The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence

The Inexorable Emergence

Sometime in the next 100 years machines will surpass human intelligence. Computers today already
surpass humans in activities like playing chess, diagnosing some medical conditions, buying and selling
stocks, and guiding missiles. Still human intelligence is far more flexible than machine intelligence.
Computers cant describe objects on a table, write a term paper, tie shoes, distinguish a dog and a cat,
appreciate humor, etc. One reason for this is that computers are simpler than the human brain, about a
million times simpler. But this difference will go away. Computers are doubling in speed every twelve
months, and they will achieve the memory capacity and computing speed of the human brain around
2020.
Still this wont allow computers to match the flexibility of human intelligence. And thats because the
software of intelligence is as important as the hardware. One way to mirror the brains software is by
reverse engineeringscanning a human brain (which will be achievable in this century) and copying its
neural circuitry into a neural computer of sufficient capacity. We might be able to train a system of parallel
neural nets to understand language and model knowledge, to read and understand written materials.
Although the ability of todays computers to do this is quite limited, their abilities are improving. Computers
will be able to read, understanding what they read, in this century. Computers can then read all the worlds
literature and gather knowledge on their own.
After computers reach a human level of intelligence, they will go beyond it. They already remember and
process information better than we do. Computers remember trillions of facts perfectly, while we have a
tough time with a few phone numbers. A computer can search a huge database in fractions of a seconds,
and share their knowledge bases. The combination of human-level intelligence and the speed, accuracy,
and memory capabilities will move computers past human intelligence. While our neurons are marvelous,
they are hardly optimal. Most of their complexity supports of life processes, not computation and
information analysis. And neurons are slow compared to electronic circuits which are a million times faster.
Once computers reach a human level of ability in understanding abstract concepts, recognizing patterns,
and more, they will apply their abilities to a knowledge base of all human-acquired knowledge.
Most of us think of evolution as a billion-year drama that leads to human intelligence. But the creation of
greater than human intelligence will dispel the notion that we are the most intelligent creation. And this
realization will have profound effects on our thinking, lives, and selves. A variety of philosophical questions
will be asked. Are computers thinking, or just calculating? Are humans thinking or just calculating? Are

there any important differences between human thinking and machine thinking? Will we ever consider our
machines conscious? For example, if someone scans their brain through a noninvasive scanning
technology and downloads their brain to their personal computer, are the people who come out of the
machine the same ones that entered?
Summary of Chap 1 Kurzweils The Age of Spiritual Machines
In the first few moments of the universe important events and paradigm shifts happened very fast. As the
universe aged, cosmologically significant events took eons of time. So time, thought of as the interval
between significant events, has been moving very slowly for most of cosmic evolutionbut it has slowly
been moving faster and is about to begin to move exponentially faster. [What K calls the knee of the
curve, the spot at which exponential growth is about to take off, is basically describes the same
phenomena that futurists call the singularity or the spike.] We can see this in the pace of cosmic
evolution: 10 billions years until the earths formation; a few billion more for life to evolve, hundreds of
millions of years till the emergence of primates, millions of years till the emergence of humanoids, the
emergence of homo sapiens a mere million years ago, etc. In short, time is speeding up by which K
means that the intervals between salient (important) events are shrinking, i.e., there is an exponential
curve which plots the nature of change.
Technologyfashioning and using tools ever more sophisticated toolsis evolution by other means. Just
as DNA records the information of biology, technology records its own records in books, libraries, and
computer databases.
[If you are interested in this idea, explore the concept of memes. Memes, like genes, preserve and transfer
information only much faster because, while genes go from one body to another, memes spread from one
brain to another. And you can spread a memean idea or belief for examplevery quickly. I just spread
the meme meme to all the people who read this. And the meme could be a meme for any idea:
immortality, evolution, a god, patriotism, etc. Many contemporary thinkers believe that memes infect brains
which then spread them; some think of people as memebots. For more see the work of Richard Dawkins,
who introduced the term in his book, The Selfish Gene. In addition, there is an entire literature on memes.]
And technology has expedited the process of evolution considerably. Consider that homo sapiens sapiens
(as opposed to Neanderthals) appeared only 90,000 years ago (a mere moment in cosmic time) and
become the lone hominoids a mere 40,000 years ago. Still it took tens of thousands of years to figure out
how to sharpen both ends of stones to make them effective! (Lets hope things are evolving faster than this
now.) And the pace of technological change has accelerated remarkable since then. For example, the
19thcentury saw technology increase at a dramatic rate compared to the 18 th century and increased

