The Age of Intelligent Machines

Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1990. Presumed First Edition, First printing. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. xiii, [1],565, [5] pages. Illustrations (many in color). Chronology. Notes. Bibliography and Suggested Readings. Glossary. Index. DJ has slight wear and soiling. Format is approximately 8.5 inches by 11.25 inches. Raymond Kurzweil (born February 12, 1948) is an American author, computer scientist, inventor and futurist. He is involved in fields such as optical character recognition (OCR), text-to-speech synthesis, speech recognition technology, and electronic keyboard instruments. He has written books on health, artificial intelligence (AI), transhumanism, the technological singularity, and futurism. Kurzweil is an advocate for the futurist and transhumanist movements, and gives public talks to share his optimistic outlook on life extension technologies and the future of nanotechnology, robotics, and biotechnology. Kurzweil received the 1999 National Medal of Technology and Innovation, the U. S.'s highest honor in technology. In 2002 he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. This was Kurzweil's first book and the Association of American Publishers named it the Most Outstanding Computer Science Book of 1990. The format is a combination of monograph and anthology with contributed essays by artificial intelligence experts such as Daniel Dennett, Douglas Hofstadter, and Marvin Minsky. Kurzweil surveys the philosophical, mathematical and technological roots of artificial intelligence, starting with the assumption that a sufficiently advanced computer program could exhibit human-level intelligence. Kurzweil argues the creation of humans through evolution suggests that humans should be able to build something more intelligent than themselves. He believes pattern recognition, as demonstrated by vision, and knowledge representation, as seen in language, are two key components of intelligence. Driven by the exponential improvements in computer power, Kurzweil believes artificial intelligence will be possible and then commonplace.