The Penguin Podcast is back! Listen Now
The Singularity is Nearer

The Singularity is Nearer

When We Merge with AI

Summary

THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER

The legendary oracle of technological change explains how AI will transform our species beyond recognition.

‘The best person I know at predicting the future of AI’ BILL GATES
'Essential reading to understand our exponential times' MUSTAFA SULEYMAN
'Fascinating . . . raises the most profound philosophical questions' YUVAL NOAH HARARI

By the end of this decade, AI will exceed human levels of intelligence. During the 2030s, it will become ‘superintelligent’, vastly outstripping our capabilities and enabling dramatic interventions in our bodies. By 2045, we will be able to connect our brains directly with AI, enhancing our intelligence a millionfold and expanding our consciousness in ways we can barely imagine. This is the Singularity.

Ray Kurzweil is one of the greatest inventors of our time with over 60 years’ experience in the field of Artificial Intelligence, whose long-range predictions about the rise of the internet, AI and bioengineering have all borne out. In this visionary, fundamentally optimistic book, Kurzweil explains how the Singularity will occur, explores what it will mean to live free from the limits of biology and argues that we can and will transform life on Earth profoundly for the better.

'The greatest oracle of our digital age' PETER H. DIAMANDIS, founder of XPRIZE
'Curious about the future? Read this book' VINT CERF, Chief Internet Evangelist, Google

Reviews

  • Ray Kurzweil is the best person I know at predicting the future of artificial intelligence
    BILL GATES

About the author

Ray Kurzweil

Ray Kurzweil is the field of AI’s longest-serving expert, the inventor of numerous world-changing technologies and the author of several best-selling books. The Age of Spiritual Machines (1999) and The Singularity is Near (2005), in which he first predicted that computers would reach human level intelligence by 2029 and outlined his vision of the merging of human and artificial intelligence, have together inspired several major films, hundreds of books and thousands of articles. Many of his inventions, such as text and speech recognition, and vocal and musical synthesizers, have enabled breakthroughs in communication between humans and computers. He is a Principal Researcher and AI Visionary at Google, the recipient of the US National Medal of Technology and Innovation, one of the nation’s highest honours, and a member of the US National Inventors Hall of Fame.
Learn More

Sign up to the Penguin Newsletter

For the latest books, recommendations, author interviews and more