Humanity has a problem. It’s linear. Technology, on the other hand, is exponential. Take it from Ray Kurzweil, the bestselling author, futurist, and Google chief engineer.

The tale of the inventor of chess and his patron, the Emperor of China: In response to the emperor’s offer of a reward for his new beloved game, the inventor asked for a single grain of rice on the first square, two on… read more

Google engineering director Ray Kurzweil is one of the most accomplished men of our time. Google is trying to bring about technological singularity, creating a true AI smart enough to improve its own source code.

Machines can progress to far-future, science fiction levels of intelligence within our lifetimes. Kurzweil predicts this will happen by 2040.

That’s something Kurzweil’s group is already working on, and if you have… read more

Now Google bosses have turned their sights on a much more complex subject – the human body. The tech giant has recently embarked on a series of high profile hires for its new venture Calico, a company which wants to extend human life by up to 100 years.

It comes after the company hired Ray Kurzweil as engineering director, the 65-year-old credited with inventing speech recognition technology who… read more

Google introduced Calico to the world with the bold ambition of curing death. CEO Larry Page, Google Ventures head honcho Bill Maris, and futurist Ray Kurzweil, who Google hired as its director of engineering, have all expressed a deep interest in radical life extension and the Singularity.

Larry Page had told Time, “One of the things I thought was amazing is that if you solve cancer, you’d add… read more

Ray Kurzweil will have implications far beyond the fun projects at Google. His machine learning knowhow could impact networks, data centers and algorithms too.

Google has brought on futurist and artificial intelligence expert Ray Kurzweil as director of engineering, and there could be some real returns on the company’s high-profile hire.In a statement, Kurzweil confirmed that he’d be joining Google. He noted that his interest in… read more

Shares of Google closed at $845.72 in New York today, up almost 2 percent. It’s been a pretty big week for the company. Google Now, a voice-activated search assistant, launched on iPhone this week. And the wearable computer Google Glass has been getting a lot of press.

Pretty much everything Google’s doing is changing the way we think about and get our information. What’s all that… read more

The setting: An intimate gathering at Singularity University’s NASA campus in Silicon Valley. This is the place founded by Dr. Peter Diamandis and Dr. Ray Kurzweil, pursuing the idea of a new university that could “leverage the power of exponential technologies to solve humanity’s grand challenges.” Speaking in an interview is artificial intelligence expert and Google’s new Director of Engineering, Ray Kurzweil.

Now you know this is worth… read more

The words of this inventor and futurist have struck a cord, explaining how the iRobot Audi fits in our future.

Kurzweil believes that by 2022, a $1,000 computer will be able to “emulate all the computation of the brain.”

2022 is when most car companies developing autonomous or semi-autonomous cars will be ready to launch. Kurzweil believes they help reduce the number of people killed in accidents, and… read more

There are around 377 million results on Google for the query “Can I live forever?” Ask that question to company’s top engineer, though, and you’re likely to hear an answer that’s much more concise.

Simply put, Google’s Ray Kurzweil says immortality is only a few years away. Digital immortality, at least. Kurzweil, 64, was only brought on to Google late last year, but that hasn’t stopped… read more

According to Ray Kurzweil, Director of Engineering at Google, by 2030 we’ll have “billions of blood cell sized computers in our bloodstream, keeping us healthy, augmenting our immune system, going into the brain and putting it onto the cloud.”

He explains that humanity will use technology to attain immortality over the next 30 years.

While it sounds cool to upload your brain to the cloud, it may be… read more