unbelievably fast compared to the 12th century! In the 20th century major shifts in technology began to
happen in decades or in some cases in a few years. A hundred years ago there was no flight or radio.
When I was born there were no wireless phones and not many color TVs. When you were born there were
no cell phones or WWW.
[Ks discussion of technology in the grey box on pgs 16-17 is interesting. Tech is the use of tools and
especially recording the knowledge that fashions better toolsfrom oral to written to computer databases
to control the environment. And technology is a means of transcendingof putting pieces of matter
together to create sound and thenmusic, which itself expresses feelings, emotions, etc. In short, we use
tech to, in addition to other purposes, communicate. And language plays the key role in human
communication. (What a marvelous thing language is. Where would we be without it?) Other species
communicate but we record our communication.]
Technology has enabled our species to dominate the earth, exercise some control over our environment,
and survive. A noteworthy technological innovation has been computation the ability to remember and
solve problems The machines created by our technology do more than merely increase our strength,
increasingly they solve a vast array of problems. Computers are at the cutting edge of this and governed
by Moores law: every 2 years or so the surface area of a transistor is reduced by 50% and thus you can
put twice as many transistors on an integrated circuit. The implication is that every 2 years you get twice
the computer power for the same amount of money. This trend should continue for another 15 years or so
after which it will break down since by that time transistor insulators will be but a few atoms wide. K makes
the pointand backs it up with statistics, pictures, and graphsthat this trend of doubling of computing
power goes back to the beginning of the 20th century. To really understand what will happen in the
21st century and beyond we need to more closely look at the exponential growth of technology that will
bring about vast changes in the near future.
Crucial to Ks argument is what he calls the law of time and chaos. (See illustrations on pgs. 26-7) He
asks you to consider why some processes start out fast and then slow downsalient events in cosmic
evolution or in the biological development of an organismand why others start slow and then speed up
the evolution of life forms or technology. The answer is that the law of t & c shows a relationship between
the speed of time and chaos. If there is a lot of chaos or disorder in a system, the time between salient
events is great and thus time can be said to slow down. As the chaos decreases, in other words as order
increases, the time between salient events gets smaller and time can be said to speed up. The law of
increasing chaos denotes the former while the law of accelerating returns denotes the latter. The law of
AR is what most interests K. While the universe increases in disorder or entropy, evolution leads to
increasing order (information for the purpose of survival) and usually complexity. Technology is evolution

by other means than biology. [It is part of cultural evolution which, unlike biological evolution, is now
moving extraordinarily fast. Cultural evolution is now the whole ballgame.] And technological evol speeds
up because it builds on its own increasing order. In other words, technological evol, like other forms of
evolution, builds on itself. What this all leads to is the following:
a) evolution builds on itself, thus
b) in an evol process order increases exponentially, thus
c) time speeds up exponentially, thus
d) the returns accelerate.
This law of accelerating returns is what drives cultural, and notable technological, evolution forward. And
the rate of these returns, which then build on themselves to create higher returns, is growing exponentially.
Thus technology is most significant as it provided the means to store the information from previous brains.
And all of this means that, like the moral of the story of the inventor of chess and the Emperor of China
change is increasing exponentially. And this means that the near future will be radically different than the
present.
Summary Chap 6 Building New Brains from Kurzweils The Age of Spiritual Machines
The Hardware of Intelligence To build intelligent machines we need: 1)formulas (recursive search, selforganizing networks, and evolutionary improvement); 2) knowledge (for a process to achieve results); and
3) computation. Here the human brain is strong because of its parallel processing but weak in terms of its
slow computational speed. For this reason, DNA-based evolution will eventually have to be abandoned.
DNA-based evolution is good at tinkering with and extending its designs, but it is unable to scrap an entire
design and start over. Organisms created through DNA-based evolution are stuck with an extremely
plodding type of circuitry.101
But the Law of Accelerating Returns tells us that evolution will not remain stuck at a dead end for very
long. And indeed, evolution has found a way around the computational limitations of neural circuitry.
Cleverly, it has created organisms that in turn invented a computational technology a million times faster
than carbon-based neurons (which are continuing to get faster). Ultimately, the computing conducted on
extremely slow mammalian neural circuits will be ported to a far more versatile and speedier electronic
(and photonic) equivalent. 101-02
Achieving the Hardware Capacity of the Human Brain To summarize: Ks argues (with good evidence
and inferences from that evidence) that computers will equal the computing speed of a human brain by
about 2020. (the brain only calculates at a rate of 200 per second, but there are about 100 trillion neural

