Raymond Kurzweil, an American author, inventor, and a director of engineering at Google calls the moment “singularity,” when artificial intelligence will overtake human thinking.

He believes that the Turing test will be passed in 2029. Robots, when accurately programmed, don’t make mistakes. They don’t complain about working conditions — don’t demand union representation, they don’t take sick leave or demand benefits. [...]

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 Each significant form of information is superseded by another in a series of stepping stones, exposing a universal will at work within technology towards extropy.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

Dr. Ray Kurzweil, a Science Talent Search 1965 alumnus, spoke to the 40 finalists of the Intel STS 2014 and other invited guests at the annual Alumni Dinner on March 7, 2014.

Today, Dr. Kurzweil serves as the Director of Engineering for Google, heading up a team developing machine intelligence and natural language understanding.

He is also a successful author and inventor, and… read more

36. Ray Kurzweil is considered to be one of the leading minds in the artificial intelligence field. Since joining Google, Kurzweil has laid out some ambitious plans for search, in which Google would actually be conscious and know who you are.

Last year, Kurzweil also shared his plans for cheating death and how little robots, called nanobots, can help fight disease. [...]

In an era that feels starved for leadership, we’ve found men and women who will inspire you — some famous, others little known, all of them energizing their followers and making the world better.

43. Peter Diamandis | Age 52, CEO, X Prize Foundation

Apart from the 14 other companies he has founded, Diamandis presides over X Prize Foundation, which hosts $10 million competitions to… read more

Ray Kurzweil predicts that the AI dating depicted in the Oscar-nominated film Her might be possible by 2029.

Ray Kurzweil, an inventor and Google’s director of engineering makes the claim in a review of Spike Jonze’s much-praised sci-fi romance. In a post on his website, Kurzweil delivered a generally positive verdict on the film, which stars Joaquin Phoenix as a man called Theodore who falls in love with… read more

When Ray Kurzweil published The Age Of Spiritual Machines in 1999, he predicted a new era of thinking machines that will meet and then exceed human intelligence.

Today, it appears we are entering a new industrial revolution. In The Singularity Is Near, Kurzweil illustrated the point in a cartoon with some posters on the wall showing what computers can’t do and others on the floor representing limits that… read more

If Spike Jonze‘s Her left you yearning for a virtual Scarlett Johansson of your very own, we have some good news. According to futurist Ray Kurzweil, who spends a lot of time pondering such things, a Samantha-like AI could be available as early as 2029.

Other aspects of the movie, like the foul-mouthed video game character, could be available even sooner, around 2020. [...]

You’d be hard-pressed to find someone more qualified to discuss the technology that permeates through the movie than the renowned futurist Ray Kurzweil.

In a blog post, the author, who joined Google in 2012, discusses the feasibility of Her‘s AI, concluding that companions with a similar capacity to Samantha could become reality within 15 years. [...]