RATING  ****

Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind is a 240 page non-fiction paperback book by Hans Moravec published in 2000.

Hans Moravec is both a practical robotics engineer and a transcendent dreamer.  Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind is a work of pessimism delivered by an optimist.  It’s complex, compelling, naïve and frightening.  Is this the world we’re building for our children?  I mean human children, not mind children.

Robot begins with a good overview of robotics, outlining the work of cyber-pioneers such as Alan Turing, John McCarthy and Marvin Minsky; then progressing into the late nineties.  Moravec is a first-class robotics scientist and engineer, explaining technical issues and solutions in a concise, interesting manner.  Good stuff, if you’re interested in understanding robotics (why else would you be reading this book?).

Moravec then projects the growth of robotics and artificial intelligence employing a model similar to that of Ray Kurzweil in The Age of Spiritual Machines.  Both men base this growth on the exponentially increasing power of inexpensive computers, which they believe will match the computing power of the human mind by approximately 2020.  They both present strong arguments that the human mind is fundamentally a complex machine; therefore, it’s not a stretch to believe an equally complex mind can be developed in silicon.  Moravec then provides his assessment of robot capabilities for each decade of the twenty-first century.  It’s fascinating and not unreasonable.

Okay, we all know the future is not going to look like Star Trek, but Moravec’s vision for the coming centuries is just too unbelievable: robot corporations in outer space, some planet-sized, virtually all of humanity living on a dole provided by taxing robot corporations, “execs” with almost supernatural powers … you get the idea.  Who knows – maybe he will be right – but these speculations don’t fit well with the practical, science-based tone of the bulk of the material.