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Archive for the ‘Ray Kurzweil’ category: Page 25

Feb 14, 2016

William White, the banker who predicted 2008 crisis, warns of another crash

Posted by in categories: finance, Ray Kurzweil

Well, Tech has Ray Kurzweil as the industry’s favorite futurist; and Economists have William White as their goto futurist.


As financial markets reeled last week and fears of a fresh recession or even banking crisis sparked panic, White was more than willing to issue yet another prophecy of doom.

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Feb 5, 2016

Strategies for Growing the Transhumanism Movement

Posted by in categories: existential risks, geopolitics, life extension, Ray Kurzweil, transhumanism

An article on transhumanism in the Huff Post:


2016-02-05-1454642218-44797-futurecity.jpg
Future Transhumanist City — Image by Sam Howzit

Transhumanism–the international movement that aims to use science and technology to improve the human being–has been growing quickly in the last few years. Everywhere one looks, there seems to be more and more people embracing radical technology that is already dramatically changing lives. Ideas that seemed science fiction just a decade ago are now here.

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Feb 2, 2016

Why Ray Kurzweil’s Predictions Are Right 86% of the Time

Posted by in categories: computing, internet, law, Ray Kurzweil, singularity

It’s that time of the year again when techno pundits are once again breathlessly telling us all about the technology and innovation trends that will be big in 2013. That’s great, but many of those predictions will be hopelessly wrong by the end of March. That’s why it’s so fascinating that Ray Kurzweil, one of the leading thinkers when it comes to the future of technology, has had such a strong track record in making predictions about technology for nearly two decades. In fact, of the 147 predictions that Kurzweil has made since the 1990’s, fully 115 of them have turned out to be correct, and another 12 have turned out to be “essentially correct” (off by a year or two), giving his predictions a stunning 86% accuracy rate. So how does he do it?

The fact is, Ray has a system and this system is called the Law of Accelerating Returns. In his new book How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed, Kurzweil points out that “every fundamental measure of information technology follows predictable and exponential trajectories.” The most famous of these trajectories, of course, has been the price/performance path of computing power over more than 100 years. Thanks to paradigms such as Moore’s Law, which reduces computing power to a problem of how many transistors you can cram on a chip, anyone can intuitively understand why computers are getting exponentially faster and cheaper over time.

The other famous exponential growth curve in our lifetime is the sheer amount of digital information available on the Internet. Kurzweil typically graphs this as “bits per second transmitted on the Internet.” That means the amount of information on the Internet is doubling approximately every 1.25 years. That’s why “Big Data” is such a buzzword these days — there’s a growing recognition that we’re losing track of all the information we’re putting up on the Internet, from Facebook status updates, to YouTube videos, to funny meme posts on Tumblr. In just a decade, we will have created more content than existed for thousands of years in humanity’s prior experience.

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Feb 2, 2016

Top 6 Ways Technology Will Make You Immortal

Posted by in categories: bioengineering, computing, Elon Musk, geopolitics, life extension, neuroscience, Ray Kurzweil, robotics/AI, sustainability

Becoming immortal is one of mankind’s many quixotic notions that most people will relegate to the world of fantasy and science fiction. However, there is a subset of prominent scientists who believe that immortality is not only attainable, but it is something that will come to fruition in as little as 25 years. This idea is shared by men like Google’s Director of Engineering, Ray Kurzweil; Tesla Motors CEO, Elon Musk; and one of the most interesting presidential candidates outside of Donald Trump and Deez Nuts, Zoltan Istvan. All three men identify as trans-humanist, and for those who don’t know, trans-humanism is the idea that mankind will one day be able to transcend our biological limitations through the use of science and technology; not to mention, the movement has accumulated over 3 million supporters worldwide. So the question remains, with the multitude of prominent intellectuals who believe immortality is a tangible goal, just how will they go about achieving it? Well, the six answers below could possibly hold the key to everlasting life.

Number Six: Uploading Minds to Computers. Futurists believe that at some point in the near future we will be able to copy and scan all of the data that exists in our brains and upload the information into a computer. This will allow us to perpetually exist as incorporeal inhabitants of cyberspace. Of course, the idea of mind uploading is still purely science fiction, but if it ever becomes tangible, progeny could possibly live in a limitless world, that echoes notions expressed in the Matrix; minus the robot despots.

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Jan 30, 2016

Connected Medical Devices Are Sick with Vulnerabilities, According to New Research

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, internet, life extension, nanotechnology, Ray Kurzweil, security, wearables

This is not good especially as we look at those aspirations for more nanobots to connect us to the cloud plus Mr. Kurzweil’s desire to live forever.


Medical device manufacturers are struggling to safeguard their newly connected designs from current and emerging security threats.

Natick, MA (PRWEB) January 29, 2016.

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Jan 29, 2016

Ray Kurzweil reflects on the death of Marvin Minsky

Posted by in categories: Ray Kurzweil, robotics/AI

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Jan 26, 2016

In memory of Marvin Minsky

Posted by in categories: futurism, Ray Kurzweil

Nice tribute.


Marvin Minsky at One Laptop per Child office, Cambridge Mass. 2008 (credit: Bcjordan/Wikimedia Commons)

Ray Kurzweil, January 25, 2016

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Jan 24, 2016

Ray Kurzweil keynote and panel at Nobel Week Dialog from the Nobel Prize

Posted by in categories: computing, neuroscience, Ray Kurzweil

Dear readers,

I had the honor of speaking on the future of technology at the Nobel Prize gatherings in Gothenburg, Sweden. Every year, the Nobel Prize picks a theme of interest to the world on the state of sciences in different arenas. This year’s theme was the future of intelligence, with a focus on different technologies that are changing our ability to see and understand large sets of information and create computer systems that might reach human level thinking — I believe that progress is accelerating.

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Jan 19, 2016

The Dawn of the Singularity: A Visual Timeline of Ray Kurzweil’s Predictions

Posted by in categories: engineering, Ray Kurzweil, singularity

The following predictions were made by Ray Kurzweil, now the Director of Engineering at Google. He has made 147 predictions since the 1990’s and has maintained an astonishing 86% accuracy rate.

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Jan 10, 2016

Ray Kurzweil on Giving Future AI the Right to Vote [Video]

Posted by in categories: Ray Kurzweil, robotics/AI

This is a huge position to take on AI. Very gutsy of Ray.


All technology impacts our individual daily lives one way or another—but perhaps no technology makes us question our collective humanity as much as artificial intelligence.

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