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Ray Kurzweil joins Google

kurzweilai.net

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Re: Ray Kurzweil joins Google

#11

Post by GuiA »

Saw him give a talk promoting his latest book last month, was heavily disappointed. Ideas are presented in a way to fit nicely together, but ultimately lack any depth or critical insights. I recall someone calling it "creationism for people with an IQ over 140"; it's a fair description.

It's a shame, he's brought many great contributions to our field, but I fear he has jumped the shark a while ago. Maybe going to Google will force him to work on solutions to problems of which the correctness can be more easily assessed.

Re: Ray Kurzweil joins Google

#12

Post by 6ren »

It's as if you took a lot of very good food and some dog excrement and blended it all up so that you can't possibly figure out what's good or bad. http://www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/pub/douglas-r-hof...

I see what DRF means, and The Singularity is Near did seem mostly a perfunctory literature review, with important issues not discussed, just skimmed over. (For example, he doesn't discussed the causes of accelerating returns, doesn't support the causes with data, only the effects. Another example: is it necessarily true that we are intelligent enough to understand ourselves? We're effective when we can something decompose hierarchically into simpler concepts... but what if there isn't such a decomposition of intelligence? i.e. the simplest decomposition is too complex for us to grasp. Hofstadner asks if a giraffe is intelligent enough to understand itself.)

But I thought he supported his basic thesis, that progress is accelerating, compellingly. Really did a great job (seems to be the result of ongoing criticism, and him finding ways to refute it).

Re: Ray Kurzweil joins Google

#13

Post by praxeologist »

GuiA wrote: post #11

Saw him give a talk promoting his latest book last month, was heavily disappointed. Ideas are presented in a way to fit nicely together, but ultimately lack any depth or critical insights. I recall someone calling it "creationism for people with an IQ over 140"; it's a fair description. It's a shame, he's brought many great contributions to our field, but I fear he has jumped the shark a while ago. Maybe going to Goo…

>It's a shame, he's brought many great contributions to our field

What field? The fluffsters? Saying stuff like, "Ideas are presented in a way to fit nicely together, but ultimately lack any depth or critical insights.", is saying nothing.

Re: Ray Kurzweil joins Google

#14

Post by GuiA »

praxeologist wrote: post #13
GuiA wrote: post #11

Saw him give a talk promoting his latest book last month, was heavily disappointed. Ideas are presented in a way to fit nicely together, but ultimately lack any depth or critical insights. I recall someone calling it "creationism for people with an IQ over 140"; it's a fair description. It's a shame, he's brought many great contributions to our field, but I fear he has jumped the shark a while ago. Maybe going to Goo…

>It's a shame, he's brought many great contributions to our field What field? The fluffsters? Saying stuff like, "Ideas are presented in a way to fit nicely together, but ultimately lack any depth or critical insights.", is saying nothing.

He did a lot of work in text to speech, speech recognition, OCR, etc. back in the day.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Kurzweil#Mid-life

Re: Ray Kurzweil joins Google

#15

Post by waterlesscloud »

It's seemed pretty clear to me for some time that Google's real mission is AI/singularity oriented and everything else is just a step along that road. It may not be what the day-to-day view is in the trenches, but it seems like the high level plan.

A hire like this one certainly reinforces that perception.

I don't know if it's truly possible to accomplish, but it's fascinating to see a major company taking steps in that directions.

Re: Ray Kurzweil joins Google

#17

Post by praxeologist »

GuiA wrote: post #14
praxeologist wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's a shame, he's brought many great contributions to our field What field? The fluffsters? Saying stuff like, "Ideas are presented in a way to fit nicely together, but ultimately lack any depth or critical insights.", is saying nothing.

He did a lot of work in text to speech, speech recognition, OCR, etc. back in the day. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Kurzweil#Mid-life

Of course, fluffster was directed at you and I know what Kurzweil did.

Re: Ray Kurzweil joins Google

#18

Post by ilaksh »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #10
nonsequ wrote: post #2

Can anyone shed some light on what 'Director of Engineering' might mean at Google? It sounds rather unassuming for a person of his stature.

For a long time it was the highest grade you could be hired in as since Google didn't feel like the title "Vice President" in Google meant the same thing as other places. I know VP's they gave offers to, who turned down the offer on the basis of having to take the title of director. At one time you had a limited amount of time post hire to 'prove yourself' or be managed out of the organization. I found the hire curio…

His tendency to handwave rather than retreat to data? What the heck are you talking about? Have you seen how many graphs he puts in his presentations?

You think he's a theorist rather than an experimentalist? How can you possibly get that idea with all of his game-changing inventions?

Re: Ray Kurzweil joins Google

#19

Post by nostrademons »

waterlesscloud wrote: post #15

It's seemed pretty clear to me for some time that Google's real mission is AI/singularity oriented and everything else is just a step along that road. It may not be what the day-to-day view is in the trenches, but it seems like the high level plan. A hire like this one certainly reinforces that perception. I don't know if it's truly possible to accomplish, but it's fascinating to see a major company taking steps in t…

"Organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful."

If you take that to the limit, the logical consequence is some sort of planet-wise consciousness that can instantly pull up any of humanity's collective knowledge at a moment's notice.

Re: Ray Kurzweil joins Google

#20

Post by xianshou »

waterlesscloud wrote: post #15

It's seemed pretty clear to me for some time that Google's real mission is AI/singularity oriented and everything else is just a step along that road. It may not be what the day-to-day view is in the trenches, but it seems like the high level plan. A hire like this one certainly reinforces that perception. I don't know if it's truly possible to accomplish, but it's fascinating to see a major company taking steps in t…

Google: maximizing the sum of consciousness.
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