Financial Times | Breakfast with the Financial Times: Ray Kurzweil

Over a specially prepared breakfast, the inventor + futurist details his plans to live forever.
January 1, 2018

Financial Times — April 10, 2015 | Caroline Daniel

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publication: the Financial Times
section: Life + Arts
column: Lunch with the Financial Times
about the column: A weekly interview w. leading cultural + business figures.

story title:
Breakfast w. the Financial Times: Ray Kurzweil
story deck: Over a specially prepared breakfast, the inventor + futurist details his plans to live forever.
story: web link

Ray Kurzweil’s work at Google aims at moving search beyond keywords towards more complex ideas.

He offers this example. “I met this girl at a party last night. We only spoke a few words but I felt an instant bond with her. Is that realistic? What does the psychology literature say about this?

“Ultimately, and this is the long term project, it would be like asking a person who has reviewed the relevant literature and would intelligently give you the right citations and summarize them for you.”

Kurzweil is frustrated at how artificial intelligence is misrepresented in movies as a dangerous force divorced from humans, “an alien invasion of intelligent machines.” He sees AI as a tool that will enable billions of us “to enhance our capacity. They’ll go from being in our pockets to inside our bodies and brains.”

On virtual reality, Kurzweil said, “We could be having this brunch on a Mediterranean beach, and you’d feel the warm air in yoru face. It would be very realistic. That’s going to happen over the next couple of decades.” […]


image | left: art by James Ferguson