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The Singularity Is Nearer

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The Singularity Is Nearer

When We Merge with AI

Viking,

15 min read
8 take-aways
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What's inside?

AI technologies are now accelerating forward at an exponential pace, and will transform human life.

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AI is developing at an unprecedented pace, and it’s set to utterly transform human life by the mid-2000s. AI is trending toward a “Singularity” in which humans merge with AI and digital technologies. Computing power is increasing and becoming cheaper by orders of magnitude. Better understanding of neurology, coupled with more sophisticated engineering to support nanotechnology, will enable human brains to connect with AI and the cloud, radically expanding human intellect and consciousness. And as AI develops exponentially, so too will the quality of human life, health, and longevity.

Summary

Technology and human life are trending toward “the Singularity.”

In physics, the term “singularity” refers to the infinitely dense point in the middle of a black hole where the usual laws of physics cease to work. As applied to technology, “the Singularity” is a metaphor for the coming convergence of artificial intelligence and human biology and the resulting transformation of society. With the help of nanotechnology, scientists will be able to augment and dramatically expand the brain with layers of digital neurons accessible in the cloud. This development will increase human cognitive capabilities and change the nature and scope of human consciousness. Life won’t ever be the same again.

The move toward the Singularity is shaped by several key factors. Computing power is increasing exponentially, and at the same time, it’s getting cheaper. In addition, scientists’ understanding of neurology and how the human brain functions is improving, and engineers’ ability to work at a microscopic level and develop nanotechnologies is increasing. The development of information technologies involves a feedback loop. Each move forward in information technologies makes ...

About the Author

Ray Kurzweil is an inventor, futurist, thinker, and writer. He was the principal inventor of the first CCD flat-bed scanner, omni-font optical character recognition, a print-to-speech reading machine, a text-to-speech synthesizer, a music synthesizer capable of recreating the sounds of a grand piano and other orchestral instruments, and large-vocabulary speech recognition software. He is also the author of many books, including The Singularity Is Near and How to Create a Mind.

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