"This successor volume to The Singularity Is Near explores how technology will refashion the human race in the decades to come. In this entirely new book, Ray Kurzweil brings a fresh perspective to advances in the singularity-assessing the progress of many of his predictions and examining the novel advancements that, in the near future, will bring a revolution in knowledge and an expansion of human potential. Among the topics he discusses are rebuilding the world atom by atom with devices like nanobots; radical life extension beyond the current age limit of 120; reinventing intelligence by expanding biological capacity with nonbiological intelligence in the cloud; how life is improving with declines in poverty and violence; and the growth of technologies that can be applied to everything from clothes to building materials to growing human organs. He also considers the potential perils of biotechnology, nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence, including such topics as how AI will impact unemployment and the safety of autonomous cars, and "After Life" technology, which will reanimate people who have passed away through a combination of data and DNA"--

This book presents a provocative exploration of the most important project in human-machine civilization: reverse-engineering the brain to understand precisely how it works and using that knowledge to create even more intelligent machines. Kurzweil discusses how the brain functions, how the mind emerges, brain computer interfaces, and the implications of vastly increasing the powers of our intelligence to address the world's problems.

The creator of the Kurzweil Reading Machine, the Kurzweil synthesizer, and the Windows 95 voice-recognition program offers logical and readable forecasts about twenty-first century technology. 65,000 first printing. Tour.

Winner, 1990, category of Computer Science, Professional/Scholarly Publishing Annual Awards Competition presented by the Association of American Publishers, Inc. In The Age of Intelligent Machines, inventor and visionary computer scientist Raymond Kurzweil probes the past, present, and future of artificial intelligence, from its earliest philosophical and mathematical roots to tantalizing glimpses of 21st-century machines with superior intelligence and truly prodigious speed and memory. Generously illustrated and easily accessible to the nonspecialist, this book provides the background needed for a full understanding of the enormous scientific potential represented by intelligent machines as well as their equally profound philosophic, economic, and social implications. Running alongside Kurzweil's historical and scientific narrative are 23 articles examining contemporary issues in artificial intelligence. Raymond Kurzweil is the founder and chairman of Kurzweil Applied Intelligence and the Kurzweil Reading Machine division of Xerox. He was the principal developer of the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind and other significant advances in artificial intelligence technology. Articles by: Charles Ames. Margaret A. Boden. Harold Cohen. Daniel C. Dennett. Edward A. Feigenbaum. K. Fuchi. George Gilder. Douglas R. Hofstadter. Michael Lebowitz. Margaret Litven. Blaine Mathieu. Marvin Minsky. Allen Newell. Brian W. Oakley. Seymour Papert. Jeff Pepper. Roger Schank and Christopher Owens. Sherry Turkle. Mitchell Waldrop.