The Singularity Is Nearer: When We Merge with AI

 
　　AI領域重量級先驅——雷‧庫茲威爾（Ray Kurzweil），在2005年出版的著作《The Singularity Is Near》中勾勒出人工智慧、智能機器的未來，推升了一股全球科技新浪潮，書中的種種預測如今多已成真！
        
　　這位被比爾‧蓋茲譽為「最能掌握AI趨勢」的未來學家，把研究人工智慧六十年的心血結晶，撰寫成新書《The Singularity Is Nearer》。他大膽預言，「奇點」時刻，就在不遠處！雷‧庫茲威爾觀察科技的發展進程，預估在五年內，AI就能發展出與人類相當的智能，並大膽預言，在不久的未來，更高智慧的電腦和尖端科技，將輔助人類，提升百萬倍的智能。
 
　　書中探討許多革命性的未來趨勢，例如：透過讓人類大腦和雲端連線來改造智能、再生能源將有重大突破、奈米機器人等設備將協助人類重新建構世界、人類的壽命可突破120歲的極限……作者也回應幾個最具爭議的話題，包含：人工智慧的潛在風險、對就業環境的衝擊、自動駕駛的安全性、虛擬復活的來世技術等面向，提出他的獨到見解。一場大規模的科學革命，勢不可擋，人類的生活、生命、工作和福祉等所有層面，都將徹底改變！ 這本書將衝擊我們的認知，啟動對未來的想像，重新思考定位與方向。(文/博客來編譯)

The noted inventor and futurist’s successor to his landmark book The Singularity Is Near explores how technology will transform the human race in the decades to come

　　Since it was first published in 2005, Ray Kurzweil’s The Singularity Is Near and its vision of an exponential future have spawned a worldwide movement. Kurzweil's predictions about technological advancements have largely come true, with concepts like AI, intelligent machines, and biotechnology now widely familiar to the public.

　　In this entirely new book Ray Kurzweil brings a fresh perspective to advances toward the Singularity—assessing his 1999 prediction that AI will reach human level intelligence by 2029 and examining the exponential growth of technology—that, in the near future, will expand human intelligence a millionfold and change human life forever. Among the topics he discusses are rebuilding the world, atom by atom with devices like nanobots; radical life extension beyond the current age limit of 120; reinventing intelligence by connecting our brains to the cloud; how exponential technologies are propelling innovation forward in all industries and improving all aspects of our well-being such as declining poverty and violence; and the growth of renewable energy and 3-D printing. He also considers the potential perils of biotechnology, nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence, including such topics of current controversy as how AI will impact employment and the safety of autonomous cars, and "After Life" technology, which aims to virtually revive deceased individuals through a combination of their data and DNA.

　　The culmination of six decades of research on artificial intelligence, The Singularity Is Nearer is Ray Kurzweil’s crowning contribution to the story of this science and the revolution that is to come.

Ray Kurzweil is one of the world’s leading inventors, thinkers, and futurists, with a thirty-year track record of accurate predictions. Called "the restless genius" by The Wall Street Journal and "the ultimate thinking machine" by Forbes magazine, he was selected as one of the top entrepreneurs by Inc. magazine, which described him as the "rightful heir to Thomas Edison." PBS selected him as one of the "sixteen revolutionaries who made America."

Ray was the principal inventor of the first CCD flat-bed scanner, the first omni-font optical character recognition, the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, the first text-to-speech synthesizer, the first music synthesizer capable of recreating the grand piano and other orchestral instruments, and the first commercially marketed large-vocabulary speech recognition.

Among Ray’s many honors, he received a Grammy Award for outstanding achievements in music technology; he is the recipient of the National Medal of Technology, was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame, holds twenty-one honorary Doctorates, and honors from three U.S. presidents.

Ray has written five national best-selling books, including New York Times best sellers The Singularity Is Near (2005) and How To Create A Mind (2012). He is Co-Founder and Chancellor of Singularity University and a Director of Engineering at Google heading up a team developing machine intelligence and natural language understanding.