IP: Age Of Spiritual Machines

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

From: "Richard Dooling" <richard () dooling com> 

THREE BOOKS ABOUT ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
**The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence**
By RAY KURZWEIL
Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind
By HANS MORAVEC
When Things Start to Think
By NEIL GERSHENFELD

All three Reviewed by COLIN McGINN
http://www.nytimes.com/books/99/01/03/reviews/990103.03mcginnt.html

[I added djf]

Hello, Hal!

as the invasion already begun? Are the aliens already right under our noses? Are machines, the products of human 
engineering intelligence, poised to take over the world -- or is this an irrational fear, the latest spasm of the 
Luddite spirit? Finally, is the whole idea just a clever marketing ploy for the investment-hungry artificial 
intelligence industry? Here we have three books, all written by experts in computer intelligence, aimed to persuade us 
that the Age of Machines is nigh. We are to be eclipsed by our own technology, ceding our outdated flesh, blood and 
neural tissue to integrated circuits and their mechanistic progeny.