[ExI] The Singularity is Nearer

[Kelly Anderson]

So I finished the book, and I felt like there wasn't a lot of new
stuff in it. It felt TO ME like it was yet another victory lap for
Ray... see, I was right about this, I was right about that, this stuff
is progressing so fast now that a fair amount of the AI information
felt out of date, which is simply impossible to avoid as a book right
now. But even in the areas where he could have pushed forward, it felt
like he didn't. It was mercifully less than half the length of The
Singularity is Near, but contained nowhere near the high information
to noise ratio of TSIN. Now, that may be because I keep up on this
stuff both here and on YouTube... but I really think Ray could have
done more with this update than he did.

As an example, while he reviewed his previous prediction about solar
panels and batteries getting cheaper and cheaper, which is obviously
correct for anyone watching, he neglected to point out that about 80%
of the global supply chain for solar panels and 60%+ of the supply
chain for batteries is completely locked down the by the Chinese,
creating a potential pinch point for progress along those lines should
the Chinese get desperate enough to start another trade war. That's
the kind of insight that I think is useful, but I didn't hear a single
point in the presentation that talked about any geographically based
problem related to singularity related issues. He also doesn't talk
about emergence nearly enough imho, though he didn't say zero on the
subject.

I'm thinking the only answer is to write my own books. LOL. But I'm
not a recognized expert AT ALL in any of this stuff. I still think I
could have written a more interesting book updating TSIN.

To be fair, TSIN is probably my all time favorite book, and it would
have been VERY difficult to have come even close to that kind of
sweeping victory.

-Kelly

On Tue, Jun 25, 2024 at 3:39 AM Giulio Prisco via extropy-chat
<extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
> Ray Kurzweil's new book "The Singularity is Nearer" is out! I'll do a
> couple of days of almost total immersion in the book.
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