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Ray Kurzweil joins Google

kurzweilai.net

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Re: Ray Kurzweil joins Google

#81

Post by noonespecial »

cschmidt wrote: post #42
cs702 wrote: post #39

Thanks in part to the popularity of his books, movie, and speeches, Kurzweil now knows pretty much every AI researcher in the planet, and we can safely assume he's aware of even very obscure research projects in the field, both inside and outside academia. Joining Google gives him ready access to data sets of almost unimaginable size, as well as unparalleled infrastructure and skills for handling such large data sets…

I just can't see Kurzweil being in the same league as Peter Norvig. Sure, he did some interesting work a long time ago, before he got weird. I can't see this working out well for Google, unless they just want a famous figurehead.

>Sure, he did some interesting work a long time ago, before he got weird.

He was weird then too. That's why he did such interesting work. His work, combined with a lack of fame at that time, just kept the weird from showing through.

I suspect that genius is made up almost, but not quite, entirely of crazy.

Re: Ray Kurzweil joins Google

#82

Post by pjscott »

orangecat wrote: post #80
jere wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm fine with reusing quotes, but in this instance it seems like a rather ham-handed application of it. The singularity reeks of religious concepts. Kurzweil even called his book "The Age of Spiritual Machines" before it was "The Singularity is Near." He literally thinks he's going to be able to live forever (and the technology to do so will be available within his own lifetime). Yada yada... basically what I'm sayin…

The singularity reeks of religious concepts. If by that you mean that scientists are attempting to achieve what religions have been falsely promising, then ok, but so what? Before we had medicine, people could only pray to try to heal the sick. Then physicians actually started studying the body and figuring out how to cure disease, fortunately not abandoning the idea because religions had failed to deliver. He litera…

If Kurzweil's technological miracle predictions come true, one of the side-benefits will be that we can start talking about them in phlegmatic, everyday language, and forget that there used to be religious undertones to it.

Re: Ray Kurzweil joins Google

#83

Post by Simucal »

michaelochurch wrote: post #51
dumitrue wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you ever think that he is being blindly allocated to the position of Director of Engineering? In that position, he'll pretty much be in control of his own destiny at Google.

When I was there, Directors were still above the Real Googler Line, but it may have moved up in the time since then. Also, he lives in Massachusetts, which means he'll only get the work that MTV doesn't want (unless he moves). Finally, with his visibility, he's going to get a lot of prank Perf and his manager is going to have a hard time promoting him because of that.

prank Perf?

Re: Ray Kurzweil joins Google

#84

Post by macarthy12 »

Osmium wrote: post #40
jere wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I recall someone calling it "creationism for people with an IQ over 140"; it's a fair description. Really? Because if so, then they stole that quote almost verbatim from Mitch Kapor when he was discussing the singularity in 2007. And it seems to have a lot less relevance to a book about how the brain works than it does to an imagined singularity. >Mitch Kapor, the founder of Lotus Development Corporation, has called…

In fairness, that's how good quotes usually work: they tend to be retold time and again and adopted for other purposes until it's no longer clear who said it originally. So I wouldn't be too quick to call fowl on this one. I'm not sure one can "steal" a quote...

foul?

Re: Ray Kurzweil joins Google

#85

Post by jere »

orangecat wrote: post #80
jere wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm fine with reusing quotes, but in this instance it seems like a rather ham-handed application of it. The singularity reeks of religious concepts. Kurzweil even called his book "The Age of Spiritual Machines" before it was "The Singularity is Near." He literally thinks he's going to be able to live forever (and the technology to do so will be available within his own lifetime). Yada yada... basically what I'm sayin…

The singularity reeks of religious concepts. If by that you mean that scientists are attempting to achieve what religions have been falsely promising, then ok, but so what? Before we had medicine, people could only pray to try to heal the sick. Then physicians actually started studying the body and figuring out how to cure disease, fortunately not abandoning the idea because religions had failed to deliver. He litera…

I think it's pretty obvious, but let me quote Neal Stephenson:

>I can never get past the structural similarities between the singularity prediction and the apocalypse of St. John the Divine. This is not the place to parse it out, but the key thing they have in common is the idea of a rapture, in which some chosen humans will be taken up and made one with the infinite while others will be left behind.

Poll Americans (most of whom are Christian). Close to half will tell you the end of the world and thus the rapture is going to happen in their own lifetime. Christians have been believing that the rapture was around the corner for literally the last 2000 years. Arrogant if you ask me.

It wouldn't be so bad if Kurzweil's dates didn't line up conveniently with his own mortality. He'll be around 97 at the time he's predicting the singularity will occur.

