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raj_page's review against another edition
4.0
I'd picked this book up assuming that it'd be just about artificial intelligence.
But along with AI, it also taught me the biology of a human brain, the definition of consciousness and the philosophy of life.
Read these lines:
True mind reading, therefore, would necessitate not just detecting the activations of the relevant axons in a person’s brain, but examining essentially her entire neocortex with all of its memories to understand these activations
How beautifully and simply, we understand how brain works with just this one line
And how about this?
At the far end of the story of love, a loved one becomes a major part of our neocortex. After decades of being together, a virtual other exists in the neocortex such that we can anticipate every step of what our lover will say and do. Our neocortical patterns are filled with the thoughts and patterns that reflect who they are. When we lose that person, we literally lose part of ourselves. This is not just a metaphor—all of the vast pattern recognizers that are filled with the patterns reflecting the person we love suddenly change their nature. Although they can be considered a precious way to keep that person alive within ourselves, the vast neocortical patterns of a lost loved one turn suddenly from triggers of delight to triggers of mourning.
Tell me if this is not the best definition of love you've ever read.
But along with AI, it also taught me the biology of a human brain, the definition of consciousness and the philosophy of life.
Read these lines:
True mind reading, therefore, would necessitate not just detecting the activations of the relevant axons in a person’s brain, but examining essentially her entire neocortex with all of its memories to understand these activations
How beautifully and simply, we understand how brain works with just this one line
And how about this?
At the far end of the story of love, a loved one becomes a major part of our neocortex. After decades of being together, a virtual other exists in the neocortex such that we can anticipate every step of what our lover will say and do. Our neocortical patterns are filled with the thoughts and patterns that reflect who they are. When we lose that person, we literally lose part of ourselves. This is not just a metaphor—all of the vast pattern recognizers that are filled with the patterns reflecting the person we love suddenly change their nature. Although they can be considered a precious way to keep that person alive within ourselves, the vast neocortical patterns of a lost loved one turn suddenly from triggers of delight to triggers of mourning.
Tell me if this is not the best definition of love you've ever read.
booksrule's review against another edition
this taught me it's not the robots we need to fear, it's the humans making them now
subtle's review against another edition
I find Kurzweil to be far on the optimistic side of how quickly world-changing technology will develop, but his explanations for artificial intelligence, the human brain, the mind and information processing helped me better understand the field of AI, how it has developed, and where it is going.
bakudreamer's review against another edition
3.0
I'm really not sure what to make of all this. Hope he's right. ( Especially about LOAR < law of accelerating returns > applying to biotech < when it becomes an information science, which actually is what's happening > ) Good explanations of other things in here too ( Genetic Algorythms, Cell Automata ... )
shawnwhy's review against another edition
5.0
I think this book explained the thought process of Einstein when he was constructing the theory of relativity better than anything I've ever read. also breaks down the stucture of the brain and its workings really really well. the part about fixing the communication errors by large amount of repetition is really interesting...
sprague's review against another edition
2.0
On Intelligence seemed to provide a more original idea. Not sure I got much out of this.
ninjalawyer's review against another edition
2.0
A merely passable popular science book that lacks enough material to fill its pages. At around 279 pages (excluding notes at the end), this book would already be a quick read. However, a significant portion at the end (around 70 pages) was only tangentially connected to the main premise of the book, or was used by the author to bash a critic of another of his books.
To backup slightly, the book starts by discussing the structures of the brain and then moves on to a discussion of the neocortex and how, in Kurzweil's and others' view, the neocortex is comprised of some 300 billion pattern recognizers. This "pattern recognition theory of mind" is the meat of the book, but isn't as well described as it could be. An earlier book, On Intelligence (which is cited by Kurzweil) did a far better job of explaining this theory and the implications on mind and consciousnesses that flow from it. This section also suffers a fair bit from Kurzweil's tedious name-dropping of Nuance, the company responsible for some of the voice recognition tech in Siri, started by Kurzweil.
