Ray Kurzweil is widely acknowledged as a true technology guru. As Wikipedia notes: “Kurzweil was the principal inventor of the first CCD flatbed scanner, the first omni-font optical character recognition, the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, the first commercial text-to-speech synthesizer, the first music synthesizer Kurzweil K250 capable of recreating the grand piano and other orchestral instruments, and the first commercially marketed large-vocabulary speech recognition.”

Recently, the Wall Street Journal‘s Editor-in-Chief Gerard Baker sat down with Kurzweil for an in-depth interview: “Machines will soon be as smart as we are, says Ray Kurzweil. But not to worry. The engineering director of Google Inc. and founder and CEO of Kurzweil Technologies Inc. argues that as computers get smaller and more powerful, we won’t face a sci-fi nightmare. Instead, these machines will help us expand our capabilities.”

For print excerpts from the interview, click here.

Click the image for a video clip of the interview.

 

5 Replies to “An Interview with Futurist Guru Ray Kurzweil”

  1. I agree that we won’t reach a sci fi nightmare but instead these machines will help us expand our capabilities. these machines are what help us create new ones. with these machines we have gained more knowledge than we had a decade ago. I remember when I was in the first grade, we had one computer in our house and it had the dial tone to connect to the internet. over these years we have gained more knowledge through research to invent these new machines to help us expand.

  2. I have always felt that the whole idea of machines taking over was really popularized by the Skynet theme in Terminator.

    I think improvements in technology have always helped us progress in various fields and improve quality of life. Very soon, improvements in bioengineering and the field of medicine in general will help cure a lot of degenerative diseases. In addition to this, the next big step in technology will hopefully see increased global communications and transport.

  3. I always had an idea that machines will someday in the future takeover and expand drastically. As technology improves, we improve as well. The new technology helps us to create newer technology. I think that the new technology is helping people improve in the real world and also help the more needy people such as blind people as stated. Having updated technology that will help them communicate in the world makes there life easier as well as the people who teach them.
    New technology helps us better to the world with updates. For example, the advancement of technology has upgraded so much that when I was younger I had Netzero and could not use the internet and phone at one time. Today we can use the internet, phone, and even the internet on our phones.
    Technology is the new face of the world !

  4. I wish to say that this post is awesome, great written and come with almost all important info. I would like to peer more posts like this .

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.