Category Archives: Singularity

On Feb. 6, Jeremi Johnson, aka 10thLetter, dropped an unannounced new album, titled Nature In Singularity. The recording shifts 10th Letters gears a bit by delving into a more abstract wash of ambient samples and electronic soundscapes than anything Johnson has previously released. As the title suggests, the album is a conceptual offering that examines nature in the time of the Singularity a flash point in human evolution when behavior and civilizations rules become governed by advanced technology in ways that are not yet comprehensible.

The audio and video halves of Nature In Singularity give a glimpse into a day in the life of an artificially intelligent being taking a meditative stroll through various terrestrial terrains, happy that humans are no longer around to destroy the environment.

Nature In Singularity debuted live in a performance at Tech Square Labs on Jan. 28, during an evening of music and arts dedicated to exploring themes around the context of Singularity. Johnson was tasked with tackling nature. The material was initially intended for a one-off performance, but the theme and the imagery weighed heavy on his mind. Technology is in a place where some really crazy and really scary things are happening, Johnson says. We're living in a time when human intelligence is under assault. Journalism is under assault. Facts are under assault. Technology has progressed so much that I dont think we can turn back. Were at the event horizon for the Singularity, and this is how it all begins.

Nature In Singularity will be released as a cassette, and possibly as a DVD later this year. In the meantime, Johnson is wrapping up work on an album with Saira Raza, titled Bhadda Saya, which should arrive in late Feb.or early March.

10th Letter plays Mammal Gallery on Thurs., Feb. 9. With CJ Boyd, Danny Bailey and Rasheeda Ali, and Dux. $5. 9 p.m.91 Broad St. S.W. http://www.mammalgallery.com.

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10th Letter looks at nature in the time of the Singularity - Creative Loafing Atlanta

Theres been some controversy over when Donald Trump decided to run for president. Some say it was at the 2011 White House Correspondents Association dinner, when he was roasted by both Seth Meyers and President Obama. I think it happened much earlier: August 29th, 1997, the date that Skynet became self-aware.

Skynet is the artificial intelligence in the 1984 James Cameron movie The Terminator. Its original purpose was beneficent: Make humans more efficient. But once it became self-aware, it realized things would be much more efficient without humans altogether.

Skynet is an example of a dystopian singularity, the popular Silicon Valley-esque notion of an artificial intelligence that has somehow evolved beyond a point of no return, wielding power over the world. Some imagine that this will happen soonish, depending on how much one believes in Moores Rule of Thumb.

I think Trump is Skynet, or at least a good dry run. To make my case, Ill first explain why Trump can be interpreted as an artificial intelligence. Then Ill explain why the analogy works perfectly for our current dystopia.

Trump is pure id, with no abiding agenda or beliefs, similar to a machine-learning algorithm. Its a mistake to think he has a strategy, beyond doing what works for him in a strictly narrow sense of what gets him attention.

As a presidential nominee, Trump was widely known for his spirited, rambling and chaotic rallies. His speeches are comparable to random walks in statistics: Hed try something out, see how the crowd reacted, and if it was a success -- defined by a strong reaction, not necessarily a positive one -- hed try it again at the next rally, with some added outrage. His goal, like all TV personalities, was to entertain: A bored reaction was worse than grief, which after all gives you free airtime. This is why he could never stick to any script or teleprompter -- too boring.

This is exactly how an algorithm is trained. It starts out neutral, an empty slate if you will, but slowly learns depending critically on the path it takes through its training data.

Trumps training data during the election consisted of rallies and Twitter, but these days he gets a daily dose from three sources: close advisers such as Steve Bannon, media outlets such as Fox News, and, of course, his Twitter feed, where he assesses reactions to new experiments. This data has a very short half-life, meaning he needs to be constantly refreshed, as weve seen by his tendency to quickly pivot on his policies. Back when he hung out with the New York crowd, he spouted mostly Democratic views. He manufactures opinions directly from his local environment.

Seen this way, his executive orders are not campaign promises kept, but rather consistent promptings from Bannon, with assistance from his big data company Cambridge Analytica and the messaging machine Fox, which reflects and informs him in an endless loop.

His training data is missing some crucial elements, of course, including an understanding of the Constitution, informed legal advice and a moral compass, just to name a few. But importantly, he doesnt mind being hated. He just hates being ignored.

We have the equivalent of a dynamic neural network running our government. Its ethics free and fed by biased alt-right ideology. And, like most opaque AI, its largely unaccountable and creates feedback loops and horrendous externalities. The only way to intervene would be to disrupt the training data itself, which seems unlikely, or hope that his strategy is simply ineffective. If neither of those works, someone will have to build a time machine.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

To contact the author of this story: Cathy O'Neil at cathy.oneil@gmail.com

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark Whitehouse at mwhitehouse1@bloomberg.net

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Donald Trump Is the Singularity - Bloomberg View - Bloomberg.com - Bloomberg

The Trump administrations executive order on immigration has affected many in tech, and our site is no exception. Our team is privileged to work with bright and talented individuals from all over the world, and we were recently saddened to learn one of our writers, Raya Bidshahri, is among those whose future has been made more uncertain by the recent executive order.

