The Age of Spiritual Machines

Homo sapiens S @ ( engl. Original title: The Age of Spiritual Machines ) is a book published in 1999 by Raymond Kurzweil, which deals mainly with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and other advanced technologies.

The subtitle " Life in the 21st Century - What remains of the people," sums up the impact that the AI will have according to the author Ray Kurzweil on the future development of mankind, together. The English subtitles (When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence, German: When computers exceed human intelligence ) refers to the issue of super-intelligence, Kurzweil has become famous for its vision.

Content

The book is in three parts, and split a prologue and an epilogue. Subject in this book are among other artificial intelligence, superintelligence, nanotechnology, neurotechnology, and quantum mechanics.

Structure

  • Prologue: A relentless winning streak
  • Part I: The past under the magnifying glass Chapter 1: The Law of Time and Chaos
  • Chapter 2: The intelligence of evolution
  • Chapter 3: From Consciousness and machinery
  • Chapter 4: A new form of intelligence on Earth
  • Chapter 5: Context and Knowledge
  • Chapter 6: The construction of new brain ...
  • Chapter 7: ... and body
  • Chapter 8: 1999
  • Chapter 9: 2009
  • Chapter 10: 2019
  • Chapter 11: 2029
  • Chapter 12: 2099

Described forecasts

Forecast for 2009

Kurzweil expected for 2009, a computing capacity of a trillion floating point operations per second (1 Teraflops ) for a 1000 dollar PC and 20 petaflops for supercomputers. Most people would rather than traditional PCs use portable computers that can " significantly lighter and smaller than [ ... ] Notebooks " the end of the 1990s were, also you would usually wear more than a dozen small computer (cell phones, pagers, etc. ) with you.

Speech recognition and machine translation are almost fully developed, so that applications like translated phones are common and less keyboards would be needed. Voice controlled assistants ( Language User Interfaces) and intelligent software agents would be used mainly on the internet for routine tasks. Virtual reality ( VR) is available in audio and video no longer distinguishable from the natural quality, tactile applications are in the prototype phase. Rotating storage such as CDs and hard drives are outdated and were dying from. The Turing Test, however, existed not yet computer.

Assistive devices for the disabled such as navigation systems for the blind are mature, the lame could recover with electronic orthopedic walking machines her mobility. In medicine, expert systems, VR training programs and telemedicine is widespread. Art will mainly generated on the computer using intelligent programs, and the distribution of movies and music and books mainly successes over the Internet.

Also prophesied Kurzweil for the first decade of the 21st century an uninterrupted economic recovery and a sharp drop in prices, starting from the IT industry.

Forecasts for 2019

For Kurzweil 2019 expected that a 1000 dollar PC surpasses the computing power of a human brain. The total computing capacity of all computers should be equal to the mankind. Computers are integrated almost everywhere ( eg, in clothing, in furniture ) and it will give the opportunity to all, to surf on the Retina Display on the Internet - the virtual world would partially merge with the real. Pin Large cameras were spread everywhere.

Computer would be served only by voice, keyboards are no longer used. Most transactions were running on a computer. Data cable would largely disappear, and the flash memory as data storage standard. For CPUs, three-dimensional Nanotubegitterstrukturen established. Also artificial neural networks and genetic algorithms would be used widely. Lightweight, thin and high-resolution displays would replace the paper (see: Electronic paper ). Thus, the advancing technology have overtaken books and paper documents.

Noninvasive brain scans would allow scientists to determine the exact thought processes of the human brain. Nanotechnology will awarded more and more important, the use of nanotechnology in manufacturing processes will default.

Learning will take place through virtual teacher. Most people would spend most of their time so that their skills and expand their knowledge. It would at first neural implants. Translation machinery would routinely used in conversations.

In everyday household robots will be affordable. Computer take over the driving - as a result there would be hardly any accidents. People would sometimes profound relations with simulated personalities. So in some cases more rights for computer personalities be required.

Kurzweil predicts for this decade heyday of the global economy. A living wage for the lower layer would be guaranteed.

Expenditure

  • Ray Kurzweil: Homo sapiens S @. Econ Tb, 1999, ISBN 978-3-5487-5026-2.
  • Literature ( English )
  • Literature ( 20th century)
  • Transhumanism
Neural engineering Turing-Test Retina-Display
397909
de