The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology Read online

  Praise for The Singularity Is Near

  One of CBS News’s Best Fall Books of 2005

  Among St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s Best Nonfiction Books of 2005

  One of Amazon.com’s Best Science Books of 2005

  “Anyone can grasp Mr. Kurzweil’s main idea: that mankind’s technological knowledge has been snowballing, with dizzying prospects for the future. The basics are clearly expressed. But for those more knowledgeable and inquisitive, the author argues his case in fascinating detail. . . . The Singularity Is Near is startling in scope and bravado.”

  —Janet Maslin, The New York Times

  “Filled with imaginative, scientifically grounded speculation. . . . The Singularity Is Near is worth reading just for its wealth of information, all lucidly presented. . . . [It’s] an important book. Not everything that Kurzweil predicts may come to pass, but a lot of it will, and even if you don’t agree with everything he says, it’s all worth paying attention to.”

  —The Philadelphia Inquirer

  “[An] exhilarating and terrifyingly deep look at where we are headed as a species. . . . Mr. Kurzweil is a brilliant scientist and futurist, and he makes a compelling and, indeed, a very moving case for his view of the future.”

  —The New York Sun

  “Compelling.”

  —San Jose Mercury News

  “Kurzweil links a projected ascendance of artificial intelligence to the future of the evolutionary process itself. The result is both frightening and enlightening. . . . The Singularity Is Near is a kind of encyclopedic map of what Bill Gates once called ‘the road ahead.’ ”

  —The Oregonian

  “A clear-eyed, sharply-focused vision of the not-so-distant future.”

  —The Baltimore Sun

  “This book offers three things that will make it a seminal document. 1) It brokers a new idea, not widely known, 2) The idea is about as big as you can get: the Singularity—all the change in the last million years will be superceded by the change in the next five minutes, and 3) It is an idea that demands informed response. The book’s claims are so footnoted, documented, graphed, argued, and plausible in small detail, that it requires the equal in response. Yet its claims are so outrageous that if true, it would mean . . . well . . . the end of the world as we know it, and the beginning of utopia. Ray Kurzweil has taken all the strands of the Singularity meme circulating in the last decades and has united them into a single tome which he has nailed on our front door. I suspect this will be one of the most cited books of the decade. Like Paul Ehrlich’s upsetting 1972 book Population Bomb, fan or foe, it’s the wave at epicenter you have to start with.”

  —Kevin Kelly, founder of Wired

  “Really, really out there. Delightfully so.”

  —Businessweek.com

  “Stunning, utopian vision of the near future when machine intelligence outpaces the biological brain and what things may look like when that happens. . . . Approachable and engaging.”

  —the unofficial Microsoft blog

  “One of the most important thinkers of our time, Kurzweil has followed up his earlier works . . . with a work of startling breadth and audacious scope.”

  —newmediamusings.com

  “An attractive picture of a plausible future.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Kurzweil is a true scientist—a large-minded one at that. . . . What’s arresting isn’t the degree to which Kurzweil’s heady and bracing vision fails to convince—given the scope of his projections, that’s inevitable—but the degree to which it seems downright plausible.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  “[T]hroughout this tour de force of boundless technological optimism, one is impressed by the author’s adamantine intellectual integrity. . . . If you are at all interested in the evolution of technology in this century and its consequences for the humans who are creating it, this is certainly a book you should read.”

  —John Walker, inventor of Autodesk, in Fourmilab Change Log

  “Ray Kurzweil is the best person I know at predicting the future of artificial intelligence. His intriguing new book envisions a future in which information technologies have advanced so far and fast that they enable humanity to transcend its biological limitations—transforming our lives in ways we can’t yet imagine.”

  —Bill Gates

  “If you have ever wondered about the nature and impact of the next profound discontinuities that will fundamentally change the way we live, work, and perceive our world, read this book. Kurzweil’s Singularity is a tour de force, imagining the unimaginable and eloquently exploring the coming disruptive events that will alter our fundamental perspectives as significantly as did electricity and the computer.”