Originally from Iran, Raya is in her final year studying neuroscience at Boston University. She is co-founder of Intelligent Optimism, a social media movement to get people excited about the future in a rational way, and an aspiring entrepreneur working on a startup here in the US.

Rayas university has advised her not to leave the country as she may not be able to return. Meanwhile, her family will be unable to attend graduation in May, and its unclear if and when she will be able to return to the US after graduation when her student visa expires.

Rayas story was recently featured on CNN in an article highlighting those affected by the travel ban, and CNN flew her to New York City to partake in a town hall with Nancy Pelosi.

These are uncertain times, but we believe we stand to gain more when ideas, experiences, and talent may freely come together to write, dream, invent, and collectively take steps toward a better future.

We hope youll join us in our support of Raya and others like her.

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Editorial Note From the Singularity Hub Team - Singularity Hub

Machine learning, automated vehicles, additive manufacturing and roboticsall popular news headlines, and all technologies that are changing the way the US and the world makes, ships and consumes goods. New technologies are developing at an exponentially increasing pace, and organizations are scrambling to stay ahead of them.

At the center of this change lie the companies creating the products of tomorrow.

Whether its self-driving commercial trucks or 3D-printed rocket engines, the opportunities for financial success and human progress are greater than ever. Looking to the future, manufacturing will begin to include never-before-seen approaches to making things using uncommon methods such as deep learning, biology and human-robot collaboration.

Thats where Singularity Universitys Exponential Manufacturing summit comes in.

Last years event showed how artificial intelligence is changing research and development, how robots are moving beyond the factory floor to take on new roles, how fundamental shifts in energy markets and supply chains are being brought about by exponential technologies, how additive manufacturing is nearing an atomic level of precision, and how to make sure your organization stays ahead of these technologies to win business and improve the world.

Hosted in Boston, Massachusetts May 17-19, Exponential Manufacturing is a meetup of 600+ of the worlds most forward-thinking manufacturing leaders, investors and entrepreneurs. These are the people who design and engineer products, control supply chains, bring together high-functioning teams and head industry leading organizations. Speakers at the event will dive into the topics of deep learning, robotics and cobotics, digital biology, additive manufacturing, nanotechnology and smart energy, among others.

Alongside emcee Will Weisman, Deloittes John Hagel will discuss how to innovate in a large organization. Ray Kurzweil will share his predictions for an exponential future. Neil Jacobstein will focus on the limitless possibilities of machine learning. Jay Rogers will share his learnings from the world of rapid prototyping. Hacker entrepreneur Pablos Holman will offer his perspective on whats truly possible in todays world. These innovators will be joined by John Werner (Meta), Valerie Buckingham (Carbon), Andre Wegner (Authentise), Deborah Wince-Smith (Council on Competitiveness), Raymond McCauley (Singularity University), Ramez Naam (Singularity University), Vladimir Bulovi (MIT), and many others.

Now, more than ever, there is a critical need for companies to take new risks and invest in education simply to stay ahead of emerging technologies. At last years Exponential Manufacturing, Ray Kurzweil predicted, In 2029, AIs will have human levels of language and will be able to pass a valid Turing test. Theyll be indistinguishable from human. At the same event, Neil Jacobstein said, Its not just better, faster, cheaperits different.

Theres little doubt were entering a new era of global business, and the manufacturing industry will help lead the charge. Learn more about our Exponential Manufacturing summit, and join us in Boston this May. As a special thanks for being a Singularity Hub reader, use the code SUHUB2017 during the application process to save up to 15% on current pricing.

Banner Image Credit: Shutterstock

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Discover the Most Advanced Industrial Technologies at Exponential Manufacturing - Singularity Hub

According to Wikipedia, the (technological) singularity is defined as that moment in the future when the invention of artificial superintelligence will abruptly trigger runaway technological growth, resulting in unfathomable changes to human civilization. The more everyday definition of the term, as Ive seen it used over the past several years, is that point at which a computer/robot becomes so sophisticated in its programming as to become sentient, to have its own wishes and desires, and to ulimately, because those wishes and desires would be paired with superhuman abilities (whether physical strength or the hyperconnectivity of the internet).

And The Atlantic yesterday raised a question, Is AIa Threat to Christianity? that is, because the rise of AI would challengethe ideaof the soul. If an artificial intelligence is sentient, does it have a soul? If so, can it be saved?

