Ray Kurzweil
Ray Kurzweil
Raymond "Ray" Kurzweilis an American author, computer scientist, inventor and futurist. Aside from futurology, he is involved in fields such as optical character recognition, text-to-speech synthesis, speech recognition technology, and electronic keyboard instruments. He has written books on health, artificial intelligence, transhumanism, the technological singularity, and futurism. Kurzweil is a public advocate for the futurist and transhumanist movements, and gives public talks to share his optimistic outlook on life extension technologies and the future of nanotechnology, robotics, and biotechnology...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionInventor
Date of Birth12 February 1948
CountryUnited States of America
Death is a great tragedy…a profound loss…I don’t accept it…I think people are kidding themselves when they say they are comfortable with death.
As we gradually learn to harness the optimal computing capacity of matter, our intelligence will spread through the universe at (or exceeding) the speed of light, eventually leading to a sublime, universe wide awakening.
So what used to fit in a building now fits in your pocket, what fits in your pocket now will fit inside a blood cell in 25 years.
We only have to capture 1/10,000th of the solar energy landing on earth to completely satisfy all our energy needs.
The key issue as to whether or not a non-biological entity deserves rights really comes down to whether or not it's conscious.... Does it have feelings?
Sometimes people talk about conflict between humans and machines, and you can see that in a lot of science fiction. But the machines were creating are not some invasion from Mars. We create these tools to expand our own reach.
By the time we get to the 2040s, we'll be able to multiply human intelligence a billionfold. That will be a profound change that's singular in nature. Computers are going to keep getting smaller and smaller. Ultimately, they will go inside our bodies and brains and make us healthier, make us smarter.
I envision some years from now that the majority of search queries will be answered without you actually asking. It'll just know this is something that you're going to want to see.
Science fiction is the great opportunity to speculate on what could happen. It does give me, as a futurist, scenarios.
A lot of movies about artificial intelligence envision that AIs will be very intelligent but missing some key emotional qualities of humans and therefore turn out to be very dangerous.
To transcend means to "go beyond," but this need not compel us to an ornate dualist view that regards transcendent levels of reality (e.g., the spiritual level) to be not of this world. We can "go beyond" the "ordinary" powers of the material world through the power of patterns. Rather than a materialist, I would prefer to consider myself a "patternist." It's through the emergent powers of the pattern that we transcend.
A Singularitarian is someone who understands the Singularity and has reflected on its meaning for his or her own life.
In 1999, I said that in about a decade we would see technologies such as self-driving cars and mobile phones that could answer your questions, and people criticized these predictions as unrealistic.
Inventing is a lot like surfing: you have to anticipate and catch the wave at just the right moment.