The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology

by Ray Kurzweil

The brain is good: it is an existence proof that a certain arrangement of matter can produce mind, perform intelligent reasoning, pattern recognition, learning and a lot of other important tasks of engineering interest. Hence we can learn to build new systems by borrowing ideas from the brain …. The brain is bad: it is an evolved, messy system where a lot of interactions happen because of evolutionary contingencies …. On the other hand, it must also be robust (since we can survive with it) and be able to stand fairly major variations and environmental insults, so the truly valuable insight from the brain might be how to create resilient complex systems that self-organize well …. The interactions within a neuron are complex, but on the next level neurons seem to be somewhat simple objects that can be put together flexibly into networks. The cortical networks are a real mess locally, but again on the next level the connectivity isn’t that complex. It would be likely that evolution has produced a number of modules or repeating themes that are being re-used, and when we understand them and their interactions we can do something similar.