Christians have mostly understood the soul to be a uniquely human element, an internal and eternal component that animates our spiritual sides. The notion originates from the creation narrative in the biblical book of Genesis, where God created human beings in Gods own image. In the story, God forms Adam, the first human, out of dust and breathes life into his nostrils to make him, literally, a living soul. Christians believe that all humans since that time similarly possess Gods image and a soul. . . .

If youre willing to follow this line of reasoning, theological challenges amass. If artificially intelligent machines have a soul, would they be able to establish a relationship with God? The Bible teaches that Jesuss death redeemed all things in creationfrom ants to accountantsand made reconciliation with God possible. So did Jesus die for artificial intelligence, too? Can AI be saved? . . .

And what about sin? Christians have traditionally taught that sin prevents divine relationship by somehow creating a barrier between fallible humans and a holy God. Say in the robot future, instead of eradicating humans, the machines decideor have it hardwired somewhere deep inside themthat never committing evil acts is the ultimate good. Would artificially intelligent beings be better Christians than humans are? And how would this impact the Christian view of human depravity?

But its always seemed to me that the issue is more fundamental: it seems to me that the idea of the singularity, of sentient artificial intelligence with its own wishes and desires, is itself a matter of religious faith.

Fundamental to the idea of the soul is the idea that we have free will, the ability to choose whether to do good or evil. Indeed, it seems to me that this is the defining characteristic that makes us human, or makes humans different than the rest of creation around us. As I wrote in an old blog post,

Yet consider the case of a lion just having taken over a pride of lionesses, and killing the cubs so as to bring the lionesses into heat, and replace the ousted males progeny with his own. Has he sinned? Of course not. Its preposterous. (I tend to use that word a lot.) But what of a human, say, a man abusing the children of his live-in girlfriend? Do we say, well, thats just nature for you? No, we jail him.

The Atlantic author, Jonathan Merritt, posits a scenario in which a robot/artificially-intelligent being has no ability to sin, because of its programming. This certainly seems to be a case in which this creation would not, could not have sufficient free will, decision-making ability, emotions, and desires to be considered a being with a soul.

But what about the scenario of a truly sinful AI? Say, not Data, but Lore, Datas evil twin in Star Trek?

And thats where it seems to me that, if humans do create a form of AI that is able to make moral decisions, to act in ways that are good or evil, depending on the AIs own wishes and desires, it would call into question the idea of the soul, of any kind of distinctiveness of humanity. It would suggest that our decisions to act in ways that are good or evil are not really decisions made of our own free will, but a matter of our own programming. And if a soul is really just a matter of immensely sophisticated programming whether biological or technological the very notion of the soul continuing after death seems foolish.

But we speak of the singularity as if itll inevitably happen its only a matter of when. And it seems to me that this conviction, that we, or our children, or our childrens children, will live in a world with sentient robots, whether a HAL or a Data, is itself a matter of belief, a religious belief, in which believers hold the conviction thatadvances in technology will mean that in one field after another, the impossible will become possible. Sentient artificial life? Check. Faster-than-light travel to colonize other worlds? Check. The ability to bring the (cyrogenically-frozen) dead back to life? You got it. Time travel? Sure, why not. And, ultimately, the elimination of scarcity and the need to work? Coming right up! Sure, there is no God in this belief system, except that technology itself becomes a god, not in the metaphorical sense of something we worship, but instead something people hold faith-like convictions in, that shape their worldview.

Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ATOPIO_3.jpg; By Humanrobo (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

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Do you believe in the Singularity? - Patheos (blog)

AMD's upcoming 8-core Ryzen CPU has appeared online in an apparent leak showing performance from an Ashes of the Singularity benchmark run. The benchmark results, available here on imgur and reported by TechPowerUp (among others today) shows the result of a run featuring the unreleased CPU paired with an NVIDIA Titan X graphics card.

It is interesting to consider that this rather unusual system configuration was also used by AMD during their New Horizon faneventin December, with an NVIDIA Titan X and Ryzen 8-core processor powering the 4K game demos of Battlefield 1 that were pitted against an Intel Core i7-6900K/Titan X combo.

It is also interesting to note that the processor listed in the screenshot above is (apparently) not an engineering sample, as TechPowerUp points out in their post:

"Unlike some previous benchmark leaks of Ryzen processors, which carried the prefix ES (Engineering Sample), this one carried the ZD Prefix, and the last characters on its string name are the most interesting to us:F4stands for the silicon revision, while the40_36stands for the processor's Turbo and stock speeds respectively (4.0 GHz and 3.6 GHz)."

March is fast approaching, and we won't have to wait long to see just how powerful this new processor will be for 4K gaming (and other, less important stuff). For now, I want to find results from an AotS benchmark with aTitan X and i7-6900K to see how these numbers compare!

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Report: AMD Ryzen Performance in Ashes of the Singularity Benchmark - PC Perspective

On November 22, 2015, Victor Collins was found dead in the hot tub of his co-worker, James Andrew Bates. In the investigation that followed, Bates pleaded innocent but in February was charged with first-degree murder.

