The Singularity Is Nearer

About the book

What will it mean to live free from the limits of our bodies? Who will we become if our minds can be archived and replicated? How will we handle the risks inherent in such incredibly powerful technology? For futurist, inventor and champion of techno-optimism Ray Kurzweil, the innovations of the coming decades will change human life forever: more powerful than organic intelligence, artificial intelligence will merge with the biological brain, greatly expanding our consciousness and cognitive abilities. Kurzweil also predicts an era of abundance in which advances in information technology make essential goods and services increasingly accessible — from food and clothing production to more efficient appliances and housing; from clean, sustainable energy to disease treatment and longer lives. This book therefore concerns our final approach to that point of Singularity and the opportunities and dangers it represents. Its prediction is that, if we can meet the scientific, ethical, social and political challenges such advances present, we will profoundly transform life on Earth for the better.

‘Freed from the confinement of our skulls, and processing on a substrate millions of times faster than biological tissue, the human mind will be able to grow exponentially, ultimately expanding our intelligence millions of times over. That is the core of my definition of the Singularity.’