Ray Kurzweil reviews Rodney Brooks’ latest book on robotics for Wired Magazine. Brooks challenges Jaron Lanier’s claim that AI is “based on an intellectual mistake” and Kurzweil’s statements on reverse-engineering the brain and the date of the “Singularity.” Kurzweil responds.… read more
The current recession reflects failure to develop realistic models of the pace at which new information-based technologies emerge and the overall acceleration of the flow of information. But in the longer-range view, recessions and recoveries reflect a relatively minor variability compared to the far more important trend of the underlying exponential growth of the economy.… read more
In its first year of operation, KurzweilAI.net has chronicled the notable news stories on accelerating intelligence. We’ve selected here the most important of those stories to document the key breakthroughs for 2001 in continued exponential growth of computation, communication, and other information-based technologies; comparable acceleration in efforts to reverse-engineer the human brain and other sources of the templates of intelligence; similar growth in our understanding of the information basis of biological processes; and the contributions of nanotechnology.… read more
Since we constantly changing, are we just patterns? What if someone copies that pattern? Am I the original and/or the copy? Ray Kurzweil responds to Edge publisher/editor John Brockman’s request to futurists to pose “hard-edge” questions that “render visible the deeper meanings of our lives, redefine who and what we are.”… read more
Machine consciousness is the subject of this dialog with Darwin Magazine.… read more
The science fiction visionary behind HAL offers his predictions of salient events to come in this century.… read more
Ray Kurzweil addresses questions presented at Are We Becoming an Endangered Species? Technology and Ethics in the 21st Century, a conference on technology and ethics sponsored by Washington National Cathedral. Other panelists are Anne Foerst, Bill Joy and Bill Mckibben.… read more
The Second Annual American Composers Orchestra Award for the Advancement of New Music in America was presented on November 13 to Ray Kurzweil by American Composers Orchestra. Kurzweil reflects on creativity and the jump from the blackboard to changing peoples’ lives.… read more
Once we learn how to map the brain and make computers fast enough to simulate it, all bets are off.… read more
Ray Kurzweil and Howard Gardner discuss education, technology, pattern recognition and collecting electronic parts on Canal Street.… read more
In preparation for the New York Times article, “In the Next Chapter, Is Technology an Ally?,” Ray Kurzweil engaged in a conversation with computer scientist Peter Neumann, science fiction author Bruce Sterling, law professor Lawrence Lessig, retired engineer Severo Ornstein, and cryptographer Whitfield Diffie, addressing questions of how technology and innovation will be shaped by the tragic events of September 11, 2001.… read more
In this article written for PC Magazine, Ray Kurzweil explores how advancing technologies will impact our personal lives.… read more
Stephen Hawking recently told the German magazine Focus that computers were evolving so rapidly that they would eventually outstrip the intelligence of humans. Professor Hawking went on to express the concern that eventually, computers with artificial intelligence could come to dominate the world. Ray Kurzweil replies.… read more