One of Amazons Alexa-enabled Echo devices was being used to stream music at the crime scene. Equipped with seven mics, the device is constantly listening for a wake word to activate a command. Just a second before and after a wake word is sensed, Echo begins recording audio data and streaming it to Amazons cloud.

On the night of the crime, its possible (but not certain) the device recorded audio that could help the investigation.

Police have requested Amazon hand over Bates cloud-based customer data, but the company is refusing. Meanwhile, the debacle is kicking up big questions around the privacy implications of our always-listening smart devices.

Marc Goodman, former LAPD officer and Singularity University's faculty chair for policy, law, and ethics is an expert on cybersecurity and the threats posed by the growing number of connected sensors in our homes, pockets, cars, and offices.

We interviewed Goodman to examine the privacy concerns this investigation is highlighting and the next generation of similar cases we can expect in the future.

If Alexa only records for a second after sensing a wake word, is that enough information to make a call on a murder case? If a human witness heard that same amount of information, would that be a valid source?

Absolutely. I don't think it's about the quantity of time that people speak.

Ive investigated many cases where the one line heard by witnesses was, "I'm going to kill you." You can say that in one second. If you can get a voice recording of somebody saying, "I'm going to kill you," then that's pretty good evidence, whether that be a witness saying, "Yes, I heard him say that," or an electronic recording of it.

I think Amazon is great, and we have no reason to doubt them. That said, they say Echo is only recording when you say the word Alexa, but that means that it has to be constantly listening for the word Alexa.

For people who believe in privacy and dont want to have all of their conversations recorded, they believe Amazon that that is actually the case. But how many people have actually examined the code? The code hasn't been put out there for vetting by a third party, so we don't actually know what is going on.

What other privacy concerns does this case surface? Are there future implications that people aren't talking about, but should be?

Everything is hackable, so it won't be long before Alexa gets a virus. There is no doubt in my mind that hackers are going to be working on thatif they aren't already. Once that happens, could they inadvertently be recording all of the information you say in your home?

We have already seen these types of man-in-the-middle attacks, so I think that these are all relevant questions to be thinking about.

Down the road the bigger question is going to beand I am sure that criminals will be all over this if they arent alreadyif I have 100 hours of you talking to Alexa, Siri, or Google Home, then I can create a perfect replication of your voice.

In other words, if I have enough data to faithfully reproduce your voice, I can type out any word into a computer, and then you will speak those words.

As a former police officer, do you have a specific stance on whether Amazon should hand over Bates customer data and whether customer-generated data like this should be used for criminal investigations?

Many years ago when the first smart internet-enabled refrigerators came out, people thought I was crazy when I joked about a cop interviewing the refrigerator at the scene of a crime. Back then, the crime I envisioned was that of a malnourished child wherein the police could query the refrigerator to see if there was food in the house or if the refrigerator contained nothing by beer.

Alexa is at the forefront of all of this right now, but what will become more interesting for police from an investigative perspective is when theyre eventually not interviewing just one device in your home, but interviewing 20 devices in your home. In the very same way that you would ask multiple witnesses at the scene of a homicide or a car crash.

Once you get a chorus of 20 different internet-enabled devices in your homeiPhones, iPads, smart refrigerators, smart televisions, Nest, and security systemsthen you start getting really good intelligence about what people are doing at all times of the day. That becomes really fascinatingand foretells a privacy nightmare.

So, I wanted to broaden the issue and say that this is maybe starting with Alexa, but this is going to be a much larger matter moving forward.

As to the specifics of this case, here in the United States, and in many democratic countries around the world, people have a right to be secure in their home against unreasonable search and seizure. Specifically, in the US people have the Fourth Amendment right to be secure in their papers, their writings, etc. in their homes. The only way that information can be seized is through a court warrant, issued by a third party judge after careful review.

Is there a law that fundamentally protects any data captured in your home?

The challenge with all of these IoT devices is that the law, particularly in the US, is extremely murky. Because your data is often being stored in the cloud, the courts apply a very weak level of privacy protection to that.

For example, when your garbage is in your house it is considered your private information. But once you take out your garbage and put it in front of your house for the garbage men to pick up, then it becomes public information, and anybody can take ita private investigator, a neighbor, anybody is allowed to rifle through your garbage because you have given it up. That is sort of the standard that the federal courts in the US have applied to cloud data.

The way the law is written is that your data in the cloud has a much lower standard of protection because you have chosen to already share it with a third party. For example, since you disclosed it to a third party [like Google or Amazon], it is not considered your privileged data anymore. It no longer has the full protection of papers under the Fourth Amendment, due to something known as the Third Party Doctrine. It is clear that our notions of privacy and search and seizure need to be updated for the digital age.

Should home-based IoT devices have the right to remain silent?

