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Ray Kurzweil      

Chairman of Kurzweil Technologies, Inventor & Futurist; Author of "How to Create a Mind"

Ray Kurzweil is an inventor, computer scientist, and author known for his profound contributions to various technological fields. His innovative work within optical character recognition (OCR), text-to-speech synthesis, and speech recognition technology has revolutionized these areas. Notably, Kurzweil founded Kurzweil Computer Products, Inc. in 1974 and developed the first omni-font optical character recognition system. His creation, the Kurzweil Reading Machine, provided a solution for visually impaired individuals to understand written text. Additionally, he introduced the "Kurzweil-National Federation of the Blind Reader" in 2005, further advocating for technological advancements to aid people with disabilities.

Aside from his technological contributions, Kurzweil is also a prolific author, with his books delving into topics such as health technology, artificial intelligence (AI), and futurism. His first book, "The Age of Intelligent Machines," was honored as the Most Outstanding Computer Science Book of 1990 by the Association of American Publishers. In his work, Kurzweil has also proposed significant concepts, such as "The Law of Accelerating Returns," which advocates for the idea of a technological singularity. His role as a public advocate for the futurist and transhumanist movements has seen him give numerous public talks on life-extension technologies and the future of nanotechnology, robotics, and biotechnology.

Kurzweil's achievements have been recognized with numerous awards and honors. Most notably, he received the 1999 National Medal of Technology and Innovation from then-President Bill Clinton. In 2001, he was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering and was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame the following year. Kurzweil's expertise and insightful perspectives have led to his inclusion in the Public Broadcasting Service's list of 16 "revolutionaries who made America" and Inc. magazine's ranking him No. 8 among the "most fascinating" entrepreneurs in the United States.

Speech Topics

The Future of Intelligence, Artificial and Natural

At the onset of the 21st century, it will be an era in which the very nature of what it means to be human will be both enriched and challenged, as our species breaks the shackles of its genetic legacy, and achieves inconceivable heights of intelligence, material progress, and longevity. The paradigm shift rate is now doubling every decade, so the twenty-first century will see 20,000 years of progress at today’s rate. Computation, communication, biological technologies (for example, DNA sequencing), brain scanning, knowledge of the human brain, and human knowledge in general are all accelerating at an even faster pace, generally doubling price-performance, capacity, and bandwidth every year. Three-dimensional molecular computing will provide the hardware for human-level "strong" AI well before 2030. The more important software insights will be gained in part from the reverse-engineering of the human brain, a process well under way. While the social and philosophical ramifications of these changes will be profound, and the threats they pose considerable, we will ultimately merge with our machines, live indefinitely, and be a billion times more intelligent...all within the next three to four decades.

The Acceleration of Technology in the 21st Century: the Impact on Healthcare and Medicine

We are now at a pivotal time in health technologies. With the collection of the genome in 2003 and the advent of techniques such as RNA interference that can actually turn off the genes that promote disease and aging, medicine has transformed itself into an information technology. As such, medicine is now subject to the “law of accelerating returns,” meaning that these technologies will be a thousand times more powerful than today in ten years, and a million times more powerful in 20 years. Up until recently, health interventions were hit or miss. We'd find something that seemed to work with only crude models of how they worked. Drug development was called "drug discovery," basically finding things that worked rather than designing them. Today it is within our grasp to slow the aging process and take full advantage of advances in bio- and nanotechnology that have already begun and will be occurring at an accelerating pace in the years ahead. Ultimately, we will merge with our machines, vastly extending human health and longevity, and greatly increasing our intelligence.

Science, Technology, and Invention: Strategies to Create the Future

The democratization of innovation is a turbulent process with rapid creation, violent destruction, many winners and many losers. Despite the apparent chaos, we can discern predictable patterns. The pace of innovation itself is doubling every decade. The overall price-performance and capacity of every form of information technology grows exponentially, generally doubling in a year or less. As information technology achieves each new level of price-performance and capacity, new applications become feasible and existing business models lose their viability. Another implication is that the tools of disruptive change have been democratized. A couple of students created Google on their thousand dollar laptops. A few years later, a couple of undergraduates created Facebook with tools that everyone has. The rate of change is now so rapid that even three to five year business plans need to consider that every level of an industry will undergo major changes during that period. It’s not just the devices we carry around that are influenced by these exponential changes. Health and medicine is now an information technology with the collection of the human genome, the means of changing genes in a mature individual, and the ability to design interventions on computers and to test them on biological simulators. Even energy will be transformed as we apply nanotechnology to the design of solar panels and energy storage devices. The means to change the world are in everyone’s hands.

The Acceleration of Technology in the 21st Century: the Impact on Business, the Economy, and Society

At the onset of the 21st century, it will be an era in which the very nature of what it means to be human will be both enriched and challenged, as our species breaks the shackles of its genetic legacy, and achieves inconceivable heights of intelligence, material progress, and longevity. The paradigm shift rate is now doubling every decade, so the twenty-first century will see 20,000 years of progress at today’s rate. Computation, communication, biological technologies (for example, DNA sequencing), brain scanning, knowledge of the human brain, and human knowledge in general are all accelerating at an even faster pace, generally doubling price-performance, capacity, and bandwidth every year. Three-dimensional molecular computing will provide the hardware for human-level "strong" AI well before 2030. The more important software insights will be gained in part from the reverse-engineering of the human brain, a process well under way. While the social and philosophical ramifications of these changes will be profound, and the threats they pose considerable, celebrated futurist Ray Kurzweil presents an inspiring vision of our ultimate destiny in which we will merge with our machines, can live forever, and are a billion times more intelligent...all within the next three to four decades.

News

Ray Kurzweil is building a chatbot for Google - The Verge
Inventor Ray Kurzweil made his name as a pioneer in technology that ... Ray Kurzweil is building a chatbot for Google ... by Ben Popper May 27, 2016, 5:13p.
Google's chief futurist Ray Kurzweil thinks we could start living...
In an interview with Playboy, Ray Kurzweil Google's chief futurist laid out his vision of the future, and why our species is ... Apr. 20, 2016, 1:39 PM; 90,363; 47.
Inventor Ray Kurzweil believes we'll be able to extend our lives ...
Inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil thinks that technology will eventually help us reach ... Ray Kurzweil as he appeared on PBS' "News Hour" on March 24, 2016.

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