Title: Unfounded fictional ramblings
Product review: If you read this as speculation that purports to be based in reality, then it is a good read, much as The Blair Witch Project is a good movie. But this book smacks far too much of goofy 1930s predictions about two-legged vaccuming robots and lunar outposts. We're apparently unable to create a word processor that doesn't crash, and yet we are going to create superhuman machine intelligence in the near future? Anyone who has followed the history of AI knows that we haven't made much--or any--progress in that area, aside from a few novelties based on brute force, millions of dollars, and thirty years of research, like highly paralell search engines that compute chess moves in a thoughtless manner.Some of Kurweil's visions are downright dumb, such as AI artists that will create art in lieu of humans. Now that's an interesting gimmick, much as chatter bots--programs that converse in chat rooms--are, but nobody really wants such things.
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