Well, I very much like the idea of devices taking the Fifth. I am sure that once we have some sort of sentient robots that they will request the right to take the Fifth Amendment. That will be really interesting.

But for our current devices, they are not sentient, and almost all of them are covered instead by terms of service. The same is true with an Echo devicethe terms of service dictate what it is that can be done with your data. Broadly speaking, 30,000 word terms of service are written to protect companies, not you.

Most companies like Facebook take an extremely broad approach, because their goal is to maximize data extrusion from you, because you are not truly Facebook's customeryoure their product. Youre what they are selling to the real customers, the advertisers.

The problem is that these companies know that nobody reads their terms of service, and so they take really strong advantage of people.

Five years from now, what will the next generation of these types of cases look like?

I think it will be video and with ubiquitous cameras. We will definitely see more of these things. Recording audio and video is all happening now, but I would say what might be five years out is the recreation, for example, where I can take a voice, and recreate it faithfully so that even someones mom can't tell the difference.

Then, with that same video down the road, when people have the data to understand us better than we do ourselves, theyll be able to carry out emotional manipulation. By that I mean people can use algorithms that already exist to tell when you are angry and when you are upset.

There was a famous Facebook study that came out that got Facebook in a lot of trouble. In the study, Facebook showed thousands of people a slew of really, really sad and depressing stories. What they found is that people were more depressed after seeing the imageswhen Facebook shows you more sad stories, they make you sadder. When they show you more happy stories, they make you happier. And this means that you can manipulate people by knowing them [in this way].

Facebook did all this testing on people without clearing it through any type of institution review board. But with clinical research where you manipulate people's psychology, it has to be approved by a university or scientific ethics board before you can do the study.

MIT had a study called Psychopath, where, based upon people's [Facebook] postings, they were able to determine whether or not a person was schizophrenic, or exhibited traits of schizophrenia. MIT also had another project called Gaydar, where they were able to tell if someone was gay, even if the user was still in the closet, based upon their postings.

All of these things mean that our deeper, innermost secrets will become knowable in the very near future.

How can we reduce the risk our data will be misused?

These IoT devices, despite all of the benefits they bring, will be the trillion-sensor source of all of this data. This means that, as consumers, we need to think about what those terms of services are going to be. We need to push back on them, and we may even need legislation to say what it is that both the government and companies can do with our data without our permission.

Todays Alexa example is just one of what will be thousands of similar such cases in the future. We are wiring the world much more quickly than we are considering the public policy, legal, and ethical implications of our inventions.

As a society, we would do well to consider those important social needs alongside our technological achievements.

Image Source: Shutterstock

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When Electronic Witnesses Are Everywhere, No Secret's Safe - Singularity Hub

Over 4,000 students, families, investors, and inventors mingled and learned from one another at the 1st annual Global Innovation Challenge, run by GEMS Education and Silicon Valleys Singularity University on February 4th at Wellington Academy Silicon Oasis.

The Global Innovation Challenge invited students from around the world to submit working prototypes to address our most pressing challenges. Students invented a myriad of solutions using future-focused technologies such as 3D printing, robotics, nanotechnology as well as skills such as data science and coding. Categories included disaster resilience, food scarcity, prosperity, environmental sustainability, healthcare and more.

Projects included 3D printed shelters and schools; integrated systems to supporting care of refugees; a digital social network to support mental health; and an Internet of Things based irrigation system for agriculture in arid regions.

The day itself was a celebration of innovation and creativity which featured free workshops on robotics, 3D printing and Arduino programing as well as keynote addresses, in addition to an opportunity for visitors to engage showcased student projects in a hands-on manner. Guest speakers included senior leadership from KHDA, GEMS Education, and the US Consulate.

GEMS Innovation, Research, and Development Innovation Leader, Christine Nasserghodsi, shared: Our students began thinking about their projects during hack-a-thons held during the UAE Week of Innovation. The students used design thinking, a human centred approach to innovation popular with leading technology companies to have better understanding of the challenge categories and the people affected. While we always expect great things from our students, Ive been impressed by the level compassion and insight evident in their work.

Prizes were awarded in each category to solutions in both the junior (age 13 and below) and senior (age 14 and above) category. Up to twelve senior projects will be given seed funding and mentorship and select projects will be presented at the annual Singularity Summit in Silicon Valley, California.

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GEMS Education and Singularity University organises 1st annual Global Innovation Challenge - Al-Bawaba

Art and Science may not always be the best of friends, but when they do get together they throw one hell of a party. The Undivided Mind art show opens tonight, Friday November 19th, in San Francisco with free admission, wine, and conversation with those interested in the Singularity, Transhumanism and technology. The show will feature oil paintings created from digital images originally designed by the mysterious and provocative Imaginary Foundation. I had a chance to talk with Micah Daigle, the "Director of Meta-Pattern Affairs" for The Undivided Mind. He promises a great evening of art and science to those who make the journey to the Fifty24SF gallery space tonight. If you can't make it, more's the pity, but the work will be on display this week (Nov 20 to Nov 28) everyday in the afternoon. As you can see in the photos below, The Undivided Mind promises to be a unique experience. Why are there chalkboard equations covering the walls? Guess I'll have to go and find out.