So combine that with the concept of a) eternal life, b) meeting your relatives in heaven (Kurzweil is planning to resurrect his dead father), and c) AI and post humans that are essentially godlike. Sure, Kurzweil will show you a bunch of exponential graphs to make it all seem so reasonable, but that's why Kapor says "creationsim for the IQ 140 people."

That's not optimism. It's wishful thinking. If you can't see that it has all the fundamentals of a religion, I'm not sure what else to say.

>An ambitious and unlikely goal, but it's not prohibited by the laws of physics

As far as I know, neither is God.

Re: Ray Kurzweil joins Google

#86

Post by etrain »

rpm4321 wrote: post #69
etrain wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's also an ACM Fellow, from it's first class - along with people like Knuth, Cerf, Rivest, Codd, etc.

In addition, I'd rank Minsky, Larry Page, Bill Gates, Dean Kamen, Rafael Reif, Tomaso Poggio, Dileep George, and Kurzweil's other supporters as much more qualified to judge the merits of his ideas, than Kurzweil's detractors like Hofstadter, Kevin Kelly, Mitch Kapor, and Gary Marcus. It seems that Hofstadter is the only one of that group who is really qualified to render a verdict. http://howtocreateamind.com/

To put it another way - if a visionary isn't controversial, she's probably not a visionary.

Re: Ray Kurzweil joins Google

#87

Post by rpm4321 »

kanzure wrote: post #60
nealabq wrote: post #56

What's Kurzweil's motive? He's a visionary who can deliver a finished product. I think he must have some pretty specific ideas, and he wants to partner with Google. A few guesses: - New interfaces to replace keyboard/mouse/touch. Voice, gesture, face, brainwaves. Sign language with humming, blinking, and pupil pointing. Works with tablets, TVs, wearables, cars, buildings, ATMs, etc. - SuperPets (r) that can pass the…

> - New interfaces to replace keyboard/mouse/touch. Voice, gesture, face, brainwaves. Unfortunately, it turns out you can only get a limited number of bits out by looking at brainwaves (EEG). Gesture is much higher bandwidth, and keyboards seem to be the highest.

fMRI is extremely high bandwidth and still in its infancy, and we are currently getting pretty good performance from relatively basic invasive neural implants on the disabled. I've read a couple of interesting articles on breakthroughs regarding the miniaturization of fMRI technology, so I think it's safe to say that keyboards will not be the highest bandwidth interface in the decades to come.

Re: Ray Kurzweil joins Google

#88

Post by mtgx »

cs702 wrote: post #39

Thanks in part to the popularity of his books, movie, and speeches, Kurzweil now knows pretty much every AI researcher in the planet, and we can safely assume he's aware of even very obscure research projects in the field, both inside and outside academia. Joining Google gives him ready access to data sets of almost unimaginable size, as well as unparalleled infrastructure and skills for handling such large data sets…

I think Peter Norvig may have been the one to invite him to give this speech at Google last month:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zihTWh5i2C4

Re: Ray Kurzweil joins Google

#89

Post by mtgx »

cschmidt wrote: post #42
cs702 wrote: post #39

Thanks in part to the popularity of his books, movie, and speeches, Kurzweil now knows pretty much every AI researcher in the planet, and we can safely assume he's aware of even very obscure research projects in the field, both inside and outside academia. Joining Google gives him ready access to data sets of almost unimaginable size, as well as unparalleled infrastructure and skills for handling such large data sets…

I just can't see Kurzweil being in the same league as Peter Norvig. Sure, he did some interesting work a long time ago, before he got weird. I can't see this working out well for Google, unless they just want a famous figurehead.

A lot of visionaries are misunderstood because they can "see" things the others can't at the time, and it doesn't make sense to them, which is why they think they are "weird" or "crazy". From that point of view, Richard Stallman was also a visionary, even if it took 2-3 decades before his visions of states or companies putting backdoors in your proprietary software became true.

Re: Ray Kurzweil joins Google

#90

Post by kanzure »

rpm4321 wrote: post #87
kanzure wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - New interfaces to replace keyboard/mouse/touch. Voice, gesture, face, brainwaves. Unfortunately, it turns out you can only get a limited number of bits out by looking at brainwaves (EEG). Gesture is much higher bandwidth, and keyboards seem to be the highest.

fMRI is extremely high bandwidth and still in its infancy, and we are currently getting pretty good performance from relatively basic invasive neural implants on the disabled. I've read a couple of interesting articles on breakthroughs regarding the miniaturization of fMRI technology, so I think it's safe to say that keyboards will not be the highest bandwidth interface in the decades to come.

I agree that there's useful information in the brain that we can extract. EEG isn't that method. I love fMRI as much as the next guy. fMRI isn't reading "brainwaves". It images a correlate of neuronal oxygen depletion which indicates metabolism and activity.

waves: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroencephalography#Wave_pat...

versus this awesomeness: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemodynamic_response#Functional...

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