Ray Kurzweil Quotes

#1. Human life without death would be something other than human; consciousness of mortality gives rise to our deepest longings and greatest accomplishments. - LEON KASS, CHAIR OF THE PRESIDENTIAL COMMISSION ON BIOETHICS, 2003

Ray Kurzweil

#2. A successful person isn't necessarily better than her less successful peers at solving problems; her pattern-recognition facilities have just learned what problems are worth solving.

Ray Kurzweil

#3. The story of evolution unfolds with increasing levels of abstraction.

Ray Kurzweil

#4. Most long-range forecasts of what is technically feasible in future time periods dramatically underestimate the power of future developments because they are based on what I call the "intuitive linear" view of history rather than the "historical exponential" view.

Ray Kurzweil

#5. Increasing complexity on its own is not, however, the ultimate goal or end-product of these evolutionary processes. Evolution results in better answers, not necessarily more complicated ones. Sometimes a superior solution is a simpler one.

Ray Kurzweil

#6. Sometimes people talk about conflict between humans and machines, and you can see that in a lot of science fiction. But the machines we're creating are not some invasion from Mars. We create these tools to expand our own reach.

Ray Kurzweil

#7. Mobile phones are misnamed. They should be called gateways to human knowledge.

Ray Kurzweil

#8. Everyone takes the limits of his own vision for the limits of the world. - ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER

Ray Kurzweil

#9. Given that self-improving strong AI cannot be recalled, Yudkowsky points out that we need to "get it right the first time," and that its initial design must have "zero nonrecoverable errors."45

Ray Kurzweil

#10. By 2009, computers will disappear. Displays will be written directly onto our retinas by devices in our eyeglasses and contact lenses.

Ray Kurzweil

#11. My mission at Google is to develop natural language understanding with a team and in collaboration with other researchers at Google.

Ray Kurzweil

#12. Von Neumann makes two important observations here: acceleration and singularity. The first idea is that human progress is exponential (that is, it expands by repeatedly multiplying by a constant) rather than linear (that is, expanding by repeatedly adding a constant).

Ray Kurzweil

#13. So what used to fit in a building now fits in your pocket, what fits in your pocket now will fit inside a blood cell in 25 years.

Ray Kurzweil

#14. Even by common wisdom, there seem to be both people and objects in my dream that are outside myself, but clearly they were created in myself and are part of me, they are mental constructs in my own brain.

Ray Kurzweil

#15. (As Einstein said, "Make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler.")

Ray Kurzweil

#16. Most of the complexity of a human neuron is devoted to maintaining its life-support functions, not its information-processing capabilities. Ultimately, we will be able to port our mental processes to a more suitable computational substrate. Then our minds won't have to stay so small.

Ray Kurzweil

#17. No communication technology has ever disappeared, but instead becomes increasingly less important as the technological horizon widens.

Ray Kurzweil

#18. But the big feature of human-level intelligence is not what it does when it works but what it does when it's stuck. - MARVIN MINSKY

Ray Kurzweil

#19. By the end of this decade, computers will disappear as distinct physical objects, with displays built in our eyeglasses, and electronics woven in our clothing, providing full-immersion visual virtual reality.

Ray Kurzweil

#20. The essential thing is to recognize that consciousness is a biological process like digestion, lactation, photosynthesis, or mitosis;

Ray Kurzweil

#21. GEORGE 2048: We like to think of it as one civilization.

Ray Kurzweil

#22. It needs only to be good enough, which in the case of our species meant a level of intelligence sufficient to enable us to outwit the competitors in our ecological niche

Ray Kurzweil

#23. [In] 2029, I think, computers will match and exceed human intelligence in the ways we're now superior, like being funny, where we still have an edge.

Ray Kurzweil

#24. Doing real world projects is, I think, the best way to learn and also to engage the world and find out what the world is all about.

Ray Kurzweil

#25. Biological evolution is too slow for the human species. Over the next few decades, it's going to be left in the dust.

Ray Kurzweil

#26. Our sole responsibility is to produce something smarter than we are; any problems beyond that are not ours to solve ...

Ray Kurzweil

#27. People say we're running out of energy. That's only true if we stick with these old 19th century technologies. We are awash in energy from the sunlight.

Ray Kurzweil

#28. We are a pattern that changes slowly but has stability and continuity, even though the stuff constituting the pattern changes quickly.

Ray Kurzweil

#29. The need to congregate workers in offices will gradually diminish.

Ray Kurzweil

#30. We are beginning to see intimations of this in the implantation of computer devices into the human body.

Ray Kurzweil

#31. Supercomputers will achieve one human brain capacity by 2010, and personal computers will do so by about 2020.