connectionsthe massive parallel processing.) The memory capacity of the human brain should also be
equaled at about that time. Taking all of this into consideration, it is reasonable to estimate that a $1,000
personal computer will match the computing speed and capacity of the human brain by around the year
2020 105 A single personal computer will have the CS & MC of a small village by 2030, the population
of the US by 2048, and a trillion human brains by 2060. If we estimate the human Earth population at 10
billion persons, one pennys worth of computing circa 2099 will have a billion times greater computing
capacity than all humans on Earth. 105
Computing Substrates of the 21st Century K knows that Moores law cannot hold forever: For the
immediate future, Moores Law will continue with ever smaller component geometries packing greater
numbers of yet faster transistors on each chip. But as circuit dimensions reach near atomic sizes,
undesirable quantum effects such as unwanted electron tunneling will produce unreliable results. 106 He
offers a number of scenarios to deal with this issue: 1) 3 dimensional computing Already, venturebacked companies are competing to build chips with dozens and ultimately thousands of layers of
circuitry.106 2) computing with light Optical computing uses streams of photons (particles of light)
rather than electrons. A laser can produce billions of coherent streams of photons, with each stream
performing its own independent series of calculations. 106 3) computing with the machinery of life A
new field called molecular computing has sprung up to harness the DNA molecule itself as a practical
computing device. DNA is natures own nanoengineered computer and it is well suited for solving
combinatorial problems. Applying actual DNA to practical computing applications got its start when
Leonard Adleman, a University of Southern California mathematician, coaxed a test tube full of DNA
molecules to solve the well-known traveling salesperson problem. . It is an ideal problem for a
recursive algorithm, although if the number of cities is too large, even a very fast recursive search will take
far too long. Professor Adleman and other scientists in the molecular-computing field have identified a set
of enzyme reactions that corresponds to the logical and arithmetic operations needed to solve a variety of
computing problems. Although DNA molecular operations produce occasional errors, the number of DNA
strands being used is so large that any molecular errors become statistically insignificant. Thus, despite
the inherent error rate in DNAs computing and copying processes, a DNA computer can be highly reliable
if properly designed. 107
There are other possibilities including a) the brain in the crystal, b) the nanotube, and c) quantum
computing. Of all the technological possibilities to replace digital computing this is the one with the most
promise and the one K discusses most. Unlike digital computing which relies on bits of info which are
either on or off, Quantum computing, is based on qu-bits which essentially are zero and one at the
same time. The qu-bit is based on the fundamental ambiguity inherent in quantum mechanics. The
position, momentum, or other state of a fundamental particle remains ambiguous until a process of

disambiguation causes that particle to decide where it is, where it has been, and what properties it has
In a quantum computer, the qu-bits would be represented by a propertynuclear spin is a popular
choiceof individual electrons. If set up in the proper way, the electrons will not have decided the direction
of their nuclear spin (up or down) and thus will be in both states at the same time. The process of
conscious observation of the electrons spin statesor any subsequent phenomena dependent on a
determination of these statescauses the ambiguity to be resolved. The key to the quantum computer is
that we would present it with a problem, along with a way to test the answer. We would set up the quantum
decoherence of the qu-bits in such a way that only an answer that passes the test survives the
decoherence. The failing answers essentially cancel each other out. 110-11
The next few pages argue that QC is feasible, it difficulties can be overcome, and it will provide encryption
that cannot be broken. Most importantly, he argues against those who say conscious machines are
impossible. This all brings us to the main point of the chapter: how we can and will reverse engineer the
human brain. K suggests that we might begin the process of understanding how to reverse engineer a
human brain by freezing a recently deceased one. 121 We could examine one layer at a time to scan
every neural connection. We would proceed a layer at a time until we have a 3 dimensional model of the
brain. Even better we could examine living brains of persons who are about to die and consent to the
procedure. And with emerging noninvasive means of scanning our brains, 122 we will eventually be able
to scan living brains completely, the way we scan our bodies with MRIs.
Ultimately, we would want to map the entire brain, including its synapses, in fact mapping it synapse by
synapse, a capability that will result from the continual increase in scanning ability. After scanning the
brain we should be in a position to understand it, at least its overall pattern, thus slowing unpeeling the
onion. And the next step is downloading our minds into computers. After understanding the important
algorithms of each brain region we should in theory be able to accomplish this. We dont need complete
understanding but we do need the ability to copy a brains pattern. The tech will be bad at first but should
improve gradually.
And what will we find when we do this? To objective observers the new person will appear to be identical
with the person originally scanned. From the subjective point of view this issue is more difficult and
arguments can be made on both sides. If we are basically the pattern of our consciousness, then it seems
the new person is the same as the original. If our essence is our body, then the person doesnt survive.
This is complicated if both the original and copy are around, for then the original will think he is the real
person and may not want the clone to carry on for him. But then again for the new person across the
divide, she will think she is the original person and wont believe she committed suicide by surviving in
this way. And even if she wonders if she is the same person shell still be glad she exists since without

