I do have to pick my priorities. Nobody can do everything.

By the time of the Singularity, there won't be a distinction between humans and technology. This is not because humans will have become what we think of as machines today, but rather machines will have progressed to be like humans and beyond. Technology will be the metaphorical opposable thumb that enables our next step in evolution.

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.

My mission at Google is to develop natural language understanding with a team and in collaboration with other researchers at Google.

Launching a breakthrough idea is like shooting skeet. People's needs change, so you must aim well ahead of the target to hit it.

Although 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.

Nature, and the natural human condition, generates tremendous suffering. We have the means to overcome that, and we should deploy it.