The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology
Ray Kurzweil
Dec 2019 · Penguin Random House Audio · Narrated by George Wilson
4.5star
6 reviewsreport
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24 hr 38 min
Unabridged
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About this audiobook
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Celebrated futurist Ray Kurzweil, hailed by Bill Gates as “the best person I know at predicting the future of artificial intelligence,” presents an “elaborate, smart, and persuasive” (The Boston Globe) view of the future course of human development.
“Artfully envisions a breathtakingly better world.”—Los Angeles Times
“Startling in scope and bravado.”—Janet Maslin, The New York Times
“An important book.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer
At the onset of the twenty-first century, humanity stands on the verge of the most transforming and thrilling period in its history. It will be an era in which the very nature of what it means to be human will be both enriched and challenged as our species breaks the shackles of its genetic legacy and achieves inconceivable heights of intelligence, material progress, and longevity.
While the social and philosophical ramifications of these changes will be profound, and the threats they pose considerable, The Singularity Is Near presents a radical and optimistic view of the coming age that is both a dramatic culmination of centuries of technological ingenuity and a genuinely inspiring vision of our ultimate destiny.
“Artfully envisions a breathtakingly better world.”—Los Angeles Times
“Startling in scope and bravado.”—Janet Maslin, The New York Times
“An important book.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer
At the onset of the twenty-first century, humanity stands on the verge of the most transforming and thrilling period in its history. It will be an era in which the very nature of what it means to be human will be both enriched and challenged as our species breaks the shackles of its genetic legacy and achieves inconceivable heights of intelligence, material progress, and longevity.
While the social and philosophical ramifications of these changes will be profound, and the threats they pose considerable, The Singularity Is Near presents a radical and optimistic view of the coming age that is both a dramatic culmination of centuries of technological ingenuity and a genuinely inspiring vision of our ultimate destiny.
Ratings and reviews
4.5
6 reviews
Andy Smith
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October 11, 2023
fantastic and hopeful vision of the future! I will say, though, the timelines for some stuff in here have not panned out yet (the book is not recent). I'd add 20-40 years on top of any predictions in here
Arnfinn Bjørsvik
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May 3, 2020
Combination of creepy, optimistic and scary. It is impossible to disregard Kursweil describing the impact of technology on the world/humans. His predictions has always been eerily accurate. It is also important that his descriptions of future concepts are securely founded in science and years of experience from academia and the tech industry (lately Google).
Anil Das
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July 10, 2021
AÀA BOSS NETWORK
About the author
Ray Kurzweil is a world class inventor, thinker, and futurist, with a thirty-five-year track record of accurate predictions. He has been a leading developer in artificial intelligence for more than six decades—longer than any other living person. He was the principal inventor of the first CCD flat-bed scanner, omni-font optical character recognition, print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, text-to-speech synthesizer, music synthesizer capable of recreating the grand piano and other orchestral instruments, and commercially marketed large-vocabulary speech recognition software. Ray received a GRAMMY® Award for outstanding achievement in music technology. He is the recipient of the National Medal of Technology and was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. He has written five books including The Singularity Is Near and How to Create a Mind, both New York Times bestsellers, and Danielle: Chronicles of a Superheroine, winner of multiple young adult fiction awards. He is a Principal Researcher and AI Visionary at Google.
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