The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence

The Age of Spiritual Machines is compelling and accessible, and not necessarily best read from front to back--it's less heavily historical if you jump around (Kurzweil encourages this). Much of the content of the book lays the groundwork to justify Kurzweil's timeline, providing an engaging primer on the philosophical and technological ideas behind the study of consciousness. Instead of being a gee-whiz futurist manifesto, Spiritual Machines reads like a history of the future, without too much science fiction dystopianism. Instead, Kurzweil shows us the logical outgrowths of current trends, with all their attendant possibilities. This is the book we'll turn to when our computers first say "hello." --Therese Littleton

Product Description
The national bestseller by the "ultimate thinking machine" (Forbes) whose predictions for the future are startling, provocative--and closer to fruition than you think.

Ray Kurzweil is the inventor of the most innovative and compelling technology of our era, an international authority on artificial intelligence, and one of our greatest living visionaries. Now he offers a framework for envisioning the twenty-first century--an age in which the marriage of human sensitivity and artificial intelligence fundamentally alters and improves the way we live. Kurzweil's prophetic blueprint for the future takes us through the advances that inexorably result in computers exceeding the memory capacity and computational ability of the human brain by the year 2020 (with human-level capabilities not far behind); in relationships with automated personalities who will be our teachers, companions, and lovers; and in information fed straight into our brains along direct neural pathways. Optimistic and challenging, thought-provoking and engaging, The Age of Spiritual Machines is the ultimate guide on our road into the next century.

"The Age of Spiritual Machines will blow your mind. . . . Kurzweil lays out a scenario that might seem like science fiction if it weren't coming from a proven entrepreneur."-- San Francisco Chronicle
The Age of Spiritual Machines appeared on national bestseller lists, including the Boston Globe and the San Francisco Chronicle
Kurzweil's first book, The Age of Intelligent Machines, won the Association of American Publishers Award for the Most Outstanding Computer Science Book of 1990

If you read the last chapters first it would be easy to conclude that Mr. Kurzweil is crazy. However, we have here an obviously highly educated computer scientist, successful business person, and superb writer, who also apparently has spent significant time and personal engergy considering the implications of our present science. Given the attributes and qualifications of this author, the substantive content of the book then becomes extremely difficult to ignore or dismiss, and I certainly wonder when the implications here presented will begin to create the expected anxiety among our general population.

Mr. Kurzweil carefully sets the stage for his various futurist predictions. He presents a most interesting history of computer science; an intro to the law of "chaos" theory, and a rendition of the theory of evolution intelligent enough to permanently stifle any creationist; a comprehensive, informative explanation of both machine and human intelligence, which upon reading, I finally understand the mental machinations of my animals and of myself--call it "consciousness explained", and we are made aware of its scientific limits and possibilities. And, for those who have any question at all that machine intelligence equivalent to human intelligence is possible, Mr. Kurzweil breaks it down into both understandable and frightening reality.

The book examines the present state of knowledge regarding both human and computer intelligence from the established technology to the most esoteric research, and then proceeds to project where all this will take us on a timeline ending in the year 2099.

Mr. Kurzweil several times states his own optimism about what he projects and predicts, but in truth can his surmises suppose anything but the end of the human race as we know it. Mr. Kurzweil has machines going to church, a mother merging with her computer, human brains which become software programs, and on and on. Thankfully Kurzweil ends at the year 2099, since for me one of the unwritten implications of going further would be to question what really is the difference between God and Kurzweil's machines.


My highest recommendation   January 9, 2002
Mike Treder (Brooklyn, NY United States)
17 out of 17 found this review helpful

Of all the books written in recent years concerning the soon-to-be-felt effects of rapidly advancing technology, Ray Kurzweil's is the best. He combines a confident grasp of technical and scientific complexities with the unusual ability to express far-reaching ideas in a way that is not only understandable but compelling. Kurzweil is a noted inventor, a wealthy entrepreneur, a genius, and a fine author. It's too bad he hasn't published more books (this is only his third), but apparently he has his hands full running high-tech companies, participating in think tanks, and contributing to his fabulous online chronicle of technological advancement.

The Age of Spiritual Machines serves as a sweeping review of the historical development of intelligence and computation, as a grand introduction to the fields of nanotechnology, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence, and as a mind-blowing summary of where we are headed in the next thirty years. Kurzweil's scientific credentials are impeccable and lend credence to his often startling extrapolations. For the non-technical reader, the book is very engaging and highly readable. For the more serious student, it includes a comprehensive series of notes and an exhaustive bibliography. On all counts, I give it my highest recommendation.


Brilliant   January 13, 2000
Scott R. Dahl (Upstate NY)
15 out of 16 found this review helpful

This book brings together the theory of evolution, philosophy, biology, chemistry and the exponential growth of technology to explain how the world became to be what it is today, and where it will continue to go. Kurzweil puts together very strong arguments for his theories and predictions and leaves me a believer. I think that every computer science major (and anyone interested in the future) should read this book.


Must read for anyone interested in how things may pan out   April 11, 2000
Sally-Ann Nag
11 out of 12 found this review helpful

I bought the book after attending a symposium organised by DougHofstadter at Stanford and featuring Ray Kurzweil and Hans Moravec(among others.) It really is a best seller in the US - at least intech book terms - WAKE UP Britian! The central theme of this book (and Moravec's Mind Children and Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind and Paul & Cox's Beyond Humanity), is that we are approaching the crossover ie we are roughly 20 years away from when machine intelligence will overtake human intelligence. And that once this happens, machine intelligence will accelerate into uncharted waters. I think that a convincing case is built that we are on track to do this within approximately this time span.

It's quite possible to nit-pick over much of what Kurzweil says - but that's not the point. The point is the general vision of where we are headed. Kurzweil's view is that there is a 50% plus chance that humanity will make it through this transitory phase (ie the next century), that we will successfully combat the comming threats of self replicating biotech pathogens, software pathogens and self replicating nanopathogens, to complete the process of integration with our technology - and abandonment of our biological roots that we are now in the early/final stages of. Early because we are currently only fractionally fused with our technology (language, books, machines etc). Final because the maybe 40,000 year process is, because of the exponential acceleration of technological development, perhaps only 50-100 years or so away from completion.

I guess this is likely to seem utterly far fetched to 99.9% of the public - just as would mobile phones, the internet and robotic jet travel have seemed beyond belief to a 1900 audience. My belief is that these guys are very much on the right track. Bottom line - If you are interested in how this century might pan out, this is as good a place to start as any. END