The futurist Ray Kurzweil is known for his unwavering belief in human progress. In the interview he talks about his latest book, on machines that learn as children, and the hope of eternal life.

Q: Mr. Kurzweil, one of your main theses is that technological progress accelerates continuously. If we are now, for example, but smartphones, then the operating system of these devices is based on Unix, a… read more

Another day, another step towards that elusive fountain of youth thanks, this time, to a new study that claims scientists have effectively reversed the effects of aging in neurons. Just last week, a study out of Italy revealed that neurons, specifically mouse neurons, could live much longer than usual when transplanted into a longer-living organism.

Or, as we put it here at Motherboard, that “Brain Cells May Live Longer When… read more

By the time you read these words, the changes inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil says are coming, may already have halfway happened.

And by April 13, when the newly appointed director of engineering at online giant Google comes to Cal Performances’ Wheeler Auditorium for his “Strictly Speaking” lecture, he’s likely to be light speed ahead of himself.

The Wall Street Journal has called him “the restless genius” and… read more

Kurzweil’s tasks from Google will be the development of natural language processing and machine learning at the Mountain View headquarters, said the author, entrepreneur and art-philosopher called one of the “leading inventors of our time.” A Google spokesman said that Kurzweil solutions will be “incredibly valuable” for Google projects. [...]

When IBM’s Deep Blue defeated humanity’s greatest chess player Gary Kasparov in 1997 it marked a major turning point in the progress of artificial intelligence (AI). A still more impressive turning point in AI was achieved in 2011 when another creation of IBM named Watson defeated Jeopardy! phenoms Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter at their own game.

As time marches on and technology advances we can easily envision… read more

Google’s rush to Google Glass makes perfect sense, if you consider that founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin are 40, and 39 years old, respectively. With every day they have more and more in common with 60 year-olds than with 20 year-olds. Google Glass is an exercise in future-comforting their old age.

And so is the hiring of Ray Kurzweil, it’s to ensure that Google’s founders get a front… read more

Staff working at Google who think that the new Director of Engineering looks slightly familiar may not be too far off the mark, after the internet search giant announced the hiring of Ray Kurzweil for the position.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the acclaimed futurist and author of The Singularity Is Near, has been brought in to the company to work on a number of engineering research… read more

Futurist, inventor, author: In 1978, Xerox became interested in Kurzweil Computer Products and made an investment in my company. In 1979 they expressed interest in acquiring it. They were interested in the scanning and character-recognition technology. Xerox was in the printer business, and they had a lot of machines: copiers, printers that took computerized information and put it out onto paper.

We had a technology that could… read more