The Singularity Is Nearer: When We Merge with AI

by Ray Kurzweil

In 1620, the Mayflower took sixty-six days to make the crossing.[11] By the American Revolution, in 1775, better shipbuilding and navigation had shaved the time to about forty days.[12] In 1838, the paddle-wheel steamship Great Western completed the journey in fifteen days,[13] and by 1900 the four-funnel, propeller-driven liner Deutschland made the transit in five days and fifteen hours.[14] In 1937, the turboelectric-powered liner Normandie cut it to three days and twenty-three hours.[15] In 1939, the first service by Pan Am flying boats took just thirty-six hours,[16] and the first jet airline service, in 1958, made the trip in less than ten and a half hours.[17] In 1976, the supersonic Concorde slashed this to just three and a half hours![18] This certainly seems like an open-ended exponential trend—yet it’s not. The Concorde was retired in 2003, and since then the London–New York route is back up to over seven and a half hours.[19] There’s a range of specific economic and technical reasons why transatlantic transport has stopped getting faster. But the deeper underlying reason is that transportation technology doesn’t create feedback loops. Jet engines aren’t used in the building of better jet engines, so at a certain point the costs of adding extra speed outweigh the benefit of further innovation.