The Age of Spiritual Machines
When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence
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Narrated by:
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Alan Sklar
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By:
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Ray Kurzweil
About this listen
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Bold futurist Ray Kurzweil, author of The Singularity Is Near, offers a framework for envisioning the future of machine intelligence
Imagine a world where the difference between man and machine blurs, where the line between humanity and technology fades, and where the soul and the silicon chip unite. This is not science fiction. This is the twenty-first century according to Ray Kurzweil, the “restless genius” (The Wall Street Journal), “ultimate thinking machine” (Forbes), and inventor of the most innovative and compelling technology of our era. In his inspired hands, life in the new millennium no longer seems daunting. Instead, it promises to be an age in which the marriage of human sensitivity and artificial intelligence fundamentally alters and improves the way we live.
More than just a list of predictions, Kurzweil’s prophetic blueprint for the future guides us through the inexorable advances that will result in:
• Computers exceeding the memory capacity and computational ability of the human brain (with human-level capabilities not far behind)
• Relationships with automated personalities who will be our teachers, companions, and lovers
• Information fed straight into our brains along direct neural pathways
Eventually, the distinction between humans and computers will have become sufficiently blurred that when the machines claim to be conscious, we will believe them.
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Critic reviews
“The Age of Spiritual Machines will blow your mind. Kurzweil lays out a scenario that might seem like science fiction if it weren’t coming from a proven entrepreneur.”—San Francisco Chronicle
“Kurzweil offers a thought-provoking analysis of human and artificial intelligence and a unique look at a future in which the capabilities of the computer and the species that invented it grow ever closer.”—Bill Gates
“Tantalizing—sometimes terrifying. . . . a welcome challenge to beliefs we hold dear.”—Boston Globe
“Kurzweil’s broad outlook and fresh approach make his optimism hard to resist.”—Kirkus Reviews
“This is a book for computer enthusiasts, science fiction writers in search of cutting-edge themes and anyone who wonders where human technology is going next.”—The New York Times
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Consciousness is our gateway to experience: it enables us to recognize Van Gogh’s starry skies, be enraptured by Beethoven’s Fifth, and stand in awe of a snowcapped mountain. Yet consciousness is subjective, personal, and famously difficult to examine: philosophers have for centuries declared this mental entity so mysterious as to be impenetrable to science. In The Ravenous Brain, neuroscientist Daniel Bor departs sharply from this historical view, and proposes a new model for how consciousness works.
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Effectively demystifies consciousness
- By Gary on 11-18-12
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Why Information Grows
- The Evolution of Order, from Atoms to Economies
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What is economic growth? And why, historically, has it occurred in only a few places? Previous efforts to answer these questions have focused on institutions, geography, finances, and psychology. But according to MIT's anti-disciplinarian César Hidalgo, understanding the nature of economic growth demands transcending the social sciences and including the natural sciences of information, networks, and complexity. To understand the growth of economies, Hidalgo argues, we first need to understand the growth of order.
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Great book!
- By bpjammin on 01-07-17
By: César Hidalgo
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Autopilot
- The Art & Science of Doing Nothing
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- Narrated by: Kevin Free
- Length: 3 hrs and 51 mins
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Andrew Smart wants you to sit and do nothing much more often - and he has the science to explain why. At every turn we’re pushed to do more, faster, and more efficiently: That drumbeat resounds throughout our wage-slave society. Multitasking is not only a virtue, it’s a necessity. But Andrew Smart argues that slackers may have the last laugh. The latest neuroscience shows that the “culture of effectiveness” is not only ineffective, it can be harmful to your well-being.
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Not worth it.
- By B Lee on 04-30-14
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Whiplash
- How to Survive Our Faster Future
- By: Joi Ito, Jeff Howe
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Today, not only is everything digital getting faster, cheaper, and smaller at an exponential rate, we also have the Internet. When these two revolutions - one in technology and the other in communications - joined, an explosive force was unleashed that changed the very nature of innovation. And with any change, we have seen many strategic blunders and extraordinary learning curves along the way.