Ray Kurzweil

#32. We come from goldfish, essentially, but that [doesn't] mean we turned around and killed all the goldfish. Maybe [the AIs] will feed us once a week ... . If you had a machine with a 10 to the 18th power IQ over humans, wouldn't you want it to govern, or at least control your economy? - SETH SHOSTAK

Ray Kurzweil

#33. Most major universities now provide extensive courses online, many of which are free. MIT's OpenCourseWare (OCW) initiative has been a leader in this effort. MIT

Ray Kurzweil

#34. Life expectancy is a statistical phenomenon. You could still be hit by the proverbial bus tomorrow.

Ray Kurzweil

#35. It is doubling now every two years. Doubling every two years means multiplying by 1,000 in 20 years. At that rate we'll meet 100 percent of our energy needs in 20 years.

Ray Kurzweil

#36. A lot of movies about artificial intelligence envision that AI's will be very intelligent but missing some key emotional qualities of humans and therefore turn out to be very dangerous.

Ray Kurzweil

#37. When you talk to a human in 2035, you'll be talking to someone that's a combination of biological and non-biological intelligence.

Ray Kurzweil

#38. In the latest brain image studies, we can see real-time movies of individual interneuronal connections actually creating new synapses (connection points between neurons), so we can see our brain create our thoughts and in turn see our thoughts create our brain.

Ray Kurzweil

#39. The past is over; the present is fleeting; we live in the future.

Ray Kurzweil

#40. 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

#41. As order exponentially increases, time exponentially speeds up.

Ray Kurzweil

#42. you create your brain from the input you get.

Ray Kurzweil

#43. Although the Singularity has many faces, its most important implication is this: our technology will match and then vastly exceed the refinement and suppleness of what we regard as the best of human traits.

Ray Kurzweil

#44. Our primate ancestors was the development of a larger cerebral cortex as well as the development of increased volume of gray-matter tissue in certain regions of the brain.32 This change occurred, however, on the very slow timescale of biological evolution and still involves an inherent

Ray Kurzweil

#45. 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

#46. Launching a breakthrough idea is like shooting skeet. People's needs change, so you must aim well ahead of the target to hit it.

Ray Kurzweil

#47. By 2010 computers will disappear. They'll be so small, they'll be embedded in our clothing, in our environment. Images will be written directly to our retina, providing full-immersion virtual reality, augmented real reality. We'll be interacting with virtual personalities.

Ray Kurzweil

#48. Our technology, our machines, is part of our humanity. We created them to extend ourselves, and that is what is unique about human beings.

Ray Kurzweil

#49. Our intuition about the future is linear. But the reality of information technology is exponential, and that makes a profound difference. If I take 30 steps linearly, I get to 30. If I take 30 steps exponentially, I get to a billion.

Ray Kurzweil

#50. The ethical debates are like stones in a stream. The water runs around them. You haven't seen any biological technologies held up for one week by any of these debates.

Ray Kurzweil

#51. electron-beam lithography,

Ray Kurzweil

#52. We appear to be programmed with the idea that there are 'things' outside of our self, and some are conscious, and some are not.

Ray Kurzweil

#53. Find your passion, learn how to add value to it, and commit to a lifetime of learning.

Ray Kurzweil

#54. Intuition is linear; our imaginations are weak. Even the brightest of us only extrapolate from what we know now; for the most part, we're afraid to really stretch.

Ray Kurzweil

#55. Artificial intelligence will reach human levels by around 2029. Follow that out further to, say, 2045, we will have multiplied the intelligence, the human biological machine intelligence of our civilization a billion-fold.

Ray Kurzweil

#56. Intelligence is: (a) the most complex phenomenon in the Universe; or (b) a profoundly simple process. The answer, of course, is (c) both of the above. It's another one of those great dualities that make life interesting.

Ray Kurzweil

#57. Biology is a software process. Our bodies are made up of trillions of cells, each governed by this process. You and I are walking around with outdated software running in our bodies, which evolved in a very different era.

Ray Kurzweil

#58. Contemporary philosopher Max More describes the goal of humanity as a transcendence to be achieved through science and technology steered by human values.

Ray Kurzweil

#59. The purposeful destruction of information is the essence of intelligent work.

Ray Kurzweil

#60. I do have to pick my priorities. Nobody can do everything.

Ray Kurzweil

#61. The telephone is virtual reality in that you can meet with someone as if you are together, at least for the auditory sense.

Ray Kurzweil

#62. All of our schools need to bring 'learn from doing' into the mainstream education, not just afternoon.

Ray Kurzweil

#63. I'm an inventor. I became interested in long-term trends because an invention has to make sense in the world in which it is finished, not the world in which it is started.

Ray Kurzweil

#64. New technologies can be used for destructive purposes. The answer is to develop rapid-response systems for new dangers like a bioterrorist creating a new biological virus.

Ray Kurzweil

#65. We only have to capture 1/10,000th of the solar energy landing on earth to completely satisfy all our energy needs.

Ray Kurzweil

#66. Nature, and the natural human condition, generates tremendous suffering. We have the means to overcome that, and we should deploy it.

