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By the close of the next century, nonbiological intelligence will be ubiquitous. There will be few humans without some form of artificial intelligence, which is growing at a double exponential rate, whereas biological intelligence is basically at a standstill. Nonbiological thinking will be trillions of trillions of times more powerful than that of its biological progenitors, although it will be still of human origin.

Ultimately, however, the earth's technology-creating species will merge with its own computational technology. After all, what is the difference between a human brain enhanced a trillion-fold by nanobot-based implants, and a computer whose design is based on high-resolution scans of the human brain, and then extended a trillion-fold?

This may be the ominous, existential question that our own children, certainly our grandchildren, will face. But at this point, there's no turning back. And there's no slowing down.

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Adapted by Ph.D.

Ray Kurzweil, Ph.D., an award-winning inventor and high-tech entrepreneur, developed the world's first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind and the first music synthesizer capable of re-creating the grand piano, among other technologies. He is author of The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence, (Viking, 1999).

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