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With the increasingly important role of intelligent machines in all phases of our lives--military, medical, economic and financial, political--it is odd to keep reading articles with titles such as Whatever Happened to Artificial Intelligence? This is a phenomenon that Turing had predicted: that machine intelligence would become so pervasive, so comfortable, and so well integrated into our information-based economy that people would fail even to notice it.
RAY KURZWEIL, The Age of Spiritual Machines
The key issue as to whether or not a non-biological entity deserves rights really comes down to whether or not it's conscious.... Does it have feelings?
RAY KURZWEIL, USA Today, Aug. 19, 2007
The human brain has about 100 billion neurons. With an estimated average of one thousand connections between each neuron and its neighbors, we have about 100 trillion connections, each capable of a simultaneous calculation ... (but) only 200 calculations per second.... With 100 trillion connections, each computing at 200 calculations per second, we get 20 million billion calculations per second. This is a conservatively high estimate.... In 1997, $2,000 of neural computer chips using only modest parallel processing could perform around 2 billion calculations per second.... This capacity will double every twelve months. Thus by the year 2020, it will have doubled about twenty-three times, resulting in a speed of about 20 million billion neural connection calculations per second, which is equal to the human brain.
RAY KURZWEIL, The Age of Spiritual Machines
Although I'm not prepared to move up my prediction of a computer passing the Turing test by 2029, the progress that has been achieved in systems like Watson should give anyone substantial confidence that the advent of Turing-level AI is close at hand. If one were to create a version of Watson that was optimized for the Turing test, it would probably come pretty close.
RAY KURZWEIL, How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed
I envision some years from now that the majority of search queries will be answered without you actually asking. It'll just know this is something that you're going to want to see.
RAY KURZWEIL, interview, Singularity Hub, Jan. 10, 2013
The story of evolution unfolds with increasing levels of abstraction.
RAY KURZWEIL, How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed
By the end of this decade, we will have full-immersion visual-auditory environments, populated by realistic looking virtual humans. By the 2030s, virtual reality will be totally realistic and compelling and we will spend most of our time in virtual environments. By the 2040s, even people of biological origin are likely to have the vast majority of their thinking process taking place in nonbiological substrates. We will all become virtual humans.
RAY KURZWEIL, attributed, The Age of Virtual Reality
Solar panels are coming down dramatically in cost per watt. And as a result of that, the total amount of solar energy is growing, not linearly, but exponentially. It's doubling every 2 years and has been for 20 years. And again, it's a very smooth curve. There's all these arguments, subsidies and political battles and companies going bankrupt, they're raising billions of dollars, but behind all that chaos is this very smooth progression.
RAY KURZWEIL, "Ray Kurzweil: Solar Will Power the World in 16 Years", Big Think
We're merging with these nonbiological technologies. We're already on that path. I mean, this little Android phone I'm carrying on my belt is not yet inside my physical body, but that's an arbitrary distinction. It is part of who I am.
RAY KURZWEIL, "Reinvent Yourself", Playboy, April 19, 2016
We have already to some extent separated the biological function of sex from its communication, sensual and recreational purposes. You can certainly have sex without having babies, and you can even have babies without having sex. In virtual reality we will have even more freedom to experiment.
RAY KURZWEIL, "Reinvent Yourself", Playboy, April 19, 2016
Machines will follow a path that mirrors the evolution of humans. Ultimately, however, self-aware, self-improving machines will evolve beyond humans' ability to control or even understand them.
RAY KURZWEIL, Scientific American, June 2010
When people talk about the future of technology, especially artificial intelligence, they very often have the common dystopian Hollywood-movie model of us versus the machines. My view is that we will use these tools as we've used all other tools--to broaden our reach. And in this case, we'll be extending the most important attribute we have, which is our intelligence.
RAY KURZWEIL, "Reinvent Yourself", Playboy, April 19, 2016
We're starting to reprogram the outdated software of life--the 23,000 little programs we have in our bodies, called genes. We're programming them away from disease and away from aging.
RAY KURZWEIL, "Reinvent Yourself", Playboy, April 19, 2016
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