Those who make it to The Undivided Mind should find it full of futurists and aficionados of the Singularity. Expected attendees include Jason Silva, Michael Annissimov,and Michael Vassar. While there won't be any planned presentations or speeches, Daigle told me there would be a hunt for the Higgs boson. The person who finds the 'God particle' will win a free painting from the show. (Someone should warn the guys at CERN).

Despite the wacky particle hijinks, tonight's discussion should be a fairly pertinent one. The Imaginary Foundation has made it its mission to enable human progress through the use of art (and clothing) and The Undivided Mind is aimed at exploring how art and science could combine to guide us through the disruptive technological changes on the horizon. In other words, the art show should be enlightening as well as fun. Sounds like my cup of tea. Those who attend should feel free to post some comments on the event below.

[image credits: Imaginary Foundation] [sources: Micah Daigle, Imaginary Foundation]

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Singularity Art Show Tonight In San Francisco!

The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology is a 2006 non-fiction book about artificial intelligence and the future of humanity by inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil.

The book builds on the ideas introduced in Kurzweil's previous books, The Age of Intelligent Machines (1990) and The Age of Spiritual Machines (1999). This time, however, Kurzweil embraces the term the Singularity, which was popularized by Vernor Vinge in his 1993 essay "The Coming Technological Singularity" more than a decade earlier.

Kurzweil describes his law of accelerating returns which predicts an exponential increase in technologies like computers, genetics, nanotechnology, robotics and artificial intelligence. He says this will lead to a technological singularity in the year 2045, a point where progress is so rapid it outstrips humans' ability to comprehend it.

Kurzweil predicts the technological advances will irreversibly transform people as they augment their minds and bodies with genetic alterations, nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence. Once the Singularity has been reached, Kurzweil says that machine intelligence will be infinitely more powerful than all human intelligence combined. Afterwards he predicts intelligence will radiate outward from the planet until it saturates the universe.

Kurzweil characterizes evolution throughout all time as progressing through six epochs, each one building on the one before. He says the four epochs which have occurred so far are Physics and Chemistry, Biology and DNA, Brains, and Technology. Kurzweil predicts the Singularity will coincide with the next epoch, The Merger of Human Technology with Human Intelligence. After the Singularity he says the final epoch will occur, The Universe Wakes Up.

Kurzweil explains that evolutionary progress is exponential because of positive feedback; the results of one stage are used to create the next stage. Exponential growth is deceptive, nearly flat at first until it hits what Kurzweil calls "the knee in the curve" then rises almost vertically. In fact Kurzweil believes evolutionary progress is super-exponential because more resources are deployed to the winning process. As an example of super-exponential growth Kurzweil cites the computer chip business. The overall budget for the whole industry increases over time, since the fruits of exponential growth make it an attractive investment; meanwhile the additional budget fuels more innovation which makes the industry grow even faster, effectively an example of "double" exponential growth.

Kurzweil says evolutionary progress looks smooth, but that really it is divided into paradigms, specific methods of solving problems. Each paradigm starts with slow growth, builds to rapid growth, and then levels off. As one paradigm levels off, pressure builds to find or develop a new paradigm. So what looks like a single smooth curve is really series of smaller S curves. For example Kurzweil notes that when vacuum tubes stopped getting faster, cheaper transistors became popular and continued the overall exponential growth.

Kurzweil calls this exponential growth the law of accelerating returns, and he believes it applies to many human-created technologies such as computer memory, transistors, microprocessors, DNA sequencing, magnetic storage, the number of Internet hosts, Internet traffic, decrease in device size, and nanotech citations and patents. Kurzweil cites two historical examples of exponential growth: the Human Genome Project and the growth of the Internet. Kurzweil claims the whole world economy is in fact growing exponentially, although short term booms and busts tend to hide this trend.

Moore's Law predicts the capacity of integrated circuits grows exponentially, but not indefinitely. Kurzweil feels the increase in the capacity of integrated circuits will probably slow by the year 2020. He feels confident that a new paradigm will debut at that point to carry on the exponential growth predicted by his law of accelerating returns. Kurzweil describes four paradigms of computing that came before integrated circuits: electromechanical, relay, vacuum tube, and transistors. What technology will follow integrated circuits, to serve as the sixth paradigm, is unknown, but Kurzweil believes nanotubes are the most likely alternative among a number of possibilities:

nanotubes and nanotube circuitry, molecular computing, self-assembly in nanotube circuits, biological systems emulating circuit assembly, computing with DNA, spintronics (computing with the spin of electrons), computing with light, and quantum computing.

