The Singularity Is Near

The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology

Author	Ray Kurzweil
Language	English
Publisher	Viking
Publication date	September 2005
Publication place	United States
Pages	652
ISBN	978-0-670-03384-3
OCLC	57201348
Dewey Decimal	153.9
LC Class	QP376 .K85
Preceded by	The Age of Spiritual Machines
Followed by	How to Create a Mind (follow-up book) The Singularity is Nearer (sequel)

The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology is a 2005 non-fiction book about artificial intelligence and the future of humanity by inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil. A sequel book, The Singularity Is Nearer, was released on June 25, 2024.^[1]

The book builds on the ideas introduced in Kurzweil's previous books, The Age of Intelligent Machines (1990) and The Age of Spiritual Machines (1999). In the book, Kurzweil embraces the term "the singularity", which was popularized by Vernor Vinge in his 1993 essay "The Coming Technological Singularity."^[2]

Kurzweil describes his law of accelerating returns which predicts an exponential increase in technologies like computers, genetics, nanotechnology, robotics and artificial intelligence. Once the singularity has been reached, Kurzweil says that machine intelligence will be infinitely more powerful than all human intelligence combined. The singularity is also the point at which machines' intelligence and humans would merge; Kurzweil predicts this date: "I set the date for the Singularity—representing a profound and disruptive transformation in human capability—as 2045".^[3]