The Singularity Is Near

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Cover of the book

The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology (Viking Penguin, ISBN 0-670-03384-7) is a 2005 update of Raymond Kurzweil's 1999 book, The Age of Spiritual Machines and his 1987 book The Age of Intelligent Machines. In it, as in the two previous versions, Kurzweil attempts to give us a glimpse into what awaits us in the near future. His reasoning rests on the combination of four postulates:

That a technological-evolutionary jump known as "the singularity" exists as an achievable goal for humanity.
That through a law of accelerating returns, technology is progressing toward the singularity at an exponential rate.
That the functionality of the human brain is quantifiable in terms of technology that we can build in the near future.
That medical advancements will keep his generation (Baby Boomers) alive long enough for the exponential growth of technology to intersect and surpass the processing of the human brain.

[edit] Postulates

All four of Kurzweil's primary postulates must be correct in order for his conclusion to be true.

Acceptance and striving for the idea of living forever

Kurzweil asserts that a technological-evolutionary jump known as "the singularity" will be recognized as an achievable goal by humanity. Kurzweil acknowledges that belief in the singularity promotes the paradigm shift necessary for its advancement. By promoting the "truth" of its coming through predictions that seem remarkable at the time but inevitable after the fact (a global network, a computer beating the chess champion, etc.), Kurzweil's popular series of books reinforce the belief that a singularity is unavoidable.

The law of accelerating returns

Kurzweil asserts in his Law of Accelerating Returns that technology is progressing toward the Singularity at an exponential rate, relying almost entirely on empirical data. He expands on Moore's Law with models showing that not only the return, but the rate of return is increasing exponentially.

An objective measurement of cerebral processing power

Kurzweil asserts that the functionality of the brain is quantifiable in terms of technology that we can build in the near future. Kurzweil's earlier books showed cerebral processing power as primarily the number of computations in a square inch multiplied by the area of the brain. In this update, however, he finally acknowledges the possibility of Penrose-Hameroff Microtubule quantum processing and states that if his calculations of the processing capability of the brain are off by a factor of a billion, the double-exponential growth of technology will still catch up to it twenty-four years after his original projections. In a rebuttal paper at KurzweilAI.net, Hameroff asserts that the quantum processing power required for consciousness is at an order of magnitude greater than what can be expressed through conventional systems of processing measurement - an argument that seems again to ignore Kurzweil's premise that accelerating returns in development of present technologies (as well as the inevitable paradigm shift by advent of another periodically) could ameliorate even such a barrier, a relevant example being more advanced a form of quantum computing capable of full neural emulation, at a scale and with accuracy of computation equivalent to the biological human brain.

Sufficient medical advancements

Kurzweil asserts that medical advancements will keep his generation alive long enough for the exponential growth of technology to intersect and surpass the processing of the human brain. Kurzweil explains how nanobots will eventually be able to repair and replace any part of the body that wears out, but relies on other methods of medical technology to prolong our lives long enough to reach the singularity. The usefulness of this medical postulate then becomes a function of how long it will take to reach the singularity, something that has been thrown into question due to the possibility of quantum brain processing in many recent books, such as Roger Penrose's The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe.