How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed, by Ray Kurzweil 29th September 2012 Pre-orders for Ray Kurzweil's latest book are now being taken.
Described by Forbes as "the ultimate thinking machine", and by The Wall Street Journal as "the restless genius", Ray Kurzweil is among the world's leading futurists. He has amassed a cult following, thanks in large part to his uncannily accurate predictions – which have included the demise of the Soviet Union, the approximate year when a computer would beat a human chess player, the exponential growth of the Internet and the completion date for the Human Genome Project. He is perhaps best known for his 2005 international best-seller, The Singularity is Near. This offered a profound and detailed analysis of past, current and future trends in a range of technologies. In particular, the smooth and predictable nature of many trends was revealed, challenging the long-held view that the future is inherently unpredictable. Extrapolations were made of genetics, nanotechnology and robotics, suggesting that a technological singularity may emerge, not in centuries, but as soon as the mid-2040s. Kurzweil has critics, however, who contend that his predictions are too optimistic and ignore many factors. Seven years on, Kurzweil is back with a new book: How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed. This time around, Kurzweil will focus on a specific topic: reverse-engineering of the brain to understand precisely how it works, then applying that knowledge to create machines that are vastly more intelligent than us. With access to "super intelligence", he claims that humanity's most pressing problems could be overcome: even death itself. Cutting-edge research in neuroscience, compelling thought experiments, and the latest breakthroughs in artificial intelligence are explored together with Kurzweil's own theory of how the neocortex works, to show how our physical and mental capacities will be vastly expanded in the future. How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed will be published by Viking on 13th November 2012.
Comments »
|