After that section though, things take a turn for the worse. Kurzweill spends a chapter ruminating on the history of neural networks and the philosophy of consciousness and free will. These sections are incredibly shallow, and feel like a first year college student's half-hearted efforts to fill pages. The sections on philosophy are particularly bad, involving Kurzweil quoting a few philosophers (some out of context) about consciousness or free will, and then deciding to believe that both exist through a "leap of faith" (Kurzweil's words). Some of the conclusions Kurzweil seemingly draws from this shallow exploration of philosophy are real head scratchers too, like this gem:
"Evolution can then be viewed as a spiritual process in that it creates spiritual beings, that is, entities that are conscious. Evolution also moves toward greater complexity, greater knowledge, greater intelligence, greater beauty, greater creativity, and the ability to express more transcendent emotions, such as love..."
Unfortunately, the above expresses a fallacious view of evolution; there's no "goal" to evolution other than survival for reproduction, and that doesn't necessarily mean greater complexity or greater knowledge. This is typical of shallow thinking on evolution that views it incorrectly as a ladder of progress. This is also a little funny to read after a section where Kurzweil admits that there's no definition of "consciousness", so it's a little hard to see how the "goal" of evolution is the production of this secret sauce. These sections were so poor that it made me question Kurzweil's reasoning in the rest of the book.
As bad as the section on philosophy was though, it can't compare to the awfulness of the last chapter. Entitled "Objections", one could probably be forgiven for thinking that this would be a chapter where Kurzweil addresses objections to the pattern recognition theory of mind. Instead, Kurzweil takes this time to address objections to his other book, The Singularity is Near. I think Kurzweil's thoughts on the singularity are very interesting, but I also can't think of a bigger waste of space and reader time than a book responding to critics of another book.
To backup slightly, the book starts by discussing the structures of the brain and then moves on to a discussion of the neocortex and how, in Kurzweil's and others' view, the neocortex is comprised of some 300 billion pattern recognizers. This "pattern recognition theory of mind" is the meat of the book, but isn't as well described as it could be. An earlier book, On Intelligence (which is cited by Kurzweil) did a far better job of explaining this theory and the implications on mind and consciousnesses that flow from it. This section also suffers a fair bit from Kurzweil's tedious name-dropping of Nuance, the company responsible for some of the voice recognition tech in Siri, started by Kurzweil.
After that section though, things take a turn for the worse. Kurzweill spends a chapter ruminating on the history of neural networks and the philosophy of consciousness and free will. These sections are incredibly shallow, and feel like a first year college student's half-hearted efforts to fill pages. The sections on philosophy are particularly bad, involving Kurzweil quoting a few philosophers (some out of context) about consciousness or free will, and then deciding to believe that both exist through a "leap of faith" (Kurzweil's words). Some of the conclusions Kurzweil seemingly draws from this shallow exploration of philosophy are real head scratchers too, like this gem:
"Evolution can then be viewed as a spiritual process in that it creates spiritual beings, that is, entities that are conscious. Evolution also moves toward greater complexity, greater knowledge, greater intelligence, greater beauty, greater creativity, and the ability to express more transcendent emotions, such as love..."
Unfortunately, the above expresses a fallacious view of evolution; there's no "goal" to evolution other than survival for reproduction, and that doesn't necessarily mean greater complexity or greater knowledge. This is typical of shallow thinking on evolution that views it incorrectly as a ladder of progress. This is also a little funny to read after a section where Kurzweil admits that there's no definition of "consciousness", so it's a little hard to see how the "goal" of evolution is the production of this secret sauce. These sections were so poor that it made me question Kurzweil's reasoning in the rest of the book.
As bad as the section on philosophy was though, it can't compare to the awfulness of the last chapter. Entitled "Objections", one could probably be forgiven for thinking that this would be a chapter where Kurzweil addresses objections to the pattern recognition theory of mind. Instead, Kurzweil takes this time to address objections to his other book, The Singularity is Near. I think Kurzweil's thoughts on the singularity are very interesting, but I also can't think of a bigger waste of space and reader time than a book responding to critics of another book.