  —Dean Kamen, recipient of the National Medal of Technology, physicist, and inventor of the first wearable insulin pump, the HomeChoice portable dialysis machine, the IBOT Mobility System, and the Segway Human Transporter

  “One of our leading AI practitioners, Ray Kurzweil, has once again created a ‘must read’ book for anyone interested in the future of science, the social impact of technology, and indeed the future of our species. His thought-provoking book envisages a future in which we transcend our biological limitations, while making a compelling case that a human civilization with superhuman capabilities is closer at hand than most people realize.”

  —Raj Reddy, founding director of the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University and recipient of the Turing Award from the Association for Computing Machinery

  “Ray’s optimistic book well merits both reading and thoughtful response. For those like myself whose views differ from Ray’s on the balance of promise and peril, The Singularity Is Near is a clear call for a continuing dialogue to address the greater concerns arising from these accelerating possibilities.”

  —Bill Joy, cofounder and former chief scientist, Sun Microsystems

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Ray Kurzweil is one of the world’s leading inventors, thinkers, and futurists, with a twenty-year track record of accurate predictions. Called “the restless genius” by The Wall Street Journal and “the ultimate thinking machine” by Forbes magazine, Kurzweil was selected as one of the top entrepreneurs by Inc. magazine, which described him as the “rightful heir to Thomas Edison.” PBS selected him as one of “sixteen revolutionaries who made America,” along with other inventors of the past two centuries. An inductee into the National Inventors Hall of Fame and recipient of the National Medal of Technology, the Lemelson-MIT Prize (the world’s largest award for innovation), thirteen honorary doctorates, and awards from three U.S. presidents, he is the author of four previous books: Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever (coauthored with Terry Grossman, M.D.), The Age of Spiritual Machines, The 10% Solution for a Healthy Life, and The Age of Intelligent Machines.

  RAY KURZWEIL

  The Singularity Is Near

  * * *

  WHEN HUMANS TRANSCEND BIOLOGY

  This impression 2008

  First published in the UK in 2005 by

  Duckworth Overlook

  90-93 Cowcross Street, London EC1M 6BF

  Tel: 020 7490 7300

  Fax: 020 7490 0080

  [email protected]

  www.ducknet.co.uk

  First published in the USA by

  Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  Copyright © 2005 by Ray Kurzweil

  Photograph on p. 368 by Helene DeLillo, 2005

  Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint excerpts from the following copyrighted works: “Plastic Fant
astic Lover” by Marty Balin, performed by Jefferson Airplane. Ice Bag Publishing Corp. “What I Am” by Edie Arlisa Brickell, Kenneth Neil Withrow, John Bradley Houser, John Walter Bush, Brandon Aly. © 1988 by Geffen Music, Edie Brickell Songs, Withrow Publishing, Enlightened Kitty Music, Strange Mind Productions. All rights reserved. Administered by Universal—Geffen Music (ASCAP). Used by permission. All rights reserved. “Season of the Witch” by Donovan Leitch. © 1966 by Donovan (Music) Limited. Copyright renewed. International copyright secured. Used by permission. All rights reserved. World rights administered by Peermusic (UK) Ltd. “Sailing to Byzantium” from The Collected Worlks of W. B. Yeats, Volume I: The Poems, revised edited by Richard J. Finneran. Copyright © 1928 by The Macmillan Company; copyright renewed © 1956 by Georgie Yeats. Reprinted with permission of Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group and A.P. Watt Ltd on behalf of Michael B. Yeats.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication

  may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or

  transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,

  mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,

  without the prior permission of the publisher.

  The right of Ray Kurzweil to be identified as the Author of

  the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with

  the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  A catalogue record for this book is available

  from the British Library

  ebook ISBN 978 0 7156 3938 2

  * * *

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  The Power of Ideas

  CHAPTER ONE

  The Six Epochs

  The Intuitive Linear View Versus the Historical Exponential View

  The Six Epochs

  Epoch One: Physics and Chemistry. Epoch Two: Biology and DNA.

