Raymond “Ray” Kurzweil (/krzwal/ “KURZwyl”; born February 12, 1948) is an American writer, scientist, inventor, futurist, and is a manager of engineering at Google. Regardless of futurology, he’s involved in areas like optical character recognition (OCR), text to speech synthesis, speech recognition technology, and electronic keyboard instruments. He’s written books on health, artificial intelligence (AI), trans-humanism, the technological singularity, and futurism. Kurzweil is a public supporter for the futurist and trans-humanist movements, as has been shown in his vast collection of public talks, wherein he’s shared his mostly positive outlooks on life extension technologies as well as the future of nanotechnology, robotics, and biotechnology.
He was the recipient of the $500,000 Lemelson-MIT Prize for 2001, the world’s biggest for initiation. And in 2002 he was inducted to the National Inventors Hall of Fame, created by the U.S. Patent Office. He’s received twenty honorary doctorates, and honors from three U.S. presidents. Kurzweil continues to be called a “restless genius” by “The Wall Street Journal” and “the ultimate thinking machine” by “Forbes”. PBS contained Kurzweil as among 16 “revolutionaries who made America” along with other inventors of the previous two centuries.
Kurzweil has authored seven books, five of that have been national bestsellers. “The Age of Spiritual Machines” has been translated into 9 languages and was the #1 bestselling book on Amazon in science. Kurzweil talks extensively to crowds public and private and frequently presents keynote speeches at business conventions like DEMO, SXSW and TED. His web site catalogs his public speaking, publications and media looks. He keeps the news website, KurzweilAI.net, which includes over three million readers per annum.
Our bodies are made up of trillions of cells, each governed by [a transformation] process. You and I are walking around with outdated software running in our bodies, which evolved in a very different era. We each have a fat insulin receptor gene that says, 'Hold on to every calorie'. That was a good idea 10,000 years ago when you worked all day to get a few calories. There were no refrigerators, so you stored them in your fat cells. I would like to tell my fat insulin receptor gene, 'You don't need to do that anymore', and indeed that was done at the Joslin Diabetes Center. They turned off this gene and the lab mice ate ravenously and remained slim. They didn't get diabetes; they didn't get heart disease. They lived 20 percent longer.
2
All my measurements are in ideal ranges. I scan my arteries to see if I have plaque buildup, and I have no antherosclerosis. I come out younger on biological aging tests. So far, so good. But this program is not designed to last a very long time. [It] is what we call bridge one. The goal is to get to bridge two: the biotechnology revolution, where we can reprogram biology away from disease.. Bridge three is to go beyond biology to the nanotechnology revolution. At that point we can have little robots, sometimes called 'nanobots', that augment your immune system . We can create an immune system that recognizes all disease and .. could be programmed to deal with new pathogens.
3
People say, 'I don't want to live like a typical 95-year-old for hundreds of years'. But the goal is not just to extend life. The idea is to stay healthy and vital and not only to have life extension but life expansion.
4
We are increasing the intelligence of our civilization, and we're doing so exponentially. Technology is part of our civilization. Sometimes people talk about conflict between humans and machines, and you can see a lot of that in science fiction. But the machines we're inventing are not some invasion from Mars. We create these tools to expand our reach, One thousand years ago, I couldn't reach fruit at a higher branch, so I created a tool to increase my reach. No other species does that.
5
It is only the rich that afford [new technologies] at an early point, when they don't work. By the time they work a little bit, they're affordable. By the time they work really well, they're almost free. And that will be true of these health technologies. Look at AIDS drugs - twenty years ago they were $30,000 per patient per year, Today they're [more] effective and they're $80 per patient per year.
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Fact
1
Founder of Kurzweil Technologies.
2
Inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2002 for the Kurzweil Reading Machine, the first device to transform print into computer-spoken words.
3
Kurzweil is a pioneer in the field of human-computer interfacing, and has also developed music synthesizers that successfully re-create the sound of acoustic instruments.
Director
Title
Year
Status
Character
The Singularity Is Near
2010
Documentary co-director
Producer
Title
Year
Status
Character
The Singularity Is Near
2010
Documentary producer
Thanks
Title
Year
Status
Character
Circuit
2001
additional thanks: Kurzweil Technologies
Self
Title
Year
Status
Character
The University
2016
Documentary
Himself - Interviewee (as Ray Kurzweil)
Dans les limbes
2015
Documentary
Himself
Autopilots
2013
Documentary
Himself
Steve Aoki-Singularity
2013
Short
Himself
Terms and Conditions May Apply
2013
Documentary
Himself - Futurist & Inventor
Google and the World Brain
2013
Documentary
Himself - Inventor of the Scanner, Futurologist (as Ray Kurzweil)
The Singularity
2012
Documentary
Un monde sans humains?
2012
TV Movie documentary
Welcome to the Machine
2012
Video documentary
Himself
Weird or What?
2011
TV Series documentary
Himself - Author & Inventor
Transcendent Man: Live with Ray Kurzweil
2011
TV Movie documentary
Himself
Real Time with Bill Maher
2011
TV Series
Himself
Jimmy Kimmel Live!
2011
TV Series
Himself
The Colbert Report
2011
TV Series
Himself - Futurist
Charlie Rose
2005-2011
TV Series
Himself - Guest / Himself
Nova ScienceNow
2011
TV Series documentary
Himself - Kurzweil Technologies, Inc.
Truth in Numbers? Everything, According to Wikipedia
2010
Documentary
Himself
The Singularity Is Near
2010
Documentary
Himself
Plug & Pray
2010
Documentary
Himself - Author
Roadtrip Nation
2009
TV Series documentary
Himself
Transcendent Man
2009
Documentary
Himself
How to Live Forever
2009
Documentary
Himself
Life Extended
2009
Documentary
Himself
NextWorld
2009
TV Series documentary
Himself
Visions of the Future
2007
TV Series documentary
Himself
The Real Superhumans and the Quest for the Future Fantastic
2007
TV Movie documentary
Himself
The Universe
2007
TV Series documentary
Himself - Author, 'The Singulrity is Near'
Horizon
2004-2006
TV Series documentary
Himself
The Daily Show
2006
TV Series
Himself
Technocalyps
2006
Documentary
Himself - Futurist
The Riddle of Einstein's Brain
2005
TV Movie documentary
Himself - Author (as Ray Kurzweil)
Modern Marvels
2004
TV Series documentary
Himself - Author, Fantastic Voyage
The Hard Problem: The Science Behind the Fiction
2004
Video documentary
Himself
Sentient Machines: Robotic Behavior
2004
Video documentary short
Himself
2001: HAL's Legacy
2001
TV Movie documentary
Himself
Great Books
2000
TV Series documentary
Himself
The Revenge of the Dead Indians
1993
Documentary
Himself
Giving Machines Some Thought
1986
Documentary
Himself
I've Got a Secret
1965
TV Series
Himself - Contestant
Archive Footage
Title
Year
Status
Character
What Makes Us Clever? A Horizon Guide to Intelligence
2011
TV Movie documentary
Himself
Endgame: Blueprint for Global Enslavement
2007
Video documentary
Himself
Known for movies
Plug & Pray (2010) as Himself - Author
The Singularity Is Near (2010) as Director
Terms and Conditions May Apply (2013) as Himself - Futurist & Inventor
The Real Superhumans and the Quest for the Future Fantastic (2007) as Himself
$27 Million
