The Singularity Is Nearer: When We Merge with AI

by Ray Kurzweil

And so this book is about our final approach to the Singularity—the opportunities and dangers we must confront together over the last generation of the world as we knew it.

In the Fifth Epoch, we will directly merge biological human cognition with the speed and power of our digital technology. This is brain–computer interfaces.

When behaviors are driven by genetics instead of learning, they are orders of magnitude slower to adapt.

The Ship of Theseus is a fun thought experiment when it comes to ships or other “dead” objects, but it doesn’t have particularly high stakes.

In the memorable formulation of astronomer Hugh Ross, the likelihood of all this fine-tuning happening by chance is like “the possibility of a Boeing 747 aircraft being completely assembled as a result of a tornado striking a junkyard.”[75]

The introduction of the movable-type printing press in Europe in the late Middle Ages sparked a proliferation of inexpensive and varied reading materials and made it practical for ordinary people to become literate. As the medieval period was ending, less than a fifth of Europe’s population knew how to read.[44]

This changed with Gutenberg’s invention of the movable-type printing press around 1440, and with its rapid adoption the educated classes were able to spread both news and ideas with far greater effectiveness.[185]

It’s not clear whether Ned Ludd actually existed, but legend has it that he accidentally broke textile factory machinery, and any equipment damaged thereafter—either mistakenly or in protest of automation—would be blamed on Ludd.[25] When the desperate weavers formed an urban guerrilla army in 1811, they declared General Ludd their leader.[26] These Luddites, as they were known, revolted against factory owners—they first directed their violence primarily at the machines, but bloodshed soon ensued. The movement ended with the imprisonment and hanging of prominent Luddite leaders by the British government.[27] Ned Ludd was never found.

Many were forced into lower-paying jobs, at least for a time. But a positive result of this early wave of automation was that the common person could now afford a well-made wardrobe rather than a single shirt. And over time, whole new industries were formed as a result of automation. The resulting prosperity was the primary factor that destroyed the original Luddite movement. Although the Luddites have passed into history, they’ve remained a powerful symbol of those who protest being left behind by technological progress.

Even if your nominal wages stayed flat over the past two decades, you can now buy many thousands of times more computing power with them.[96] Government agencies have made some efforts to take improving performance into account for some economic statistics,[97] but these still massively underestimate the true price-performance gains.

One of the leading researchers in this field is biogerontologist Aubrey de Grey, founder of the LEV (Longevity Escape Velocity) foundation.[98]

In 2016 US Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work stated that the American military will “not delegate lethal authority to a machine to make a decision” about the use of such force.[69]