The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology

by Ray Kurzweil

Our progress in reverse engineering the human brain, a key issue that I will describe in detail in this book, demonstrates that we do indeed have the ability to understand, to model, and to extend our own intelligence. This is one aspect of the uniqueness of our species: our intelligence is just sufficiently above the critical threshold necessary for us to scale our own ability to unrestricted heights of creative power—and we have the opposable appendage (our thumbs) necessary to manipulate the universe to our will.

This book will argue, however, that within several decades information-based technologies will encompass all human knowledge and proficiency, ultimately including the pattern-recognition powers, problem-solving skills, and emotional and moral intelligence of the human brain itself.

By the end of this century, the nonbiological portion of our intelligence will be trillions of trillions of times more powerful than unaided human intelligence.

There will be no distinction, post-Singularity, between human and machine or between physical and virtual reality. If you wonder what will remain unequivocally human in such a world, it’s simply this quality: ours is the species that inherently seeks to extend its physical and mental reach beyond current limitations.

As biological evolution moved toward humanoids, the objective itself evolved to the ability to outthink adversaries and to manipulate the environment accordingly.

Evolution applies positive feedback: the more capable methods resulting from one stage of evolutionary progress are used to create the next stage. As described in the previous chapter, each epoch of evolution has progressed more rapidly by building on the products of the previous stage. Evolution works through indirection: evolution created humans, humans created technology, humans are now working with increasingly advanced technology to create new generations of technology. By the time of the Singularity, there won’t be a distinction between humans and technology.