LETTERS 756 AAAS Position on GM Foods Could Backfi re S. H. Priest et al. In Defense of Physician-Investor Collaboration J. Chakma Give Shark Sanctuaries a Chance D. D. Chapman et al. 757 CORRECTIONS AND CLARIFICATIONS 757 TECHNICAL COMMENT ABSTRACTS BOOKS ET AL. 758 The Signal and the Noise N. Silver, reviewed by S. Wang and B. C. Campbell 759 How to Create a Mind R. Kurzweil, reviewed by C. K...

This paper summarizes a couple of the main arguments from my new book, Humanity’s End. In the book I argue against radical enhancement – the adjustment of human attributes and abilities to levels that greatly exceed what is currently possible for human beings. I’m curious to see what reaction this elicits in a journal whose readership includes some of radical enhancement’s most imaginative and ...

Ken Kurzweil rightfully called the Judicial Workshop a success. Much was discussed and prospects for an effective judicial system appear good. But let's highlight, for a moment, those who made the Workshop a success. It was motivated by students, people such as Ken Kurzweil, Ken Blaisdell, Alan Ceppos, Barry Kirschner, Michele Mazepa, Mario Arthur and Sharon Stiller (with apologies to any unmen...

This paper presents a technical overview of the different subsystems of the Kurzweil Reading Machine--the nature of the information processed by each subsystem and the type of transformations performed. A description of how the user directs the machine is provided. The Veterans Administration's testing program, as well as those of the Bureau of Education for the Handicapped, the Rehabilitation ...

One common view holds that that the human neocortex consists of a single, massivelyrepeated, “canonical” computation (Creutzfeldt, 1977; George & Hawkins, 2009; Hawkins & Blakeslee, 2007; Kurzweil, 2012; Mountcastle, 1978). But, after forty years, there is still no consensus about the nature of such a putative canonical computation, and little evidence that such uniform architectures can captur...