The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence Read online

  Table of Contents

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Acknowledgements

  PART ONE - PROBING THE PAST

  CHAPTER ONE - THE LAW OF TIME AND CHAOS

  CHAPTER TWO - THE INTELLIGENCE OF EVOLUTION

  CHAPTER THREE - OF MIND AND MACHINES

  CHAPTER FOUR - A NEW FORM OF INTELLIGENCE ON EARTH

  CHAPTER FIVE - CONTEXT AND KNOWLEDGE

  PART TWO - PREPARING THE PRESENT

  CHAPTER SIX - BUILDING NEW BRAINS ...

  CHAPTER SEVEN - ... AND BODIES

  CHAPTER EIGHT - 1999

  PART THREE - TO FACE THE FUTURE

  CHAPTER NINE - 2009

  CHAPTER TEN - 2019

  CHAPTER ELEVEN - 2029

  CHAPTER TWELVE - 2099

  EPILOGUE:

  TIME LINE

  HOW TO BUILD AN INTELLIGENT MACHINE IN THREE EASY PARADIGMS

  GLOSSARY

  NOTES

  SUGGESTED READINGS

  WEB LINKS

  INDEX

  Praise for The Age of Spiritual Machines

  The Age of Spiritual Machines “ranges widely over such juicy topics as entropy, chaos, the big bang, quantum theory, DNA computers, quantum computers, Godel’s theorem, neural nets, genetic algorithms, nanoengineering, the Turing test, brain scanning, the slowness of neurons, chess playing programs, the Internet—the whole world of information technology past, present, and future. This is a book for anyone who wonders where human technology is going next.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  “A mind-expanding account of the rise of intelligent machines..... Nothing less than a blueprint for how to shove Homo sapiens off centre-stage in evolution’s endless play.... If you buy into [Kurzweil’s Law of Accelerating Returns]—and all empirical evidence currently available supports it completely—then the replacement of humans by machines as the primary intellectual force on Earth is indeed imminent.”

  —John Casti, Nature

  “A welcome challenge to beliefs we hold dear ... Kurzweil paints a tantalizing—and sometimes terrifying—portrait of a world where the line between humans and machines has become thoroughly blurred.”

  —Chet Raymo, The Boston Globe

  “Brilliant ... Kurzweil clearly takes his place as a leading futurist of our time. He links the relentless growth of our future technology to a universe in which Artificial Intelligence and Nanotechnology combine to bring unimaginable wealth and longevity, not merely to our descendants, but to some of those living today.”

  —Marvin Minsky, Professor of Media Arts and Sciences, MIT

  “The Age of Spiritual Machines makes all other roads to the computer future look like goat paths in Patagonia.”

  —George Gilder, author of Wealth and Poverty and Life After Television

  “A compelling vision of the future from one of our nation’s leading innovators. Kurzweil brings serious science and a twinkling sense of humor to the question of where we are headed ... With his pioneering inventions, and his penetrating ideas, Kurzweil convincingly takes us through what promises to be the most pivotal of centuries.”

  —Mike Brown, Chairman of the Nasdaq Stock Market

  “An extremely provocative glimpse into what the next few decades may well hold ... Kurzweil’s broad outlook and fresh approach make his optimism hard to resist.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Ray Kurzweil’s inventions include reading machines for the blind, music synthesizers used by Stevie Wonder and many others, and marketing leading speech-recognition technology. He is the author of The Age of Intelligent Machines, which won the Association of American Publishers’ Award for the Most Outstanding Computer Science Book of 1990, and The 10% Solution for a Healthy Life. He was awarded the Dickson Prize, Carnegie Mellon’s top science prize, in 1994. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology named him Inventor of the Year in 1988. He is also the recipient of nine honorary degrees and honors from two U.S. presidents. Kurzweil lives in a suburb of Boston.

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  First published in the United States of America by Viking Penguin,

  a member of Penguin Putnam Inc. 1999

  Published in Penguin Books 2000

  19 20

  Copyright © Ray Kurzweil, 1999

  All rights reserved

  Illustrations credits

  Pages 24, 26-27, 104, 156: Concept and text by Ray Kurzweil.

  Illustration by Rose Russo and Robert Brun.

  Page 72: © 1977 by Sidney Harris.

  Pages 167-168: Paintings by Aaron, a computerized robot built and programmed by Harold Cohen.

  Photographed by Becky Cohen.

  Page 188: Roz Chast © 1998. From The Cartoon Bank. All rights reserved.

  Page 194: Danny Shananhan © 1994. From The New Yorker Collection. All rights reserved.

