Singularity Hub — August 19, 2010 | Aaron Saenz
10 years? 20 years? 100 years? Never? There are about as many predictions for when artificial intelligence will match human intellect as there are AI researchers.
More, really, when you figure in all the people who simply read about AI research and decide to make their own decisions (I’m in that boat myself). Processing power has been increasing exponentially for years, and few doubt that it… read more
Time — April 21, 2011
Time has announced its 2011 Readers’ Choice 100 Poll. It asks readers to “cast your votes for the leaders, artists, innovators, icons and heroes that you think are the most influential people in the world.” The Top 100 results are included in the annual “Time 100” special edition. Ray Kurzweil’s final rank is #30, just below Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. You can see the complete final poll results here.
PC Magazine — March 12, 2012 | Dan Costa
As you would expect, this kind of optimism draws a lot of fire from more pessimistic, perhaps more realistic, critics. On Monday at SXSW, Kurzweil took on the skeptics with an array of historical charts, future forecasts, and the simple belief that “you can start world-changing revolution with just the power of your ideas and everyday tools.”
The cornerstone to many of Kurzweil’s predictions is the… read more
Publishers Weekly — October 22, 2012
Bringing together contemporary theories and research in cognitive neuroscience and artificial intelligence, Kurzweil (The Singularity Is Near) provides insight into how the human brain functions, while speculating on the possibilities and philosophical implications of creating a nonbiological mind.
Underlying this analysis is the Pattern Recognition Theory of Mind, a process in the neocortex, the seat of higher brain functions such as perception, memory, and language —… read more
The Register — December 16, 2012 | Simon Sharwood
Futurist, artificial intelligence expert and inventor Ray Kurzweil will join Google as its director of engineering. Kurzweil’s profile is such that it was he — and not his new employer — who announced the new gig, and on his own website to boot.
Kurzweil also says he feels Google is his kind of place to work, and not just for the free food. Just what Kurzweil’s arrival… read more
San Francisco Sentinel — March 28, 2013
“The restless genius” (Wall Street Journal) Ray Kurzweil comes to Cal Performances’ Wheeler Auditorium on Saturday, April 13 at 8:00 p.m. He has been nicknamed the “rightful heir to Thomas Edison” by Forbes for making cutting-edge technological advances including the first flatbed scanner, the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, and the first music synthesizer capable of recreating the grand piano.
In addition to his… read more
Cambridge Healthtech Institute — May 13, 2013 | Kevin Davies, PhD
Rather than reflect on the ups and downs of the past 11 years, let me simply lay out some of my most vivid memories from my perch at Bio-IT World:
Best Keynote: Lander in 2002? Ray Kurzweil? Stephen Wolfram? Venter, Collins, Berners-Lee? I can’t pick. But I would give special commendation to BioTeam cofounder Chris Dagdigian’s annual unofficial fourth keynote, “Trends from the Trenches.” [...]
Silicon Valley Business Journal — January 24, 2013 | Cromwell Schubarth
Jeff Epstein, the former chief financial officer at Oracle, and Ethan Kurzweil, son of futurist and Google director of engineering Ray Kurzweil, are among six new partners named at Bessemer Venture Partners.
Kurzweil has been with Bessemer’s Menlo Park office for four years and focuses on investments in cloud computing, consumer web and mobile technologies and drives the firm’s roadmap on developer platforms. [...]
Mobiledia — August 26, 2013 | Margaret Rock
By all accounts, Ray Kurzweil is a genius, a “restless genius,” according to The Wall Street Journal. Forbes called him the “ultimate thinking machine,” while PBS picked him as one of 16 “Revolutionaries Who Made America” — a list that included legends like Thomas Edison and Henry Ford.
You know those names every time you flick on a light or jump into a car, but despite… read more
Dish Magazine — December 2013 | Fred Topel
Though Jonze did some research on some of the science of Her, he ultimately went with his heart. “Obviously, I love science fiction too,” he explained.
“I definitely was interested in things that Ray Kurzweil — American author, inventor, futurist, and a director of engineering at Google — writes about, and things like that.
“I made a lot of notes about artificial intelligence and watched a lot… read more