The book, In The Age of Spiritual Machines, was an interesting read during the days I was without a computer. It allowed me to reflect a lot on the future, the different paradigms of computing, and the philosophy, morality and ethics that will arise when computers get more advanced - indeed, spiritual. The book flows quite strangely - Kurzweil starts off the book by creating various different laws that link time and chaos, like the Law of Accelerating Returns. While Kurzweil seems to have effectively researched and planned his laws, in my opinion he overemphasizes the tendency of the world of computing to follow these universal laws (he derives most of his laws from the beginning of the universe, then applies them to the computer science world). Nevertheless, this section of the book allows the reader to see the incredible pace at which the computer world is growing. The following two chapters then deal with how man will treat computers as they get more and more intelligent. What would happen if a computer suddendly displayed a message "I am lonely, talk to me?" - how would you react? Would you view it as an emotional response, or as a hard-wired output? These days, the latter, but as computer intelligence gets higher and higher, how will people react? The next chapter Kurzweil talks about "Context and Knowledge" - this was probably the most interesting chapter of all, covering the different ways that we think - something I am very interested in myself. The ensuing chapters all dealt with predictions. Firstly, Kurzweil dedicated two chapters to brains and bodies - some really scary ideas arise, like brains that can be passively scanned and stored as a "mind file", these mind files can now be read by computers, which essentially become "you" - this leads to the ideas of immortality as a file, we'll all end up being magnetic data stored on a disk. Then Kurzweil talks about bodies - neural implants, synthetic limbs, organs, nanoengineering to boost our immune system, bioengineering and many other aspects. The next 3 chapters are dedicated to predicting life in 2009, 2019, and 2099. While the 2009 chapter seems to be quite realistic, as Kurzweil progresses, he does seem to get a bit further out into fuzzy territory, especially by 2099, whereby you have multiple personalities, you are merged with another computer-generated computer personality, you can be in several places at once, since you don't have a physical body, but several virtual ones. I'll leave most of the juicy bits out for you to find out for yourself. The book does have some excellent ideas, and really does make you think about what will happen in the future. For example, chess was always the symbol of intelligence - only intelligent beings could play chess. Yet, the minute a computer beats the world champion at chess, does the world accept the computer as intelligent? No, it alters its definition of chess by saying "Oh, then chess obviously isn't a good sign of intelligence." - will AI ever win? Kurzweil points out that the same will happen with the Turing Test as computer programs gets more and more advanced. If a computer does pass the test, people won't accept the test as a definition of an intelligent computer. Another thing that really interested me was Kurzweil's prediction that a population consensus will soon be invalid, and will cease to occur. Why is this? Because computers will start claiming conciousness, because they are the result of brains that have been scanned, and reconstructed in silicon. Therefore, the computer has the exact personality of the owner of the brain - so they consider themselves concious. Later, one computer will be able to BE several people all at once, because the computing power will be sufficient to run a TOWN of reconstructed brains. So, is that computer 1, or multiple, entities?! Soon, people will merge with technology, so that only the brain remains, and a robotic platform for the brain to exist in will be the motion platform. Kurzweil predicts that there won't be a population consesus, instead they'll be a calculation power consensus. With the content of the book aside, I still have a few gripes. The writing style of the book was very informal (perhaps because Kurzweil didn't type it, instead he dictated it using a program sold by one of his companies!) - I have no trouble with that. But, at the end of each chapter was a simulated conversation with a person called Molly. These conversations would sum up each chapter at times, bring in other issues at other times, or digress somewhat at other times. With the exception of the prediction chapters I felt that these "conversations" were redundant. Overall, the book was entertaining, a great thought provoker. The book has got me looking forward to the future with some great expectations (and a little bit of fear too!). I'd recommend this book to anyone who has a casual interest in Artificial Intelligence and the future of technology. | ||||||||||||||