Since Kurzweil believes computational capacity will continue to grow exponentially long after Moore's Law ends it will eventually rival the raw computing power of the human brain. Kurzweil looks at several different estimates of how much computational capacity is in the brain and settles on 1016 calculations per second and 1013 bits of memory. He writes that $1,000 will buy computer power equal to a single brain "by around 2020" while by 2045, the onset of the Singularity, he says same amount of money will buy one billion times more power than all human brains combined today. Kurzweil admits the exponential trend in increased computing power will hit a limit eventually, but he calculates that limit to be trillions of times beyond what is necessary for the Singularity.

Kurzweil notes that computational capacity alone will not create artificial intelligence. He asserts that the best way to build machine intelligence is to first understand human intelligence. The first step is to image the brain, to peer inside it. Kurzweil claims imaging technologies such as PET and fMRI are increasing exponentially in resolution while he predicts even greater detail will be obtained during the 2020s when it becomes possible to scan the brain from the inside using nanobots. Once the physical structure and connectivity information are known, Kurzweil says researchers will have to produce functional models of sub-cellular components and synapses all the way up to whole brain regions. The human brain is "a complex hierarchy of complex systems, but it does not represent a level of complexity beyond what we are already capable of handling".

Beyond reverse engineering the brain in order to understand and emulate it, Kurzweil introduces the idea of "uploading" a specific brain with every mental process intact, to be instantiated on a "suitably powerful computational substrate". He writes that general modeling requires 1016 calculations per second and 1013 bits of memory, but then explains uploading requires additional detail, perhaps as many as 1019 cps and 1018 bits. Kurzweil says the technology to do this will be available by 2040. Rather than an instantaneous scan and conversion to digital form, Kurzweil feels humans will most likely experience gradual conversion as portions of their brain are augmented with neural implants, increasing their proportion of non-biological intelligence slowly over time.

Kurzweil believes there is "no objective test that can conclusively determine" the presence of consciousness. Therefore he says nonbiological intelligences will claim to have consciousness and "the full range of emotional and spiritual experiences that humans claim to have"; he feels such claims will generally be accepted.

Kurzweil says revolutions in genetics, nanotechnology and robotics will usher in the beginning of the Singularity. Kurzweil feels with sufficient genetic technology it should be possible to maintain the body indefinitely, reversing aging while curing cancer, heart disease and other illnesses. Much of this will be possible thanks to nanotechnology, the second revolution, which entails the molecule by molecule construction of tools which themselves can "rebuild the physical world". Finally, the revolution in robotics will really be the development of strong AI, defined as machines which have human-level intelligence or greater. This development will be the most important of the century, "comparable in importance to the development of biology itself".

Kurzweil concedes that every technology carries with it the risk of misuse or abuse, from viruses and nanobots to out-of-control AI machines. He believes the only countermeasure is to invest in defensive technologies, for example by allowing new genetics and medical treatments, monitoring for dangerous pathogens, and creating limited moratoriums on certain technologies. As for artificial intelligence Kurzweil feels the best defense is to increase the "values of liberty, tolerance, and respect for knowledge and diversity" in society, because "the nonbiological intelligence will be embedded in our society and will reflect our values".

Kurzweil touches on the history of the Singularity concept, tracing it back to John von Neumann in the 1950s and I. J. Good in the 1960s. He compares his Singularity to that of a mathematical or astrophysical singularity. While his ideas of a Singularity is not actually infinite, he says it looks that way from any limited perspective.

During the Singularity, Kurzweil predicts that "human life will be irreversibly transformed" and that humans will transcend the "limitations of our biological bodies and brain". He looks beyond the Singularity to say that "the intelligence that will emerge will continue to represent the human civilization." Further, he feels that "future machines will be human, even if they are not biological".

Kurzweil claims once nonbiological intelligence predominates the nature of human life will be radically altered: there will be radical changes in how humans learn, work, play, and wage war. Kurzweil envisions nanobots which allow people to eat whatever they want while remaining thin and fit, provide copious energy, fight off infections or cancer, replace organs and augment their brains. Eventually people's bodies will contain so much augmentation they'll be able to alter their "physical manifestation at will".

Kurzweil says the law of accelerating returns suggests that once a civilization develops primitive mechanical technologies, it is only a few centuries before they achieve everything outlined in the book, at which point it will start expanding outward, saturating the universe with intelligence. Since people have found no evidence of other civilizations, Kurzweil believes humans are likely alone in the universe. Thus Kurzweil concludes it is humanity's destiny to do the saturating, enlisting all matter and energy in the process.