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Just general advice on how to survive
- By A. Yoshida on 09-01-17
By: Joi Ito, and others
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Breakpoint
- Why the Web Will Implode, Search Will Be Obsolete, and Everything Else You Need to Know About Technology Is in Your Brain
- By: Jeff Stibel
- Narrated by: Robert David Grant
- Length: 7 hrs and 37 mins
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Overall
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Story
We are living in a world in which cows send texts to farmers when they're in heat, where the most valuable real estate in New York City houses computers, not people, and some of humanity's greatest works are created by crowds, not individuals. We are in the midst of a networking revolution - set to transform the way we access the world's information and the way we connect with one another. Studying biological systems is perhaps the best way to understand such networks, and nature has a lesson for us if we care to listen: Bigger is rarely better in the long run.
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Meh
- By Customer on 12-07-14
By: Jeff Stibel
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Radical Abundance
- How a Revolution in Nanotechnology Will Change Civilization
- By: K. Eric Drexler
- Narrated by: Tim Pabon
- Length: 11 hrs and 53 mins
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K. Eric Drexler is the founding father of nanotechnology - the science of engineering on a molecular level. In Radical Abundance, he shows how rapid scientific progress is about to change our world. Thanks to atomically precise manufacturing, we will soon have the power to produce radically more of what people want, and at a lower cost. The result will shake the very foundations of our economy and environment.
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Drexler Rehashes the Past
- By David on 10-19-13
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The Shallows
- What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains
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- Narrated by: Richard Powers
- Length: 10 hrs and 6 mins
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Weaving insights from philosophy, neuroscience, and history into a rich narrative, The Shallows explains how the internet is rerouting our neural pathways, replacing the subtle mind of the book reader with the distracted mind of the screen watcher. A gripping story of human transformation played out against a backdrop of technological upheaval, The Shallows will forever alter the way we think about media and our minds.
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It is not consistant, so it is frustrating.
- By Adam Shields on 08-03-12
By: Nicholas Carr
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T-Minus AI
- Humanity's Countdown to Artificial Intelligence and the New Pursuit of Global Power
- By: Michael Kanaan
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In T-Minus AI: Humanity's Countdown to Artificial Intelligence and the New Pursuit of Global Power, author Michael Kanaan explains the realities of AI from a human-oriented perspective that's easy to comprehend. A recognized national expert and the U.S. Air Force's first Chairperson for Artificial Intelligence, Kanaan weaves a compelling new view on our history of innovation and technology to masterfully explain what each of us should know about modern computing, AI, and machine learning.
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Trivial Book Regarding AI
- By AstroMan on 10-30-20
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Complexity
- The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos
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- Narrated by: Mikael Naramore
- Length: 17 hrs and 8 mins
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In a rarified world of scientific research, a revolution has been brewing. Its activists are not anarchists, but rather Nobel Laureates in physics and economics and pony-tailed graduates, mathematicians, and computer scientists from all over the world. They have formed an iconoclastic think-tank and their radical idea is to create a new science: complexity. They want to know how a primordial soup of simple molecules managed to turn itself into the first living cell--and what the origin of life some four billion years ago can tell us about the process of technological innovation today.
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You won't learn anything you didn't know
- By Dennis E. Alwine on 12-26-20
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Undeniable
- How Biology Confirms Our Intuition That Life Is Designed
- By: Douglas Axe
- Narrated by: Neil Hellegers
- Length: 7 hrs and 14 mins
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Throughout his distinguished and unconventional career, engineer-turned-molecular-biologist Douglas Axe has been asking the questions that much of the scientific community would rather silence. Now, he presents his conclusions in this brave and pioneering book. Axe argues that the key to understanding our origin is the "design intuition" - the innate belief held by all humans that tasks we would need knowledge to accomplish can be accomplished only by someone who has that knowledge.
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Seductively Challenge what are consider facts
- By Rafael Vila on 10-08-16
By: Douglas Axe
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Freedom Evolves
- By: Daniel C. Dennett
- Narrated by: Robert Blumenfeld
- Length: 11 hrs and 21 mins
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Can there be freedom and free will in a deterministic world? Renowned philosopher Daniel Dennett emphatically answers "yes!" Using an array of provocative formulations, Dennett sets out to show how we alone among the animals have evolved minds that give us free will and morality. Weaving a richly detailed narrative, Dennett explains in a series of strikingly original arguments - drawing upon evolutionary biology, cognitive neuroscience, economics, and philosophy - that far from being an enemy of traditional explorations of freedom, morality, and meaning, the evolutionary perspective can be an indispensable ally.
