Quantum Machine Learning Singularity from Google, Kurzweil and Dwave?

Ray Kurzweil, one of the leading scientists in the field of artificial intelligence, joined Google late last year. Kurzweil is perhaps the most prominent proponent of “hard AI,” which argues that it is possible to create consciousness in an artificial being. Add to this Google’s revelation that it is using techniques of deep learning to produce an… read more

I first heard about Singularity University from a friend who was a student in the very first SU cohort. He told me that being at SU changed his outlook on life. I was not surprised as I was a big fan of Ray Kurzweil’s (co-founder of SU) books and they had a similar effect on my life.

It is because of Kurzweil’s writing on intelligent machines… read more

When I do mentoring and early stage investing, one obvious thing I look for is that people incorporate a model of the future into their business plans. All too often we get plans which have this common assumption that the future’s going to be just like today.

Yes, we’ve had a lot of change up until now, but then people’s imagination leaves them and they assume… read more

“Hi Steve. This is Ray Kurzweil. I want to tell you about our future.”

With an opening like that, you know that the latest music video ‘Singularity’ from electro house musician Steve Aoki is going to deliver a thrill ride. Kicking off with the ominous Kurzweil describing the coming rise of artificial intelligence, the video goes on to depict the forced cybernetic transformation of Aoki at… read more

Kurzweil, inventor of the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, founder of Singularity University and the “rightful heir to Thomas Edison,” according to Forbes, compared medical advances to other technological advances, arguing that biology now is subject to the same law of accelerating returns.

Kurzweil predicted that scientists will soon be able to “reprogram” the information processes that form the foundations of biology. “The brain is… read more

Google has a one-up on my iPhone. It reads my emails before I do and knows what I am thinking by analyzing what I search for on the Internet and which Web sites I visit. It “knows” what other people think about me.

If my friend and noted futurist Ray Kurzweil succeeds in his mission at Google, it will also understand my wants and needs. It… read more

Serial entrepreneur Steve Blank, X-Prize Foundation’s Dr. Peter H. Diamandis, Google’s Ray Kurzweil and Cisco’s Padmasree Warrior to be honored. SVForum, the leading non-profit organization for developers, technologists and entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, today announced its 16th annual Visionary Award recipients:

• Steve Blank, Silicon Valley serial entrepreneur, author and academician
• Dr. Peter H. Diamandis, Chairman and CEO, X-Prize Foundation
• Ray Kurzweil, Director

… read more

Four Silicon Valley luminaries are joining SVForum’s version of the region’s tech hall of fame: Google engineering chief and futurist Ray Kurzweil, Cisco Systems Chief Technology Officer Padmasree Warrior, XPrize founder Peter Diamandis and Lean Startups advocate Steve Blank.

The annual invitation-only SVForum Visionaries gala reception has honored a Who’s Who of tech and venture investment since 1998, including Bill Gates, Elon Musk,Marc Andreessen, John Doerr and Jerry Yang.

SVForum Executive Director Chris Gill and Chairperson Debra Magid of… read more

Most recently, he has been appointed director of engineering at Google, a position that enables him to manage new projects involving machine learning and natural language integration and understanding. Directly applicable to the public face of Google, Kurzweil will become a pivotal factor in creating an even more rigorous search engine that was capable of analysing and interpreting semantic content used in digital language.

He could… read more

As these videos suggest, scientists are taking tiny, incremental steps toward melding humans and machine all the time.

Ray Kurzweil, the futurist and now Google’s director of engineering, argued in The Singularity Is Near, a 2005 book, that technology is advancing exponentially and that “human life will be irreversibly transformed” to the point that there will be no difference between “human and machine or between physical… read more