Ray Kurzweil

#67. Inflammation in the body) is a very healthy 0.01, and all of my other indexes (for heart disease, diabetes, and other conditions) are at ideal levels.

Ray Kurzweil

#68. Once we have inexpensive energy, we can readily and inexpensively convert the vast amount of dirty and salinated water we have on the planet to usable water.

Ray Kurzweil

#69. The Blue Brain project expects to have a full human-scale simulation of the cerebral cortex by 2018. I think that's a little optimistic, actually, but I do make the case that by 2029 we will have very detailed models and simulations of all the different brain regions.

Ray Kurzweil

#70. The R&D department can't get them to work but because the timing is wrong. Inventing is a lot like surfing: you have to anticipate and catch the wave at just the right moment.

Ray Kurzweil

#71. Death is a great tragedy ... a profound loss ... I don't accept it ... I think people are kidding themselves when they say they are comfortable with death.

Ray Kurzweil

#72. do not think there is any thrill that can go through the human heart like that felt by the inventor as he sees some creation of the brain unfolding to success. - NIKOLA TESLA, 1896, INVENTOR OF ALTERNATING CURRENT

Ray Kurzweil

#73. One cubic inch of nanotube circuitry, once fully developed, would be up to one hundred million times more powerful than the human brain.9

Ray Kurzweil

#74. All different forms of human expression, art, science, are going to become expanded, by expanding our intelligence.

Ray Kurzweil

#75. As you go out to the 2040s, now the bulk of our thinking is out in the cloud. The biological portion of our brain didn't go away but the nonbiological portion will be much more powerful. And it will be uploaded automatically the way we back up everything now that's digital.

Ray Kurzweil

#76. In 1999, I said that in about a decade we would see technologies such as self-driving cars and mobile phones that could answer your questions, and people criticized these predictions as unrealistic.

Ray Kurzweil

#77. If we look at the life cycle of technologies, we see an early period of over-enthusiasm, then a 'bust' when disillusionment sets in, followed by the real revolution.

Ray Kurzweil

#78. Information defines your personality, your memories, your skills.

Ray Kurzweil

#79. Death gives meaning to our lives. It gives importance and value to time. Time would become meaningless if there were too much of it.

Ray Kurzweil

#80. 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

#81. As we gradually learn to harness the optimal computing capacity of matter, our intelligence will spread through the universe at (or exceeding) the speed of light, eventually leading to a sublime, universe wide awakening.

Ray Kurzweil

#82. Yes, well, the subjective experience is the opposite of the objective reality

Ray Kurzweil

#83. Science fiction is the great opportunity to speculate on what could happen. It does give me, as a futurist, scenarios.

Ray Kurzweil

#84. We'll be able to have very intelligent, little robots with computers going inside our bloodstream, keeping us healthy from inside, destroying cancer at the level of one cell.

Ray Kurzweil

#85. Our everyday "commonsense" knowledge as a human being is even greater; "street smarts" actually require substantially more of our neocortex than "book smarts." Including this brings our estimate to well over 100 million patterns, taking into account the redundancy factor of about 100.

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#86. We're democratizing the tools of creativity.

Ray Kurzweil

#87. The lesson of these new insights is that our brain is entirely like any of our physical muscles: Use it or lose it.

Ray Kurzweil

#88. By 2029, computers will have emotional intelligence and be convincing as people.

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#89. I consider myself an inventor, entrepreneur, and author.

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#90. By the 2030s, the nonbiological portion of our intelligence will predominate.

Ray Kurzweil

#91. In mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them. - John von Neumann

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#92. If we could convert 0.03 percent of the sunlight that falls on the earth into energy, we could meet all of our projected needs for 2030.

Ray Kurzweil

#93. If you write a blog post, you've got something to say; you're not just creating words and synonyms. We'd like the computers to actually pick up on that semantic meaning.

Ray Kurzweil

#94. Humans feel deeply the suffering of their friends and allies and easily discount/dismiss the comparable experience of their enemies.

Ray Kurzweil

#95. The evolution of animal behavior does constitute a learning process, but it is learning by the species, not by the individual, and the fruits of this learning process are encoded in DNA.

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#96. I'm working on artificial intelligence. Actually, natural language understanding, which is to get computers to understand the meaning of documents.

Ray Kurzweil

#97. No matter what problem you encounter, whether it's a grand challenge for humanity or a personal problem of your own, there's an idea out there that can overcome it. And you can find that idea.

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#98. It could be simply an accident of fate that our brains are too weak to understand themselves. Think of the lowly giraffe, for instance, whose brain is obviously far below the level required for self-understanding - yet it is remarkably similar to our brain.

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#99. When people have difficulty achieving regular releases of dopamine through these kinds of socially accepted activities, they will often seek a shortcut.

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#100. Does God exist? Well, I would say, not yet

Ray Kurzweil