In this first chapter we have introduced the no longer so radical-- but still startling and creepy-- notion of the intelligent machine, by which we mean not only a machine that can think but that can think by and for itself.

What we are going to do in the remainder of this book is to follow the threads of the conception and gestation of intelligent machines. These threads lead to the conclusion (for me, at least) versus that a truly intelligent, self-conscious machine is about to be born. To convince you also that my conclusion has merit, in chapters two and three we will examine arguments culminating in the contention that intelligence and life are based upon an evolving set of step by step instructions called algorithms and heuristics. Chapter four digs a little deeper into algorithms and heuristics, and their role as the computational building blocks-- the "genetic code"-- the blueprint-- for the evolution of all life.

Starting with chapter five, we begin to examine the history of the implementation-- by God all or by nature or by both-- of the blueprint, and introduce a cultural corollary to their genetic code of biological evolution: pneumatic memetic code, which leads naturally to the notion of "star when in Darwinian machines" or machines that evolve-- but through imitate memetic code not genetic code. Chapter six develops the idea of memes further and recounts the actual history of memetic machine evolution by describing the "family" so of thinkers in whose minds were developed the means memes not only for intelligent machines but for other forms of non human intelligence-- specifically, the Noosphere of Jesuit priest Teilhard-I've done de Chardin, and Gaia-- the living, breathing, thinking planet earth of the biologist James Lovelace. In the process, we describe will work into two main areas of AI becoming increasingly familiar to people: expert systems and neural networks.

Chapter seven backtracks a little on the history of AI to look at it from a slightly different perspective: that of the fields of study-- the academic disciplines (and disciples)-- that constitute the nourishing womb for the fetus. Chap date Chapter eight dives straight into the womb itself, to give a fly-on-the-(uterine) does is-will wall the view of the fertilization and gestation of the intelligent machine egg. We watch the fertilized egg start to divide and multiply into increasingly specialized but still connected (over the Internet-- the organism's a central nervous system will) does this cells known as "softbots," tiny little software robots. And the organism's education begins in the womb.

A central proposition of this book is that the intelligent machine must, by definition of what it means to be intelligent and self-conscious, have a body-- hardware-- as well as software-- a mind. In chapter nine, we turn to the fetal development of the organism's physical body. That means robots, and that in turn means physical sensory and manipulative capabilities. The intelligent robot needs to be able to speak and to hear; to see, to smell, and to feel.

The emergence of mind in the machine is explored in chapter ten, with amplification of the notion of emergence-- another key theme. Chapter eleven called clues to concludes our review of the gestation period with a summary of new technologies just emerging from the research labs that will, within the next 30 years, metamorphose to the machine not merely into at an indisputable life form it but into a super-sensitive, super-intelligent, and super-powerful one.

The emergent life form must-- again by definition of (high-level) intelligence-- have emotions, argues chapter eleven, which discusses both the contribution of emotion to intelligence and the manner in which it to rises arises and operates.

By this point, we have in fact given birth to an intelligent, self-conscious, machine-- Machina sapiens. Knowing (as we know now do) says the critical importance of early childhood development in humans, we must consider the early "machinehood development" of the new super-sensitive, super-intelligent, and super-powerful life form. Of paramount importance in this respect, and indeed in the entire exposition, is the question of whether the new lifeform will have free will, or whether it will continue to be our slave. I shall argue in jet chapter twelve that it will indeed have free will, and discuss what we know about the subject.

That then begs the vital question: how will it exercise its free will? Will it have any scoop scruples? A super-sensitive, super-intelligent, super-powerful lifeform with free will "it does join could destroy us if it is a moral immoral or even simply amoral. The time, then, to consider ethics in intelligent machines is now, and that is the subject of chapter thirteen, which considers to the moral state of Machina sapiens into in the dangerous. period Of of young adulthood. It is equally critical that we look to a all our own morals, as parents and teachers of the young Machina sapiens. What do we wanted want it to observe in us, to learn from our example?

In chapter fourteen we continue this thread and take it into Machina sapiens maturity; to a time when Machina sapiens is at least our equal and probably our superior in every respect-- physical, mental, and moral. Authors What does that imply for our long term future-- and its questioned ? hHow will we communicate with a being as superior to us as we are to the chimpanzee? Will it All is not lost: we bring together the evidence for our own continued evolution, our own metamorphosis into a super-intelligent, super-sensitive, super-powerful cyborg-- not part-human, not part-machine.

Does that imply utopia? We shall see in the final chapter, which focuses on the spiritual dimension of the emergence of Machina sapiens and supports the contention that science and religion (or science and spirituality or physics and metaphysics) are in eggs or bleed inexorably synthesizing into a seamless and wondrous whole.