Think we’ll have artifical intelligence by 2029? Ray Kurzweil does. He is simultaneously idolized and infamous for saying so. And now he will put his ideas to the test. On Friday, Kurzweil announced he’s accepted a position with technology giant Google as Director of Engineering. Like all things exponential, the new relationship is on the fast track—he starts Monday.

Singularity Hub reached out to Kurzweil to… read more

A chance meeting turns into a chance of a lifetime: Jennifer Hsu and Brent Dearth tried in vain to get friends to accompany them to a lecture by inventor Ray Kurzweil at Sixth and I Synagogue. So each went alone. Two years later, they were married.

After hearing that inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil would be appearing at Sixth and I Synagogue in conjunction with a documentary… read more

It’s one of Her’s great strengths that it’s neither dystopian nor utopian in its vision of the coming singularity (the writer Ray Kurzweil’s term for an imagined future in which technology will have achieved consciousness).

In the first hour especially, there are many well-chosen details that satirize our growing dependence on gadgets to enhance moment-to-moment lived experience. [...]

Kurzweil describes six epochs in the history of information. Each significant form of information is superseded by another in a series of stepping stones, exposing a universal will at work within technology towards extropy.

The first epoch is physics and chemistry, and is succeeded by biology, brains, technology, the merger of technology and human intelligence and finally the epoch in which the universe “wakes up.” The final epoch… read more

Futurist Ray Kurzweil says our devices will soon process emotions. Super smart futurists like Kurzweil — of  singularity, computer-aided immortality, and Google engineering fame — think that we could soon interact with our devices on an emotional level.

Kurzweil said last week at the Exponential Finance conference. I love Kurzweil and his techno-optimism, but I worry. There’s a crazy paradox in the quest for artificial emotional intelligence (AEI) that Kurzweil and… read more

Kurzweil predicted a future in which human brains will be teeming with robots that can augment intelligence and transport people into virtual reality realms or enable people to back up their own childhood memories.