taking the plunge she wouldnt. K believes that in the second of the 21st century the process of taking
the leap will begin.
Initially there will be partial portingreplacing aging memory circuits, extending pattern-recognition and
reasoning circuits through neural implants. Ultimately, and well before the 21 st century is complete, people
will port their entire mind files to the new thinking technology. 126 While nostalgic for our carbon-based
bodies, we will quickly get over it as we find that porting ourselves allows us to extend our minds.
Remember that $1000 of computing in 2060 will have the computational capacity of a trillion human
brains. So we might as well multiply memory a trillion fold, greatly extend recognition and reasoning
abilities, and plug ourselves into the pervasive wireless-communications network. And while we are at it,
we can add all human knowledgeas a readily accessible internal database as well as already processed
and learned knowledge using the human type of distributed understanding. 126-28
And this means that if you use this technology your software is no longer dependent on your hardware.
And your evolving mind file wont be stuck with the circuitry of the brain but can evolve well beyond that.
Your mind file can be transferred from one medium to another just as files are transferred from one
computer to another. And our immortality will be a matter of being sufficiently careful to make frequent
backups. If were careless about this, well have to load an old backup copy and be doomed to repeat our
recent past. 129
Chap 7 And Bodies
Chapter 6 was about building new brains. Chapter 7 is about building new bodies. Will we want to
download our personal evolving mind files into our original bodies, upgraded bodies, nanoengineered
bodies, or virtual bodies? K starts by claiming that body and brain will like evolve and be enhanced
togethergradually. We are already further along with body transformation than with brain transformation
with titanium devices, artificial skin and heart values, pacemakers, etc. So we might want to re-build our
bodies completely. Of course most of us are attached to the warmth and softness of our bodies. We might
start by enhancing our bodies cell by cell using genetic therapies of some kind. But we can only go so far
with this, and thats because of the limitations of DNA-based cells that depend on protein synthesis.
(stable under narrow temperature and pressure ranges, sensitive to radiation, etc.) So K agrees with
Moravec that such bodieshowever well they were enhancedwould just be second-rate robots.
Instead lets us nanotechnology to rebuild the world, atom by atom. While our machines of today are
marvelous and precise compared to stone blades, they are primitive when viewed from the atomic level;
our mechanisms moved atoms in great thundering statistical herds. Nanotechnology is technology is
technology built at the atomic level: building machines one atom at a time. We have proof of the

feasibility of nanotechnology: life on Earth. Little machines in our cells called ribosomes build organisms
such as humans one molecule at a time Life on Earth has mastered the ultimate goal of
nanotechnology, which is self-replication. 137 But life on earth is limited by the molecular building blocks it
uses. And just as human-created computation will exceed natural computation, 21 st century physical
technology will exceed the capabilities of amino acid based nanotechnology of nature.
The holy grail of NT is that nanomachines would be intelligent, able to manipulate things at the nano level,
and be able to replicate. Important theorist like Eric Drexler and Ralph Merkle have shown the feasibility of
self-replicating nanobots. (And there is currently a ton of money being invested in NT.) The possibilities for
NT to transform the world are endless: they could build inexpensive solar cells to replace fossil fuels; be
launched in our bloodstream to improve the immune system, destroy pathogens, cancer cells, rebuild
diseased organs (the inspiration for the cryonics movement. Ralph Merkle, formerly of XeroxPark, inventor
of encryption technology, and on the board of directors at Alcor Life Extension told me in personal
correspondence that if NT works, cryonics almost certainly will. The point is that these are not fringe
persons who are talking about this stuff, but respectable engineers, computer scientists, and others.) And
more possibilities: reconstruction of bodily organs and systems, reverse engineering of human neurons
and any cell in the human body. Moreover: Food, clothing, diamond rings, buildings could all assemble
themselves molecule by molecule. Any sort of product could be instantly created when and where we
need it. Indeed the world could continually reassemble itself to meet our changing needs, desires, and
fantasies. NT will permit objects such as furniture, buildings, clothing, even people to change their
appearance and other characteristicsessentially to change into something elsein a split second. 140
Will we want to do this? There is a clear incentive to go down this path. Given a choice, people will prefer
to keep their bones from crumbling, their skin supple, their life systems strong and vital. Improving our
lives through neural implants on the mental level, and NT enhance bodies on the physical level , will be
popular and compelling. It is another one of those slipper slopesthere is no obvious place to stop this
progression until the human race has largely replaced the brains and bodies that evolution first provided.
141 K admits there are dangers from NT, especially self-replication run amok and the intentional hostile
use of the tech. He tries to defend the development of NT nonetheless.
Of course we dont need real bodies; in a VR a virtual body would do fine. Next K traces the development
of VR from the primitive computer games of the 60s to the state of the art VR today. But in the next decade
faster computers will continue to make VR more realistic and he goes into detail about how this will be
done. And later in the 21st century we wont need to enter a booth to experience VR. Your neural implants
will provide the simulated sensory inputs of the virtual environmentand your virtual bodydirectly in
your brain. 144

