The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology

by Ray Kurzweil

Machines have exacting memories. Contemporary computers can master billions of facts accurately, a capability that is doubling every year.159 The underlying speed and price-performance of computing itself is doubling every year, and the rate of doubling is itself accelerating. As human knowledge migrates to the Web, machines will be able to read, understand, and synthesize all human-machine information. The last time a biological human was able to grasp all human scientific knowledge was hundreds of years ago. Another advantage of machine intelligence is that it can consistently perform at peak levels and can combine peak skills. Among humans one person may have mastered music composition, while another may have mastered transistor design, but given the fixed architecture of our brains we do not have the capacity (or the time) to develop and utilize the highest level of skill in every increasingly specialized area.