How to Create a Mind | Ray Kurzweil | Talks at Google

God damn it... Not this again. =================MY PREVIOUS POSTS================= I don't think that's a very fair assessment of Kurzweil's role in technology. He was on the ground, getting his hands dirty with the first commercial applications of AI. He made quite a bit of money selling his various companies and technologies, and was awarded the presidential Medal of Technology from Clinton. As I was growing up, there was a series of "Oh wow!" moments I had, associated with computers and the seemingly sci-fi things they were now capable of. "Oh wow, computers can read printed documents and recognize the characters!" "Oh wow, computers can read written text aloud!" "Oh wow, computers can recognize speech!" "Oh wow, computer synthesizers can sound just like pianos now!" I didn't realize until much later that Kurzweil was heavily involved with all of those breakthroughs. =========================================== In addition, I'd rank Minsky, Larry Page, Bill Gates, Dean Kamen, Peter, Norvig, Rafael Reif, Tomaso Poggio, Dileep George, and Kurzweil's other supporters as much more qualified to judge the merits of his ideas, than Kurzweil's detractors like Hofstadter, Kevin Kelly, Mitch Kapor, and Gary Marcus. It seems that Hofstadter is the only one of that group who is really qualified to render a verdict. [link] ===================================== Here's Peter Norvig himself on Kurzweil: “Ray’s contributions to science and technology, through research in character and speec

Hey Paul, thanks for responding. Just in case you’re interested, this Time cover story on him from a couple of years back actually does a reasonably good job on the broad strokes: [link] as does this NY Times one: [link] - there's also this intro by Peter Norvig to a Google Talks event with Ray from a month ago: [this video] The basic idea is that exponential growth in tech will result in strong AI, advanced nanotech, biotech, and neural interfaces that will lead to a near utopian civilization (if things go smoothly) in less than forty years. As outlandish as it seems, he actually makes a fairly convincing, well-researched case, and has had a pretty impressive career as an inventor and tech prognosticator. Needless to say, he’s a very polarizing figure.