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
[In] 2029, I think, computers will match and exceed human intelligence in the ways we're now superior, like being funny, where we still have an edge.
By 2009, computers will disappear. Displays will be written directly onto our retinas by devices in our eyeglasses and contact lenses.
By 2029, computers will have emotional intelligence and be convincing as people.
I'm working on artificial intelligence. Actually, natural language understanding, which is to get computers to understand the meaning of documents.
Supercomputers will achieve one human brain capacity by 2010, and personal computers will do so by about 2020.
One could run these automata for trillions or even trillions of trillions of iterations, and the image would remain at the same limited level of complexity. They do not evolve into, say, insects, or humans, or Chopin preludes.
The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology
What if not everyone wants to go along with this?
I really do believe it is feasible to slow down the aging process, ... We call that a bridge to a bridge to a bridge -- to the full flowering of the biotechnology revolution.
Exponential growth looks like nothing is happening, and then suddenly you get this explosion at the end,
Life expectancy is a statistical phenomenon. You could still be hit by the proverbial bus tomorrow.
Once we have inexpensive energy, we can readily and inexpensively convert the vast amount of dirty and salinated water we have on the planet to usable water.
New technologies can be used for destructive purposes. The answer is to develop rapid-response systems for new dangers like a bioterrorist creating a new biological virus.
The Blue Brain project expects to have a full human-scale simulation of the cerebral cortex by 2018. I think that's a little optimistic, actually, but I do make the case that by 2029 we will have very detailed models and simulations of all the different brain regions.