  Page 219: Peter Steiner © 1997. From The New Yorker Collection. All rights reserved.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-07502-9

  1. Artificial intelligence. 2. Computers. I. Title.

  Q335.K88 1999

  006.3—dc21 98-388804

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  A NOTE TO THE READER

  As a photon wends its way through an arrangement of glass panes and mirrors, its path remains ambiguous. It essentially takes every possible path available to it (apparently these photons have not read Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken”). This ambiguity remains until observation by a conscious observer forces the particle to decide which path it had taken. Then the uncertainty is resolved—retroactively—and it is as if the selected path had been taken all along.

  Like these quantum particles, you—the reader—have choices to make in your path through this book. You can read the chapters as I intended them to be read, in sequential order. Or, after reading the Prologue, you may decide that the future can’t wait, and you wish to immediately jump to the chapters in Part III on the twenty-first century (the table of contents on the next pages offers a description of each chapter). You may then make your way back to the ea
rlier chapters that describe the nature and origin of the trends and forces that will manifest themselves in this coming century. Or, perhaps, your course will remain ambiguous until the end. But when you come to the Epilogue, any remaining ambiguity will be resolved, and it will be as if you had always intended to read the book in the order that you selected.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I would like to express my gratitude to the many persons who have provided inspiration, patience, ideas, criticism, insight, and all manner of assistance for this project. In particular, I would like to thank:

  • My wife, Sonya, for her loving patience through the twists and turns of the creative process

  • My mother for long engaging walks with me when I was a child in the woods of Queens (yes, there were forests in Queens, New York, when I was growing up) and for her enthusiastic interest in and early support for my not-always-fully-baked ideas

  • My Viking editors, Barbara Grossman and Dawn Drzal, for their insightful guidance and editorial expertise and the dedicated team at Viking Penguin, including Susan Petersen, publisher; Ivan Held and Paul Slovak, marketing executives; John Jusino, copy editor; Betty Lew, designer; Jariya Wanapun, editorial assistant, and Laura Ogar, indexer

  • Jerry Bauer for his patient photography

  • David High for actually devising a spiritual machine for the cover

  • My literary agent, Loretta Barrett, for helping to shape this project

  • My wonderfully capable researchers, Wendy Dennis and Nancy Mulford, for their dedicated and resourceful efforts, and Tom Garfield for his valuable assistance

  • Rose Russo and Robert Brun for turning illustration ideas into beautiful visual presentations

  • Aaron Kleiner for his encouragement and support

  • George Gilder for his stimulating thoughts and insights

  • Harry George, Don Gonson, Larry Janowitch, Hannah Kurzweil, Rob Pressman, and Mickey Singer for engaging and helpful discussions on these topics

  • My readers: Peter Arnold, Melanie Baker-Futorian, Loretta Barrett, Stephen Baum, Bryan Bergeron, Mike Brown, Cheryl Cordima, Avi Coren, Wendy Dennis, Mark Dionne, Dawn Drzal, Nicholas Fabijanic, Gil Fischman, Ozzie Frankell, Vicky Frankell, Bob Frankston, Francis Ganong, Tom Garfield, Harry George, Audra Gerhardt, George Gilder, Don Gonson, Martin Greenberger, Barbara Grossman, Larry Janowitch, Aaron Kleiner, Jerry Kleiner, Allen Kurzweil, Amy Kurzweil, Arielle Kurzweil, Edith Kurzweil, Ethan Kurzweil, Hannah Kurzweil, Lenny Kurzweil, Missy Kurzweil, Nancy Kurzweil, Peter Kurzweil, Rachel Kurzweil, Sonya Kurzweil, Jo Lernout, Jon Lieff, Elliot Lobel, Cyrus Mehta, Nancy Mulford, Nicholas Mullendore, Rob Pressman, Vlad Sejnoha, Mickey Singer, Mike Sokol, Kim Storey, and Barbara Tyrell for their compliments and criticisms (the latter being the most helpful) and many invaluable suggestions

  • Finally, all the scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, and artists who are busy creating the age of spiritual machines.

  PROLOGUE: AN INEXORABLE EMERGENCE

  The gambler had not expected to be here. But on reflection, he thought he had shown some kindness in his time. And this place was even more beautiful and satisfying than he had imagined. Everywhere there were magnificent crystal chandeliers, the finest handmade carpets, the most sumptuous foods, and, yes, the most beautiful women, who seemed intrigued with their new heaven mate. He tried his hand at roulette, and amazingly his number came up time after time. He tried the gaming tables, and his luck was nothing short of remarkable: He won game after game. Indeed his winnings were causing quite a stir, attracting much excitement from the attentive staff, and from the beautiful women.

