Rapture for the Geeks: When AI Outsmarts IQ

By Richard Dooling

Will the Geeks inherit the earth?

If computers become twice as fast and twice as capable every two years, how long is it before they’re as intelligent as humans? More intelligent? And then in two more years, twice as intelligent? How long before you won’t be able to tell if you are texting a person or an especially ingenious chatterbot program designed to simulate intelligent human conversation?

According to Richard Dooling in Rapture for the Geeks—maybe not that long. It took humans millions of years to develop opposable thumbs (which we now use to build computers), but computers go from megabytes to gigabytes in five years; from the invention of the PC to the Internet in less than fifteen. At the accelerating rate of technological development, AI should surpass IQ in the next seven to thirty-seven years (depending on who you ask). We are sluggish biological sorcerers, but we’ve managed to create whiz-bang machines that are evolving much faster than we are.

In this fascinating, entertaining, and illuminating book, Dooling looks at what some of the greatest minds have to say about our role in a future in which technology rapidly leaves us in the dust. As Dooling writes, comparing human evolution to technological evolution is “worse than apples and oranges: It’s appliances versus orangutans.” Is the era of Singularity, when machines outthink humans, almost upon us? Will we be enslaved by our supercomputer overlords, as many a sci-fi writer has wondered? Or will humans live lives of leisure with computers doing all the heavy lifting?

With antic wit, fearless prescience, and common sense, Dooling provocatively examines nothing less than what it means to be human in what he playfully calls the age of b.s. (before Singularity)—and what life will be like when we are no longer alone with Mother Nature at Darwin’s card table. Are computers thinking and feeling if they can mimic human speech and emotions? Does processing capability equal consciousness? What happens to our quaint beliefs about God when we’re all worshipping technology? What if the human compulsion to create ever more capable machines ultimately leads to our own extinction? Will human ingenuity and faith ultimately prevail over our technological obsessions? Dooling hopes so, and his cautionary glimpses into the future are the best medicine to restore our humanity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Oct 7, 2008
• ISBN: 9780307449955

Richard Dooling

Richard Dooling is a writer and a lawyer. His second novel, White Man's Grave, was a finalist for the National Book Award, and he has also been a finalist for a National Magazine Award. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal, among many other publications. He lives with his wife and children in Omaha, and commutes online to Bryan Cave, LLP, in St Louis, where he specializes in developing Web-based legal products.

Reviews for Rapture for the Geeks

[rmagahiz · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I thought it would be amusing to read this book about the technological singularity from ten years ago. Unfortunately, it was not so. His allusions to cutting-edge tech from that era is just about as cringe inducing as his humor larded all throughout his book (some of it in Python code). It looked better at first glance than it turned out to be.
The one useful takeaway from this book: It's only five years away from Vernor Vinge's estimate for the arrival of the singularity.
Two stars because I don't think he's actually factually wrong, so that is worth some slight respect.

[mvleeuwen · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Singularity... when will it come? The author has really done a great job writing a book about Singulariy in an understandable and joyful way. The wink on the cover might mean that the book is also readably by non-geeks. That's a compliment when talking about - a kind of geeky subject - Singulariy!

[bibliotecaboy · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An interesting book that while the author goes where many have gone before in relation to the Technological Singularity, explores the topic with simplicity and a large dose of humour.Read this book as an introduction to the Singularity and then go explore the Subject further

[dmcolon · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Richard Dooling's Rapture for the Geeks didn't exactly capture my attention when I first started reading it. It seemed to be a somewhat pedestrian narrative of artificial intelligence. Having recently finished Kurzweil's The Singularity is Near, this book seemed to be a pale shadow of that tome. Then I noticed some slight differences - Dooling was definitely much less accepting of the whole notion of the singularity. For him, there's a strange and very real potential for the Singularity to turn very, very dark. And without giving too much away, Dooling ultimately argues that humanity offers certain traits that computers cannot and will not replace. In the end, I found the book oddly flat and colorless. There are some real gems inside, but nothing that stood out for me.