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I knew I was going to like this book
- By Gary on 05-30-14
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Too Big To Know
- Rethinking Knowledge Now That the Facts Aren't the Facts, Experts Are Everywhere, and the Smartest Person in the Room Is the Room
- By: David Weinberger
- Narrated by: Peter Johnson
- Length: 8 hrs and 2 mins
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We used to know how to know. We got our answers from books or experts. We'd nail down the facts and move on. But in the Internet age, knowledge has moved onto networks. There's more knowledge than ever, of course, but it's different. Topics have no boundaries, and nobody agrees on anything.Yet this is the greatest time in history to be a knowledge seeker - if you know how.
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Good to know ...
- By John B. Fisher on 01-24-12
By: David Weinberger
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What listeners say about The Age of Spiritual Machines
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- ThatGuyWithTheFace
- 10-10-19
Love this Audiobook
Sad to see the book end. Amazing book, amazing and well spoken reader for the audiobook version.
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- Justin
- 07-31-20
Outdated but still fascinating.
This is a good short read if you want to know where we are going.
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- Sam
- 04-20-16
interesting read but very short
I was definitely surprised when it ended abruptly.
The descriptions of neutral networks and evolutionarily algorithms were clear and educational.
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3 people found this helpful
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- M. Manning
- 09-14-18
Excellent work!
I absolutely love this book! A must read for anyone interested in understanding ourselves, quantum computing, the Future and all of mankind!
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- Ian McCullough
- 05-11-24
Off by a few decades, but prescient
First, super worthwhile read.
Kurzweil’s vision of the potential that technology presented in the late 90’s was astounding. His logical next steps led to things like smartphones and tablets almost precisely on time. His expectations of where things would had as technology improves seem to be spot on, albeit some years early. Advancements in AI, nanotech for bio engineering, and evolution of visual technologies and worlds (metaverse) are on the horizon.
Kurzweil is a techno optimist, and despite minor errors in the rate of tech advancement, the blind spot in his predictions feel like his non-accounting for people’s love of entertainment and the way things are. Oddly his predictions on sexual experience advancements will probably come far faster than the advancement in thinking around education and knowledge economics. The next 5 years will be very telling as AI starts to achieve its potential and broad consumer applications are advanced.
I’m eager to see more of the vision Ray sees.
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- Ben Sisson
- 11-13-16
Outdated, but a good read nonetheless.
Would you listen to The Age of Spiritual Machines again? Why?
Ray Kurzweil makes predictions that are interesting to listen to and compare to the present reality, so this could be entertaining to listen to in 20 years again.
Any additional comments?
For those in the field of artificial intelligence, this book does not really bring in much exciting until the last half hour. For those not in the field, I am not sure how intelligible this book is. Attempts to write in both a technical and a poetic way, and though it succeeds sometimes, he fails just as often. When this book came out, it would have been fantastic. If you want to learn about how people in the past think the future would be, just read "Neuromancer".
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- Johann Cohen
- 09-18-16
Personal Favorite
Would you consider the audio edition of The Age of Spiritual Machines to be better than the print version?
Both versions are amazing! Kurzweil hits the nail on the head.
What about Alan Sklar’s performance did you like?
He was awesome to listen to! I had to adapt, but once I listened to the audiobook, I was looking for similar titles with the same narrator.
Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?
I read it in 2015. I knew going into the material that Ray Kurzweil was making outlandish predictions with the utmost accuracy. While reading (about halfway through), I was really intrigued. His other titles are also very good. If you haven't had the opportunity, check out the title, "How to Create a Mind" By Ray Kurzweil.
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- Matt Gerchow
- 06-02-17
Not the same as the book
The overall book is great, but the narrator left out the man and woman dialogue at each check-in along the time line. That was my favorite part of this book when I read it 19 years ago.
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- Jack
- 01-03-12
Interesting Theories
Would you listen to The Age of Spiritual Machines again? Why?
This is one book worth multiple listens due to the theories laid out by Ray Kurzweil. There are many barriers to achieving the path he foresees for the human race and the path may meander. However, I can see the potential and each of the steps provide a set of ethics to chew over.
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- Richard
- 06-26-12
A good read, could have been more technical
I enjoyed hearing his ideas, it was amusing hearing his predictions now that we have reached them. No, we still don't have flying cars, but quite a lot of other things were spot-on.
I had hoped it would have been a little more technical, discussing algorithms and neural networks etc, but it was a good listen none the less.
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