And thats not all. By the late 21st century the real world will take on many of the characteristics of the VW
through the means of NT swarms. 145 Intelligent nanobots can merge and create something called Utility
Fog. Spaces filled with UF go unnoticed but are able to simulate any environment by creating all sorts of
structures. A Fog environment can be anything you want. UF creates a VR in the real physical world.
Other minds can be simulated in the UF as Fog people. Furthermore, there are a variety of proposals for
NT swarms, in which the real environment is constructed form the interacting multitudes of
nanomachines. 145 What this all leads to is a situation in the last 21 st century when we will have to select
our body, our personality, [and] our environment 146
The next section deals with virtual sex, sexbots (sexual robots), neural implant sex, and the great sex
inside UF. K then delves into spiritual experiences which we already know has a physiological basis. When
we completely understand their neurological correlates we can have them at will, if that is what we want.
(Instead of sex I suppose.) A K company has already created a device which creates brain generated
music which elicits the relaxation response. And he reports on the well-known work of neuroscientists from
UCSD who have found what they call the God module, a tiny locus of nerve cells in the frontal lobes that
appers to be activated during religious experiences. 152 This neurological basis for spiritual experience
has long been postulated by evolutionary biologists because of the social utility of religious belief. 153 At
any rate, a full understanding of this research would allow us to augment it. Twenty-first century machines
will do as their human progenitors have done [and] connect with their spiritual dimension. 153
Epilogue: The Rest of the Universe Revisted
K has argued that the emergence of machine intelligence that exceeds human intelligence is
inevitable. 253 This results from the Law of Accelerating Returns which also applies to the rest of the
universe. But in what way?
To begin to answer this question K speculates that life is both rare and plentiful in the universe. That is,
very rare compared to the immensity of the universe but very plentiful in an absolute sense since the
universe is immense. Since life probably exists on other planets, K gives us a sense of the kinds of
thresholds they would go thru. [I dont think he needs this extraterrestrial life argument. He could just say
these are the stages that life went thru on earth.] He thinks the evolution of life forms could be thought of
as one threshold, the evolution of intelligence as the next, then the evolution of technology, followed by the
evolutoin of computation, followed by the merger of a species with the tech it has created. At this stage
the computers are themselves based at least in part on the designs of the brains of the species that
originally created them and in turn the computers become embedded in and integrated into the species
bodies and brains. 255-56

But there are many possible ways that this prediction might fail: nuclear war, self-replicating nanobots, and
software viruses. K guesses that we have a better than even chance of making it through. But he adds: I
have alwaysn been accused of being an optimist. [In truth I dont know how to figure the odds of us making
it thru at all, much less thru to the age of spiritual machines.]
K next turns to considering what visitors from faraway places would be like. Such visitors wouldnt be much
like they are portrayed in science fiction, [or by Bubbas report] but would probably be microscopic and
interested only in information. [I have always found this section a bit puzzling. My best guess is that K
includes it so as to answer those who would ask why we havent been visited by all these civilizations that
have survived.]
K concludes his book with a sturing and dramatic section concerning the relevance of intelligence for the
universe. While the common view is that intelligence is impotent when compared to the mighty forces of
the universe, K disagrees. Intelligence does effect physical forces; our intelligence thwarts gravity and
manipulates physical forces in other ways. And yet, the density of intelligence is very small. [If you dont
believe this travel out West and look at a mountainone large, dumb, although maybe beautiful rock.] If
you imagine that intelligence will increase exponentially with time, then it will eventually become a worthy
competitor for the big universal forces.
Thus he concludes: The laws of physics are not repealed by intelligence, but they effectively evaporate in
its presence. What then of the fate of the universe? K concludes: the fate of the Universe is a decision
yet to be made, one which we will intelligently consider when the time is right.