30 colossal Ray Kurzweil quotes that will make you laugh and think
Ray Kurzweil considers the future to predict trends by opening his mind to paths which have not been travelled yet. Forbes crowned him “the ultimate thinking machine” and he is a co-founder of the Singularity University. Meanwhile, he works at a director of engineering at Google and author. Here are 30 quotes of Ray Kurzweil to make you think and laugh.
- 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.
- 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 civilisation a billion-fold.
- 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 You and I are walking around with outdated software running in our bodies, which evolved in a very different era.
- 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.
- I'm working on artificial intelligence. Actually, natural language understanding, which is to get computers to understand the meaning of documents.
- All different forms of human expression, art, science, are going to become expanded, by expanding our intelligence.
- 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.
- 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.
- Science fiction is the great opportunity to speculate on what could happen. It does give me, as a futurist, scenarios.
- 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.
- Ageing is not one process. It's many different things going on that cause us to age. I have a program that at least slows down each of these different processes.
- What we spend our time on is probably the most important decision we make.
- By the 2030s, the nonbiological portion of our intelligence will predominate.
- I do have to pick my priorities. Nobody can do everything.
- Our technology, our machines, is part of our humanity. We created them to extend ourselves, and that is what is unique about human beings.
- Our technology, our machines, is part of our humanity. We created them to extend ourselves, and that is what is unique about human beings.
- When you talk to a human in 2035, you'll be talking to someone that's a combination of biological and non-biological intelligence.
- 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.
- 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.
- By 2029, computers will have emotional intelligence and be convincing as people.
- My mission at Google is to develop natural language understanding with a team and in collaboration with other researchers at Google.
- I think we are evolving rapidly into one world culture. It's certainly one world economy. With billions of people online, I think we'll appreciate the wisdom in many different traditions as we learn more about them. People were very isolated and didn't know anything about other religions 100 years ago.
- 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.
- Death gives meaning to our lives. It gives importance and value to time. Time would become meaningless if there were too much of it.
- Information defines your personality, your memories, your skills.
- As order exponentially increases, time exponentially speeds up.
- Supercomputers will achieve one human brain capacity by 2010, and personal computers will do so by about 2020.
- The telephone is
virtual reality in that you can meet with someone as if you are together, at least for the auditory sense. - 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.
- 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.
Conclusion
Ray Kurzweil seems to understand really well what the concept of time means which comes in handy if you make your money as a futurist and director of an engineer at Google. You have not done your job when you put two years of research into something that people feel is outdated once it comes out (even though it is, but now we are getting to market cycles and marketing… let’s keep that for another time). The concept of time and that I only have a limited amount of it and therefore prioritising becomes is something I am starting to take seriously just now, aged 30. If you are reading this in your twenties I would encourage you to make more out of your time than I did, even though the pizza eating and beer drinking I did was very enjoyable. On this blog, you will find some tips and tricks on how to diet, think and execute in the gym and at work to run faster, lift stronger and think deeper.
