The Singularity is Nearer

When We Merge with AI

By: Ray Kurzweil

Narrated by: Adam Barr

Brought to you by Penguin.

THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER.

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

What will it mean to live free from the limits of our bodies? Who will we become if our minds can be stored and duplicated? What new realms of beauty, connection and wonder might we inhabit? How will we navigate the risks presented by such awesomely powerful technology?

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. Dozens of his long-range predictions about the rise of the internet, AI and bioengineering have been borne out. In this visionary and 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 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

©2024 Ray Kurzweil (P)2024 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

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

A fascinating exploration of our future, which raises the most profound philosophical questions -- YUVAL NOAH HARARI

Few people have shaped how the world thinks about AI like Ray Kurzweil. Now, with The Singularity Is Nearer, he has written an expansive and hopeful guide to a fast-approaching future that will once again set the terms of debate. Grounded in decades of meticulous research, and written with impressive clarity across an immense canvas, it's essential reading for anyone wanting to understand our exponential times (MUSTAFA SULEYMAN, CEO of Microsoft AI and author of The Coming Wave)

Ray Kurzweil is the greatest oracle of our digital age. The Singularity Is Nearer is more than just a book—it's a survival guide for the technological renaissance we're about to experience. Ray’s accurate projections of what is likely to happen and when, makes the difference between surfing atop the tsunami of change, versus being crushed by it (Peter H. Diamandis, founder of the XPRIZE)

Kurzweil makes a compelling case . . . It is only 2023 and already the world he envisioned years ago is taking shape. Curious about the Future? Read this book (Vint Cerf, Chief Internet Evangelist, Google)

When it comes to artificial intelligence, no one has more experience than Ray Kurzweil

What Kurzweil describes in his book isn't just the dawn of a beautiful new age, but the unknowable night at the ending of one

This is one of the best books to read to understand the urgent now

Exhilarating and scary ... It sounds like science ficiton, but Kurzweil has often proved an accurate prophet

Insight and knowledge

Perhaps to main stream narrative but k clearly knowledgable and vast experience in the field overall a wonderful read

Very trite and disappointing

That was a huge disappointment. So much unnecessary historical fluff and filler!
Only buy this book in case you lived under a rock for the past 5-7 years…

awful voice

Please can you have AI optional voices for books as this guy's voice ruined the experience of the book. Even the authors voice would be better than this dinosaur droning on with his old school boring condescending tone. The book is modern & intelligent. Can the voice not also be modern & intelligent? Please?!