The Age of Intelligent Machines

by Ray Kurzweil

What is artificial intelligence? At its essence, it is another way of answering a central question that has been debated by scientists, philosophers, and theologians for thousands of How does the human brain - three pounds of ordinary matter - give rise to thought? With this question in mind, inventor and visionary computer scientist Raymond Kurzweil probes the past, present, and future of artificial intelligence, from its earliest philosophical and mathematical roots through today's moving frontier, to tantalizing glimpses of 21st-century machines with superior intelligence and truly prodigious speed and memory. Lavishly illustrated and easily accessible to the nonspecialist, "The Age of Intelligent Machines provides the background needed for a full understanding of the enormous scientific potential represented by intelligent machines and of their equally profound philosophic, economic, and social implications. It examines the history of efforts to understand human intelligence and to