Hey Hub Readers,
You may have heard that Ray Kurzweil’s latest book “How to Create a Mind” is due to be released November 13. In anticipation of the launch of his new book, I’ll be interviewing Kurzweil one on one this Saturday. We’ll be sure to post a video of the interview here on SH as soon as we can, hopefully on Monday. Singularity Hub Members will have the opportunity to submit their questions for possible inclusion into the interview, so if you aren’t a member yet you’ve now got one more reason to head on over to our membership page and give the membership a try.
Kurzweil’s book on how to create a mind is sure to bring some new spin, as well as plenty of debate to a highly controversial topic. Many claim that the human brain is too complex and too mysterious to be understood or replicated within our lifetimes, if ever. Others (many who regularly read this site!) on the other hand, recognize that technologies such as Siri and IBM’s Watson have already made impressive progress in mimicking human intelligence. In the next 20, 50, and 80 years, who is to say how far humankind will take this trend? Will human level intelligence, or even greater than human intelligence, be created entirely in machines and software, or perhaps in some combination of man and machine? Kurzweil would argue, in fact, that our smartphones connected to the cloud already represent an extension of our intelligence, and thus we already possess a very real form of superhuman intelligence relative to humans only a decade ago!
Although the book doesn’t come out until November, Kurzweil is running a pretty awesome promotion for those that want to pre-order ahead of time. I’d say if you know you want the book, you’d be hard pressed to get a better deal than the one below:
“HOW TO CREATE A MIND – The Secret of Human Thought Revealed” today and receive this exclusive offer valued at more than $1200!
– 34% off retail price
– Individually signed by Ray Kurzweil
– How to Create a Mind T-shirt
– Free streaming film: Transcendent Man, The Life and Ideas of Ray Kurzweil
– $1200 gift certificate toward attendance at Singularity Universityís 7-day Executive Program at the NASA Ames campus
– Automatic entry to win a seat at a 7-day SU Executive Program
This offer is valid through October 26, 2012.
Go here to pre-order: http://howtocreateamind.net/pre/order
