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.
Ray KurzweilI'm working on artificial intelligence. Actually, natural language understanding, which is to get computers to understand the meaning of documents.
Ray KurzweilWe only have to capture 1/10,000th of the solar energy landing on earth to completely satisfy all our energy needs.
Ray KurzweilWithin a few decades, machine intelligence will surpass human intelligence, leading to The Singularity -- technological change so rapid and profound it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history. The implications include the merger of biological and nonbiological intelligence, immortal software-based humans, and ultra-high levels of intelligence that expand outward in the universe at the speed of light.
Ray KurzweilAlthough I'm not prepared to move up my prediction of a computer passing the Turing test by 2029, the progress that has been achieved in systems like Watson should give anyone substantial confidence that the advent of Turing-level AI is close at hand. If one were to create a version of Watson that was optimized for the Turing test, it would probably come pretty close.
Ray KurzweilMy view is that consciousness, the seat of "personalness," is the ultimate reality, and is also scientifically impenetrable. In other words, there is no scientific test one can postulate that would definitively prove its existence in another entity. We assume that other biological human persons, at least those who are at least acting conscious, are indeed conscious. But this too is an assumption, and this shared human consensus breaks down when we go beyond human experience (e.g., the debate on animal consciousness, and by extension animal rights).
Ray KurzweilTake death for example. A great deal of our effort goes into avoiding it. We make extraordinary efforts to delay it, and often consider its intrusion a tragic event. Yet we'd find it hard to live without it. Death gives meaning to our lives. It gives importance and value to time. Time would become meaningless if there were too much of it.
Ray KurzweilI'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.
Ray KurzweilDoing 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.
Ray KurzweilWhat we found was that rather than being haphazardly arranged or independent pathways, we find that all of the pathways of the brain taken together fit together in a single exceedingly simple structure. They basically look like a cube. They basically run in three perpendicular directions, and in each one of those three directions the pathways are highly parallel to each other and arranged in arrays. So, instead of independent spaghettis, we see that the connectivity of the brain is, in a sense, a single coherent structure.
Ray KurzweilMy mission at Google is to develop natural language understanding with a team and in collaboration with other researchers at Google.
Ray KurzweilEmotional intelligence is what humans are good at and that's not a sideshow. That's the cutting edge of human intelligence.
Ray KurzweilWhen you talk to a human in 2035, you'll be talking to someone that's a combination of biological and non-biological intelligence.
Ray KurzweilA 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.
Ray KurzweilBy 2009, computers will disappear. Displays will be written directly onto our retinas by devices in our eyeglasses and contact lenses.
Ray KurzweilAs 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.
Ray KurzweilThe Singularity denotes an event that will take place in the material world, the inevitable next step in the evolutionary process that started with biological evolution and has extended through human-directed technological evolution. however, it is precisely in the world of matter and energy that we encounter transcendence, a principal connotation of what people refer to as spirituality.
Ray KurzweilWhen I was a student at MIT, we all shared one computer and it took up a whole building. The computer in your cell phone today is a million times cheaper and a thousand times more powerful. What now fits in your pocket 25 years from now will fit into a blood cell and will again be millions of times more cost effective.
Ray KurzweilBy 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.
Ray KurzweilLaunching a breakthrough idea is like shooting skeet. People's needs change, so you must aim well ahead of the target to hit it.
Ray KurzweilIntuition 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.
Ray KurzweilOur technology, our machines, is part of our humanity. We created them to extend ourselves, and that is what is unique about human beings.
Ray KurzweilNature, and the natural human condition, generates tremendous suffering. We have the means to overcome that, and we should deploy it.
Ray KurzweilWe have the means right now to live long enough to live forever. Existing knowledge can be aggressively applied to dramatically slow down aging processes so we can still be in vital health when the more radical life-extending therapies from biotechnology and nanotechnology become available. But most baby boomers won't make it because they are unaware of the accelerating aging process in their bodies and the opportunity to intervene.
Ray KurzweilA 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.
Ray KurzweilThose with engineering skills will build tomorrow's genius computers. But those with the ability to create knowledge of any kind will be the ones who are best able to extract great value from them. The way to create value in the age of genius machines will be to compile and disseminate knowledge that other people will find useful.
Ray KurzweilOur 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.
Ray KurzweilDeath gives meaning to our lives. It gives importance and value to time. Time would become meaningless if there were too much of it.
Ray KurzweilSo 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.
Ray KurzweilHumans feel deeply the suffering of their friends and allies and easily discount/dismiss the comparable experience of their enemies.
Ray KurzweilThe fate of the universe is a decision yet to be made, one which we will intelligently consider when the time is right.
Ray KurzweilSometimes 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.
Ray KurzweilSupercomputers will achieve one human brain capacity by 2010, and personal computers will do so by about 2020.
Ray KurzweilThere is one brain organ that is optimised for understanding and articulating logical processes and that is the outer layer of the brain, called the cerebral cortex. Unlike the rest of the brain, this relatively recent evolutionary development is rather flat, only about 0.32 cm (0.12 in) thick and includes a mere 6 million neurons. This elaborately folded organ provides us with what little competence we do possess for understanding what we do and who we do it.
Ray KurzweilThere are downsides to every technology. Fire kept us warm, but also burned down our villages.
Ray KurzweilScience fiction is the great opportunity to speculate on what could happen. It does give me, as a futurist, scenarios.
Ray Kurzweil