  This continued day after day, week after week, with the gambler winning every game, accumulating bigger and bigger earnings. Everything was going his way He just kept on winning. And week after week, month after month, the gambler’s streak of success remained unbreakable.

  After a while, this started to get tedious. The gambler was getting restless; the winning was starting to lose its meaning. Yet nothing changed. He just kept on winning every game, until one day, the now anguished gambler turned to the angel who seemed to be in charge and said that he couldn’t take it anymore. Heaven was not for him after all. He had figured he was destined for the “other place” nonetheless, and indeed that is where he wanted to be.

  “But this is the other place,” came the reply

  That is my recollection of an episode of The Twilight Zone that I saw as a young child. I don’t recall the title, but I would call it “Be Careful What You Wish For.”1 As this engaging series was wont to do, it illustrated one of the paradoxes of human nature: We like to solve problems, but we don’t want them all solved, not too quickly, anyway We are more attached to the problems than to the solutions. Take death, for example. A great deal of our effort goes into avoiding it. We make extraordinary efforts to delay it, and indeed often consider its intrusion a tragic event. Yet we would find it hard to live without it. Death gives meaning to our lives. It gives importance and value to time. Time would become meaningless if there were too much of it. If death were indefinitely put off, the human psyche would end up, well, like the gambler in The Twilight Zone episode.

  We do not yet have this predicament. We have no shortage today of either death or human problems. Few observers feel that the twentieth century has left us with too much of a good thing. There is growing prosperity, fueled not incidentally by information technology, but the human species is still challenged by issues and difficulties not altogether different than those with which it has struggled from the beginning of its recorded history.

  The twenty-first century will be different. The human species, along with the computational technology it created, will be able to solve age-old problems of need, if not desire, and will be in a position to change the nature of mortality in a postbiological future. Do we have the psychological capacity for all the good things that await us? Probably not. That, however, might change as well.

  Before the next century is over, human beings will no longer be the most intelligent or capable type of entity on the planet. Actually, let me take that back. The truth of that last statement depends on how we define human. And here we see one profound difference between these two centuries: The primary political and philosophical issue of the next century will be the definition of who we are.2

  But I am getting ahead of myself. This last century has seen enormous technological change and the social upheavals that go along with it, which few pundits circa 1899 foresaw. The pace of change is accelerating and has been since the inception of invention (as I will discuss in the first chapter, this acceleration is an inherent feature of technology). The result will be far greater transformations in the first two decades of the twenty-first century than we saw in the entire twentieth century. However, to appreciate the inexorable logic of where the twenty-first century will bring us, we have to go back and start with the present.

  TRANSITION TO THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

  Computers today exceed human intelligence in a broad variety of intelligent yet narrow domains such as playing chess, diagnosing certain medical conditions, buying and selling stocks, and guiding cruise missiles. Yet human intelligence overall remains far more supple and flexible. Computers are still unable to describe the objects on a crowded kitchen table, write a summary of a movie, tie a pair of shoelaces, tell the difference between a dog and a cat (although this feat, I believe, is becoming feasible today with contemporary neural nets—computer simulations of human neurons),3 recognize humor, or perform other subtle tasks in which their human creators excel.

  One reason for this disparity in capabilities is that our most advanced computers are still simpler than the human brain—currently about a million times simpler (give or take one or two orders of magnitude depending on the assumptions used). But this disparity will not remain the case as we go through the early part of the next century. Computers doubled in speed every three years at the beginning of the twentieth century, every two years in the 1950s and 19
60s, and are now doubling in speed every twelve months. This trend will continue, with computers achieving the memory capacity and computing speed of the human brain by around the year 2020.

  Achieving the basic complexity and capacity of the human brain will not automatically result in computers matching the flexibility of human intelligence. The organization and content of these resources—the software of intelligence—is equally important. One approach to emulating the brain’s software is through reverse engineering—scanning a human brain (which will be achievable early in the next century)4 and essentially copying its neural circuitry in a neural computer (a computer designed to simulate a massive number of human neurons) of sufficient capacity

  There is a plethora of credible scenarios for achieving human-level intelligence in a machine. We will be able to evolve and train a system combining massively parallel neural nets with other paradigms to understand language and model knowledge, including the ability to read and understand written documents. Although the ability of today’s computers to extract and learn knowledge from natural-language documents is quite limited, their abilities in this domain are improving rapidly Computers will be able to read on their own, understanding and modeling what they have read, by the second decade of the twenty-first century. We can then have our computers read all of the world’s literature—books, magazines, scientific journals, and other available material. Ultimately, the machines will gather knowledge on their own by venturing into the physical world, drawing from the full spectrum of media and information services, and sharing knowledge with each other (which machines can do far more easily than their human creators).