FREE ESSAY ON REVIEW OF THE AGE OF SPIRITUAL MACHINES BY RAY KURZWEIL

REVIEW OF THE AGE OF SPIRITUAL MACHINES BY RAY KURZWEIL

In the first chapter of his book The Age of Spiritual Machines, author Ray Kurzweil gives
a very brief history of the Universe, which serves as a preface for his subsequent
theories. In this history, Kurzweil chronicles the rapid expansion of time between
salient events in the history of the Universe, describing time, in his own words, as
geometrically slowing (pg. 10). He then jumps headfirst into the history of evolution,
and shortly thereafter of technology, in both of which the time between salient events is
shrinking exponentially. This leads him to question the opposing nature of the trend (how
can time be accelerating as applied to technology and evolution yet decelerating as
applied to the very Universe which contains these?) as well as search for similarities
between the trends. Thus is created Kurzweil's first theoretical law, that of time and
chaos.
Kurzweil's Law of Time and Chaos is as follows; "In a process, the time interval between
salient events (that is, events that change the nature of the process, or significantly
alter the future of the process) expands or contracts along with the amount of chaos."
(pg.29) In other words, as things become more chaotic as applied to a specific process it
takes longer for significant events to occur within that process, and vice-versa.
According to this law, the rate at which we advance technologically has, and will
continue to, accelerate exponentially.
What if this exponential growth "hits a wall" so to speak, as trends of the exponential
variety frequently do? Kurzweil is quick to answer this question, which he knows will be
raised quickly by most readers. According to the Law of Accelerating Returns, which
states simply that as a process speeds up so do the returns from that process speed up as
well, technology will continue to build upon and advance itself. As technology advances,
we are able to create more technologically advanced machines, which in turn will enable
us to create even more advanced machines, and so on. According to Kurzweil, the only two
resources this technological evolution needs to survive are "the growing order of the
evolving technology...and the chaos from which an evolutionary process draws its options
for further diversity" (pg 35), both of which, Kurzweil claims, are unbounded. 
With the an understanding of the Laws of Accelerating Returns and of Time and Chaos
firmly under our belts, Kurzweil advances to the next chapter in order to answer a
question subtly raised by his faith in the continuing exponential advancement of
technology-can an intelligence (such as ours) create an intelligence (such as the
artificial intelligence of our computers) more intelligent than itself?
His answer is yes, and he comes to this conclusion by looking at the process of human
evolution as an intelligence in itself. If this is the case, and we are to measure
intelligence in terms of speed and frequency of error (as we do for an IQ test), then
evolution, according to Kurzweil, would rate "only infinitesimally greater than zero" on
that same IQ test. Therefore, humans-a creation resulting from the intelligence of
evolution-are more intelligent than the intelligence that spawned them. Kurzweil cites
the example of scientists' ongoing work with DNA, which is on the brink of allowing us to
refine and control evolution as the original process never could, as evidence that we
have indeed become more intelligent than the process that gave us birth. 
It is not a difficult comparison which leads Kurzweil to postulate that some day
computers, the intelligence that man created, will some day become more intelligent than
man himself. It is also not difficult to foresee the day when computers more intelligent
than man will begin to create intelligence more intelligent than they-thus Kurzweil
brings to a close his second chapter, setting nicely the stage for the rest of the book.