‘The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology ‘ Book Review

The Gist

Futurist Ray Kurzweil has been making predictions going back as far 1990 with an astonishing 86% accuracy. In his 2006 book, Ray goes hell for leather for what our future may look like, going so far as to call 2045 as the year that this happens:

"2029 is the consistent date I have predicted for when an AI will pass a valid Turing test and therefore achieve human levels of intelligence. I have set the date 2045 for the ‘Singularity’ which is when we will multiply our effective intelligence a billion fold by merging with the intelligence we have created."

A bold claim. But how do we get there? Ray divides the book into six epochs of where we are (Between 4 and 5 for those playing at home) to where we will be:

Some of the mind boggling highlights of that future as spread across the whopping 168,000 word count. For my own attention span been I’ve divided these up into GNR…