Welcome to our collection of quotes by Ray Kurzweil. We hope you enjoy pondering them and please share widely.
Wikipedia Summary for Ray Kurzweil
Raymond Kurzweil ( KURZ-wyle; born February 12, 1948) is an American inventor and futurist. He is involved in fields such as optical character recognition (OCR), text-to-speech synthesis, speech recognition technology, and electronic keyboard instruments. He has written books on health, artificial intelligence (AI), 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.
Kurzweil received the 1999 National Medal of Technology and Innovation, the United States' highest honor in technology, from President Clinton in a White House ceremony. He was the recipient of the $500,000 Lemelson-MIT Prize for 2001. He was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2001 for the application of technology to improve human-machine communication. In 2002 he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame, established by the U.S. Patent Office. He has received 21 honorary doctorates, and honors from three U.S. presidents. The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) included Kurzweil as one of 16 "revolutionaries who made America" along with other inventors of the past two centuries. Inc. magazine ranked him #8 among the "most fascinating" entrepreneurs in the United States and called him "Edison's rightful heir".
Launching a breakthrough idea is like shooting skeet. People's needs change, so you must aim well ahead of the target to hit it.
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.
If you write a blog post, you've got something to say; you're not just creating words and synonyms. We'd like the computers to actually pick up on that semantic meaning.
Aging is not one process. It's many different things going on that cause us to age. I have a program that at least slows down each of these different processes.
Even by common wisdom, there seem to be both people and objects in my dream that are outside myself, but clearly they were created in myself and are part of me, they are mental constructs in my own brain.
Intelligence is: (a) the most complex phenomenon in the Universe; or (b) a profoundly simple process. The answer, of course, is (c) both of the above. It's another one of those great dualities that make life interesting.
Sometimes people talk about conflict between humans and machines, and you can see that in a lot of science fiction. But the machines we're creating are not some invasion from Mars. We create these tools to expand our own reach.
Intuition is linear; our imaginations are weak. Even the brightest of us only extrapolate from what we know now; for the most part, we're afraid to really stretch.
The need to congregate workers in offices will gradually diminish.
The story of evolution unfolds with increasing levels of abstraction.
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.
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?
Even by common wisdom, there seem to be both people and objects in my dream that are outside myself, but clearly they were created in myself and are part of me; they are mental constructs in my own brain.
The telephone is virtual reality in that you can meet with someone as if you are together, at least for the auditory sense.
Biological evolution is too slow for the human species. Over the next few decades, it's going to be left in the dust.
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.
By 2009, computers will disappear. Displays will be written directly onto our retinas by devices in our eyeglasses and contact lenses.
The past is over; the present is fleeting; we live in the future.
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.
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.
Emotional intelligence is what humans are good at and that's not a sideshow. That's the cutting edge of human intelligence.
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.
Launching a breakthrough idea is like shooting skeet. People's needs change, so you must aim well ahead of the target to hit it.
The purposeful destruction of information is the essence of intelligent work.
It is doubling now every two years. Doubling every two years means multiplying by 1,000 in 20 years. At that rate we'll meet 100 percent of our energy needs in 20 years.
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.
Mobile phones are misnamed. They should be called gateways to human knowledge.
I do have to pick my priorities. Nobody can do everything.
Inventing is a lot like surfing: you have to anticipate and catch the wave at just the right moment.
Science fiction is the great opportunity to speculate on what could happen. It does give me, as a futurist, scenarios.
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.
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.
By the end of this decade, computers will disappear as distinct physical objects, with displays built in our eyeglasses, and electronics woven in our clothing, providing full-immersion visual virtual reality.
If we could convert 0.03 percent of the sunlight that falls on the earth into energy, we could meet all of our projected needs for 2030.
I consider myself an inventor, entrepreneur, and author.
We appear to be programmed with the idea that there are 'things' outside of our self, and some are conscious, and some are not.
We are beginning to see intimations of this in the implantation of computer devices into the human body.
I decided to be an inventor when I was five. My parents had given me a few various enrichment toys like erector sets, and for some reason I had the idea that if I put things together just the right way, I could create the intended effect.
As order exponentially increases, time exponentially speeds up.
Supercomputers will achieve one human brain capacity by 2010, and personal computers will do so by about 2020.
I'm working on artificial intelligence. Actually, natural language understanding, which is to get computers to understand the meaning of documents.
Information defines your personality, your memories, your skills.
Death gives meaning to our lives. It gives importance and value to time. Time would become meaningless if there were too much of it.
Life expectancy is a statistical phenomenon. You could still be hit by the proverbial bus tomorrow.
A successful person isn't necessarily better than her less successful peers at solving problems; her pattern-recognition facilities have just learned what problems are worth solving.
A lot of movies about artificial intelligence envision that AI's will be very intelligent but missing some key emotional qualities of humans and therefore turn out to be very dangerous.
If we look at the life cycle of technologies, we see an early period of over-enthusiasm, then a 'bust' when disillusionment sets in, followed by the real revolution.
My mission at Google is to develop natural language understanding with a team and in collaboration with other researchers at Google.
By the 2030s, the nonbiological portion of our intelligence will predominate.
When you talk to a human in 2035, you'll be talking to someone that's a combination of biological and non-biological intelligence.
Doing real world projects is, I think, the best way to learn and also to engage the world and find out what the world is all about.
Our technology, our machines, is part of our humanity. We created them to extend ourselves, and that is what is unique about human beings.
By 2029, computers will have emotional intelligence and be convincing as people.
No matter what problem you encounter, whether it's a grand challenge for humanity or a personal problem of your own, there's an idea out there that can overcome it. And you can find that idea.
I'm an inventor. I became interested in long-term trends because an invention has to make sense in the world in which it is finished, not the world in which it is started.
What we spend our time on is probably the most important decision we make.
Artificial intelligence will reach human levels by around 2029. Follow that out further to, say, 2045, we will have multiplied the intelligence, the human biological machine intelligence of our civilization a billion-fold.
Our intuition about the future is linear. But the reality of information technology is exponential, and that makes a profound difference. If I take 30 steps linearly, I get to 30. If I take 30 steps exponentially, I get to a billion.
Biology is a software process. Our bodies are made up of trillions of cells, each governed by this process. You and I are walking around with outdated software running in our bodies, which evolved in a very different era.
All different forms of human expression, art, science, are going to become expanded, by expanding our intelligence.
People say we're running out of energy. That's only true if we stick with these old 19th century technologies. We are awash in energy from the sunlight.