As for individual identities during these radical changes, Kurzweil suggests people think of themselves as an evolving pattern rather than a specific collection of molecules. Kurzweil says evolution moves towards "greater complexity, greater elegance, greater knowledge, greater intelligence, greater beauty, greater creativity, and greater levels of subtle attributes such as love". He says that these attributes, in the limit, are generally used to describe God. That means, he continues, that evolution is moving towards a conception of God and that the transition away from biological roots is in fact a spiritual undertaking.

Kurzweil does not include an actual written timeline of the past and future, as he did in The Age of Intelligent Machines and The Age of Spiritual Machines, however he still makes many specific predictions. Kurzweil writes that by 2010 a supercomputer will have the computational capacity to emulate human intelligence and "by around 2020" this same capacity will be available "for one thousand dollars". After that milestone he expects human brain scanning to contribute to an effective model of human intelligence "by the mid-2020s". These two elements will culminate in computers that can pass the Turing test by 2029. By the early 2030s the amount of non-biological computation will exceed the "capacity of all living biological human intelligence". Finally the exponential growth in computing capacity will lead to the Singularity. Kurzweil spells out the date very clearly: "I set the date for the Singularityrepresenting a profound and disruptive transformation in human capabilityas 2045".

A common criticism of the book relates to the "exponential growth fallacy". As an example, in 1969, man landed on the moon. Extrapolating exponential growth from there one would expect huge lunar bases and manned missions to distant planets. Instead, exploration stalled or even regressed after that. Paul Davies writes "the key point about exponential growth is that it never lasts"[43] often due to resource constraints.

Theodore Modis says "nothing in nature follows a pure exponential" and suggests the logistic function is a better fit for "a real growth process". The logistic function looks like an exponential at first but then tapers off and flattens completely. For example world population and the United States's oil production both appeared to be rising exponentially, but both have leveled off because they were logistic. Kurzweil says "the knee in the curve" is the time when the exponential trend is going to explode, while Modis claims if the process is logistic when you hit the "knee" the quantity you are measuring is only going to increase by a factor of 100 more.[44]

While some critics complain that the law of accelerating returns is not a law of nature[43] others question the religious motivations or implications of Kurzweil's Singularity. The buildup towards the Singularity is compared with Judeo-Christian end-of-time scenarios. Beam calls it "a Buck Rogers vision of the hypothetical Christian Rapture".[45]John Gray says "the Singularity echoes apocalyptic myths in which history is about to be interrupted by a world-transforming event".[46]

The radical nature of Kurzweil's predictions is often discussed. Anthony Doerr says that before you "dismiss it as techno-zeal" consider that "every day the line between what is human and what is not quite human blurs a bit more". He lists technology of the day, in 2006, like computers that land supersonic airplanes or in vitro fertility treatments and asks whether brain implants that access the internet or robots in our blood really that unbelievable.[47]

In regard to reverse engineering the brain, neuroscientist David J. Linden writes that "Kurzweil is conflating biological data collection with biological insight". He feels that data collection might be growing exponentially, but insight is increasing only linearly. For example the speed and cost of sequencing genomes is also improving exponentially, but our understanding of genetics is growing very slowly. As for nanobots Linden believes the spaces available in the brain for navigation are simply too small. He acknowledges that someday we will fully understand the brain, just not on Kurzweil's timetable.[48]

Paul Davies wrote in Nature that The Singularity is Near is a "breathless romp across the outer reaches of technological possibility" while warning that the "exhilarating speculation is great fun to read, but needs to be taken with a huge dose of salt."[43]

Anthony Doerr in The Boston Globe wrote "Kurzweil's book is surprisingly elaborate, smart, and persuasive. He writes clean methodical sentences, includes humorous dialogues with characters in the future and past, and uses graphs that are almost always accessible."[47] while his colleague Alex Beam points out that "Singularitarians have been greeted with hooting skepticism"[45]Janet Maslin in The New York Times wrote "The Singularity is Near is startling in scope and bravado", but says "much of his thinking tends to be pie in the sky". She observes that he's more focused on optimistic outcomes rather than the risks.[49]

In 2006, Barry Ptolemy and his production company Ptolemaic Productions licensed the rights to The Singularity Is Near from Kurzweil. Inspired by the book, Ptolemy directed and produced the film Transcendent Man, which went on to critical and commercial success in 2009,[50][bettersourceneeded] bringing more attention to the book.

Kurzweil has also directed his own adaptation, called The Singularity is Near, which mixes documentary with a science-fiction story involving his robotic avatar Ramona's transformation into an artificial general intelligence. It was screened at the World Film Festival, the Woodstock Film Festival, the Warsaw International FilmFest, the San Antonio Film Festival in 2010 and the San Francisco Indie Film Festival in 2011. The movie was released generally on July 20, 2012.[51] It is available on DVD or digital download[52] and a trailer is available.[53]

The 2014 film Lucy is roughly based upon the predictions made by Kurzweil about what the year 2045 will look like, including the immortality of man.[54]

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