  Epoch Three: Brains. Epoch Four: Technology. Epoch Five: The Merger of Human Technology with Human Intelligence. Epoch Six: The Universe Wakes Up.

  The Singularity Is Near

  CHAPTER TWO

  A Theory of Technology Evolution:

  The Law of Accelerating Returns

  The Nature of Order. The Life Cycle of a Paradigm. Fractal Designs. Farsighted Evolution.

  The S-Curve of a Technology as Expressed in Its Life Cycle

  The Life Cycle of a Technology. From Goat Skins to Downloads.

  Moore’s Law and Beyond

  Moore’s Law: Self-Fulfilling Prophecy? The Fifth Paradigm. Fractal Dimensions and the Brain.

  DNA Sequencing, Memory, Communications, the Internet, and Miniaturization

  Information, Order, and Evolution: The Insights from Wolfram and Fredkin’s Cellular Automata. Can We Evolve Artificial Intelligence from Simple Rules?

  The Singularity as Economic Imperative

  Get Eighty Trillion Dollars—Limited Time Only. Deflation. . . a Bad Thing?

  CHAPTER THREE

  Achieving the Computational Capacity of the Human Brain

  The Sixth Paradigm of Computing Technology: Three-Dimensional

  Molecular Computing and Emerging Computational Technologies

  The Bridge to 3-D Molecular Computing. Nanotubes Are Still the Best Bet. Computing with Molecules. Self-Assembly. Emulating Biology. Computing with DNA. Computing with Spin. Computing with Light. Quantum Computing.

  The Computational Capacity of the Human Brain

  Accelerating the Availability of Human-Level Personal Computing. Human Memory Capacity.

  The Limits of Computation

  Reversible Computing. How Smart Is a Rock? The Limits of Nanocomputing. Setting a Date for the Singularity. Memory and Computational Efficiency: A Rock Versus a Human Brain. Going Beyond the Ultimate: Pico- and Femtotechnology and Bending the Speed of Light. Going Back in Time.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Achieving the Software of Human Intelligence: How to Reverse Engineer the Human Brain

  Reverse Engineering the Brain: An Overview of the Task

  New Brain-Imaging and Modeling Tools. The Software of the Brain. Analytic Versus Neuromorphic Modeling of the Brain. How Complex Is the Brain? Modeling the Brain. Peeling the Onion.

  Is the Human Brain Different from a Computer?

  The Brain’s Circuits Are Very Slow. But It’s Massively Parallel. The Brain Combines Analog and Digital Phenomena. The Brain Rewires Itself. Most of the Details in the Brain Are Random. The Brain Uses Emergent Properties. The Brain Is Imperfect. We Contradict Ourselves. The Brain Uses Evolution. The Patterns Are Important. The Brain Is Holographic. The Brain Is Deeply Connected. The Brain Does Have an Architecture of Regions. The Design of a Brain Region Is Simpler than the Design of a Neuron. Trying to Understand Our Own Thinking: The Accelerating Pace of Research.

  Peering into the Brain

  New Tools for Scanning the Brain. Improving Resolution. Scanning Using Nanobots.

  Building Models of the Brain

  Subneural Models: Synapses and Spines. Neuron Models. Electronic Neurons. Brain Plasticity. Modeling Regions of the Brain. A Neuromorphic Model: The Cerebellum. Another Example: Watts’s Model of the Auditory Regions. The Visual System. Other Works in Progress: An Artificial Hippocampus and an Artificial Olivocerebellar Region. Understanding Higher-Level Functions: Imitation, Prediction, and Emotion.

  Interfacing the Brain and Machines

  The Accelerating Pace of Reverse Engineering the Brain

  The Scalability of Human Intelligence.

