking and intriguing, but ultimately unconvincing.The words of Douglas Hofstadter pretty much summarize what I think of this book: "it's a very bizarre mixture of ideas that are solid and good with ideas that are crazy. It's as if you took a lot of very good food and some dog excrement and blended it all up so that you can't possibly figure out what's good or bad."Why am I not convinced? Well, the exponential growth of computing power over the last 100 years is hardly deniable. Extrapolating that trend and predicting that it is will continue for some time is reasonable. But my crap detector starts to go off when Kurzweil goes from there to assert that computers will exceed human intelligence (causing a technological singularity in the not-so-distant future) and to make all those overly-optimistic transhumanistic predictions. For me, the main problem is equating computing power with intelligence. To quote Steven Pinker, "sheer processing power is not a pixie dust that magically solves all your problems." My current view is that the "brain as a computer" is a very powerful and useful metaphor, but it's still a metaphor: the brain is not a computer. And as Jaron Lanier puts it, "the distance between recognizing a great metaphor and treating it as the only metaphor is the same as the distance between humble science and dogmatic religion."Other than that, I was mainly disappointed to see that Kurzweil did not discuss different or opposing views adequately (as he apparently does in The Singularity is Near, in which he devotes a whole chapter to respond to critics). For example, he discussed the views of Roger Penrose in less than two pages, and he did not even mention John Searle other than in a footnote and in the Suggested Readings list.So, until further notice, I will remain in the collective camp of Searle, Penrose, Lanier, and the like despite its shortcomings because I find it more convincing. (Or could it be that I find it more comfortable because it agrees more with the way I want the world to be? Perish the thought!)In short, I would recommend skipping this book (unless you want to judge for yourself how Kurzweil's predictions for 2009 have fared) and, if you insist on reading Kurzweil, to try instead his later book, where he actually responds to critics (but, as I haven't read it yet, I don't guarantee it will be more convincing).P.S. I can't help but to draw a parallel to projects such as FuturICT, in which it is hoped that by throwing enough data at the problem, "we might be able to construct models of complicated phenomena even when we don't have any underlying laws on which to build them." But as David Weinberger notes in "The Machine That Would Predict the Future", "the practical difficulties quickly turn exponential. There is always another layer of detail, always another factor that may prove critical in the final accounting; without a prior understanding of how humans operate, we cannot know when our accounting is final." (On a side note, this throw-more-data-at-it also reminds me of the throw-more-hardware-at-it mentality in software development.)
In The Age of Spiritual Machines author, and futurist, Ray Kurzweil prognosticates the rise of intelligent machines (among other things). The book was written in 1999, and he has predictions for 2009 so there’s been enough time for some of his predictions to be tested. Unfortunately he fares very, very poorly. See for yourself: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Age_...The ones he gets right were those things that were either already available in 1999 or are incremental extensions of things that were. But this is something anyone can do. For example, I predict that vehicles will get better gas mileage in 2021 than today (in 2011) and that there will be an increased reliance on biofuels and renewable energy. I’m a genius right?His predictions for 20 and 30 years will prove to be more wildly off the mark. For example, Kurzweil predicts that in 8 years (2019) we will have virtually eliminated all paper documents and books. In reality, paper consumption is increasing. I’ll grant you that the line between being a futurist and being a crackpot is a fine one indeed, but Kurzweil is an unabashed crank. I say this because a responsible futurist would couch his vision of the future in caveats and disclaimers as well as make sure the reader understood where the authors knowledge ended and where speculation begins. A crank, on the other hand, stands on the street corner predicting that the end of the world will occur at a specific date and time with a confident assurance that refutes all doubt. Kurzweil takes the latter approach and is wrong again and again.The reality is that no one can predict the future, and history is littered with the detritus of ill conceived prophesies. But why does Kurzweil get it so wrong? PZ Meyers has a succinct answer to this question with regards to computer intelligence: "Ray Kurzweil does not understand the brain". Kurzweil believes existing computer software and circuitry can replicate brain function. Perhaps someday, but at the moment we are no closer to developing machine intelligence than we were when the ENIAC was the state of the art. We still have much to learn about the brain and until we understand it (assuming we can understand it), there is little chance of constructing a machine able to replicate it’s function. This is the same mistake of hubris that humans made when they thought Biosphere could replicate a complete ecosystem. We simply do not have knowledge of sufficient breadth or depth to comprehend the intricate and complex inter-relationships that make up an integrated ecosystem. So … unfortunately, while computers have become faster, they are still very, very dumb. As a result, I’m left to having to read and write my own review of this book (using a keyboard no less – another failed Kurzweil prediction) while my dumb computer whirrs away inanely beneath my desk.
What do You think about The Age Of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence (2000)?
When I read this book in 2000, it blew my mind. It actually changed the way I looked at everything. It made me feel like I knew a secret, something important, that other people didn't know. While I still believe in Kurzweil's genius, and his futurist prophecies, this book is obsolete. For a current, in-depth look at Kurzweil's brilliant mind, find the 2009 documentary "Transcendent Man", and see Kurzweil talk about the fast approaching realization of his "singularity" theory. REMEMBER THIS?"There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call "The Twilight Zone"." -- Rod Serling, 1959 aw
—Nefariousbig
First of all, some of Kurzweil books seem to follow the same outline and topics. This book strongly remind me of "The singularity is near", and in some chapters I had the feeling of being reading exactly the former book. If I would have read "The Age of Spiritual Machines" at the first place, I would have gave 5 stars.Said that, Ray Kurzweil envisions a future where humans and machines will converge into one single entity. He makes predictions for some of the upcoming years, having written this book in 1999. Looking backwards, most of the predictions he is doing are surprisingly accurate, although some of them are proven false - like the driverless cars. You can also see his influence as the head of engineering in Google, where he is pushing research in the directions he thinks right - again, the driverless vehicles here."The Age of Spiritual Machines" is a philosophy book, sustained with some technology divulgation and predictions. Ray Kurzweil is a modern genius, that knows how to spread their ideas and he is firmly convinced of his beliefs. I can strongly recommend this book.
—Enrique Mañas
In this book, Computer Artificial Intelligence researcher Ray Kurzweil tries to predict the future of computers, from 1999 - 2099 CE. In brief, he predicts that by the end of the 21st century human and machine intelligence will have "merged" -- computers will be as sentient as us, and humans will have "uploaded" our minds into a Virtual Reality utopia, in which we live for eternity as immortal software. While I don't so easily dismiss the idea of future "artificial humans", I cannot believe that they will be derived from pure machinery -- this is a "Reductionist" view of reality that I cannot go along with -- By definition, a machine *cannot* be spiritual, and spiritual beings such as ourselves are *not* mere machines. I also think his timelines are incredibly optimistic -- On Jan 1, 2009, I re-read his predictions for ten years in the future from the book's 1999 publication, and almost none have actually come to pass. I also think Kurzweil is wrong to assume that technology in and of itself will somehow "save" humanity and our ailing world -- It never has yet. So while an interesting read, I think Kurzweil's thesis and predictions come, I believe, from a fundamentally flawed view of what makes us human. Yet, many of his ideas are food for thought, especially for an aspiring science fiction writer like myself. Also, I applaud his rejection of the inevitability of a future "heat death" of the universe and all sentient life within it -- I *do* agree with him that "intelligence is a force to be reckoned with." So even with its shortcomings, I have given the book three stars overall.
—Dave