  Uploading the Human Brain

  CHAPTER FIVE

  GNR: Three Overlapping Revolutions

  Genetics: The Intersection of Information and Biology

  Life’s Computer. Designer Baby Boomers. Can We Really Live Forever? RNAi (RNA Interference). Cell Therapies. Gene Chips. Somatic Gene Therapy. Reversing Degenerative Disease. Combating Heart Disease. Overcoming Cancer. Reversing Aging. DNA Mutations. Toxic Cells. Mitochondrial Mutations. Intracellular Aggregates. Extracellular Aggregates. Cell Loss and Atrophy. Human Cloning: The Least Interesting Application of Cloning Technology. Why Is Cloning Important? Preserving Endangered Species and Restoring Extinct Ones. Therapeutic Cloning. Human Somatic-Cell Engineering. Solving World Hunger. Human Cloning Revisited.

  Nanotechnology: The Intersection of Information and the Physical World

  The Biological Assembler. Upgrading the Cell Nucleus with a Nanocomputer and Nanobot. Fat and Sticky Fingers. The Debate Heats Up. Early Adopters. Powering the Singularity. Applications of Nanotechnology to the Environment. Nanobots in the Bloodstream.

  Robotics: Strong AI

  Runaway AI. The AI Winter. AI’s Toolkit. Expert Systems. Bayesian Nets. Markov Models. Neural Nets. Genetic Algorithms (GAs). Recursive Search. Deep Fritz Draws: Are Humans Getting Smarter, or Are Computers Getting Stupider? The Specialized-Hardware Advantage. Deep Blue Versus Deep Fritz. Significant Software Gains. Are Human Chess Players Doomed? Combining Methods. A Narrow AI Sampler. Military and Intelligence. Space Exploration. Medicine. Science and Math. Business, Finance, and Manufacturing. Manufacturing and Robotics. Speech and Language. Entertainment and Sports. Strong AI.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The Impact . . .

  A Panoply of Impacts.

  ... on the Human Body

  A New Way of Eating. Redesigning the Digestive System. Programmable Blood. Have a Heart, or Not. So What’s Left? Redesigning the Human Brain. We Are Becoming Cyborgs. Human Body Version 3.0.

  ... on the Human Brain

  The 2010 Scenario. The 2030 Scenario. Become Someone Else. Experience Beamers. Expand Your Mind.

  ... on Human Longevity

  The Transformation to Nonbiological Experience. The Longevity of Information.

  ... on Warfare: The Remote, Robotic, Robust, Size-Reduced, Virtual-Reality Paradigm

  Smart Dust. Nanoweapons. Smart Weapons. VR.

  ... on Learning

  ... on Work

  Intell
ectual Property. Decentralization.

  ... on Play

  ... on the Intelligent Destiny of the Cosmos:

  Why We Are Probably Alone in the Universe

  The Drake Equation. The Limits of Computation Revisited. Bigger or Smaller. Expanding Beyond the Solar System. The Speed of Light Revisited. Wormholes. Changing the Speed of Light. The Fermi Paradox Revisited. The Anthropic Principle Revisited. The Multiverse. Evolving Universes. Intelligence as the Destiny of the Universe. The Ultimate Utility Function. Hawking Radiation. Why Intelligence Is More Powerful than Physics. A Universe-Scale Computer. The Holographic Universe.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Ich bin ein Singularitarian

  Still Human?

  The Vexing Question of Consciousness

  Who Am I? What Am I?

  The Singularity as Transcendence

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The Deeply Intertwined Promise and Peril of GNR

  Intertwined Benefits . . .

  ... and Dangers

  A Panoply of Existential Risks

  The Precautionary Principle. The Smaller the Interaction, the Larger the Explosive Potential. Our Simulation Is Turned Off. Crashing the Party. GNR: The Proper Focus of Promise Versus Peril. The Inevitability of a Transformed Future. Totalitarian Relinquishment.