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Ray Kurzweil joins Google

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Re: Ray Kurzweil joins Google

#121

Post by thedaveoflife »

rpm4321 wrote: post #98
gavanwoolery wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to be a downer, but text-to-speech, speech recognition, music synthesis, and so forth are all fairly obvious applications of computer science that anyone could have pioneered without being a genius. Likewise, predicting self-driving cars is nothing science fiction has not already done. I'm sure he is a smart guy, but I think we have put him on a pedestal when he probably is not as remarkable as we want him to be.

I don't mean to pick on you (and I certainly didn't downvote you), but you seem like a posterboy for just how easy it is to take inventions and innovation for granted after the fact. I find it instructive to occassionally go to Youtube and load up commericals for Windows 95, 3.1, the first Mac, etc., or even to dust off and boot up an old computer I haven't touched for decades. Not to get too pretentious, but it's a…

>Kurzweil seems to always get technological capabilities right. Where he sometimes falls flat is in technological adoption - how actual consumers are willing to interact with technology, especially where bureaucracies are involved- see his predictions on the adoption of elearning in the classroom, or using speech recognition as an interface in an office environment.

This is a problem common to other AI pioneers, including Norvig.

Re: Ray Kurzweil joins Google

#122

Post by Confusion »

nostrademons wrote: post #108
slacka wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I just can't see Kurzweil being in the same league as Peter Norvig. The problem with Peter Norvig is that he comes from a mathematical background and is a strong defender the use of statistical models that have no biological basis.[1] While they have their use in specific areas, they will never lead us to a general purpose strong AI. Lately Kurzweil has come around to see that symbolic and bayesian networks have be…

For several hundred years, inventors tried to learn to fly by creating contraptions that flapped their wings, often with feathers included. It was only when they figured out that wings don't have to flap and don't need feathers that they actually got off the ground. It's still flight, even if it's not done like a bird. Just because nature does it one way doesn't mean it's the only way. (On a side note, multilayer per…

> aren't all that different from how neurons work

Nobody knows how neurons actually work: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2012/11/ibm-b.... We are missing vital pieces of information to understand that. Show me your accurate C. Elegans simulation and I will start to believe you have something.

Perhaps in a hundred years, this is the argument: for several hundred years, inventors tried to learn to build an AI by creating artificial contraptions, ignoring how biology worked, inspired by an historically fallacious anecdote about how inventors only tried to learn to fly by building contraptions with flapping wings. It was only when they figured out that evolution, massively parallel mutation and selection, is actually necessary that they managed to build an AI.

Re: Ray Kurzweil joins Google

#123

Post by archangel_one »

mtgx wrote: post #110
cschmidt wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You do realize Ray Kurzweil is behind the initial technology of Nuance, which Apple uses for Siri now.

That's roughly correct, but IIRC Ray sold that company 30 years ago; it later went on to buy Nuance, and subsequently quite a few more speech-related companies before hooking up with Apple for Siri. So while your comment is correct, I'd be surprised if any of that initial technology was actually being used for Siri.

Re: Ray Kurzweil joins Google

#124

Post by michaelochurch »

Simucal wrote: post #83
michaelochurch wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Anyone can write unsolicited reviews for anyone, with an option of it being visible only to the manager (aka graffiti in the executive washroom).

If someone gets pissed off about his transhumanism (especially if he starts talking about the Singularity on eng-misc, or if he has questions related to assigning Real Names to AIs, or if someone just doesn't like Canada and won't forgive him for his work with Our Lady Peace in 2000-1) and decides to "Perf" him, he could be in trouble.

If someone like Ray Kurzweil ends up on a PIP I will call the fabric of the universe broken.

Re: Ray Kurzweil joins Google

#125

Post by swah »

Raphael wrote: post #22
nostrademons wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

Doesn't it already do that?

Thinking about it, I dont think so. Because if you ask google and also ask a folk that is an expert on something or loves the subject, the person will give you much better information and links.

Re: Ray Kurzweil joins Google

#126

Post by rdl »

jonmc12 wrote: post #33

Given Kurzweil's age and stated goals, I'm thinking there is no way he is going to Google unless they are investing in life extension / prevention of death. Read between the lines - "next decade’s ‘unrealistic’ visions" - is likely nothing less than brain computer interfaces with the end goal of extending life by storing the entire human mind on a machine. Certainly not far off from Kurweil's timelines on Law of Acce…

Heh, Google Life Extension, so you can live longer and thus view more ads in your lifetime.

Re: Ray Kurzweil joins Google

#127

Post by dalke »

etrain wrote: post #86
rpm4321 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I believe your summary suffers from selection bias.

I think most people have views that are controversial. Only when one is famous do others hear about those controversial views. Furthermore, just about every famous project has its distractors, leading to controversy.

Take Stephen Hawking as an example. He doesn't believe there was a god who created the universe. That's a controversial view to many. But when an non-famous atheist says exactly the same thing, few take notice, so you don't hear about those people.

Take Alan Kay as another example. He's one of the key people behind OLPC, which given its criticism could be considered controversial. But name any big project which has neither criticism nor controversy.

Ole Kirk Christiansen founded Lego. He was visionary in that he saw a future in plastic bricks as toys for children. What were his controversial views? I have no clue. But he probably had some. Perhaps his motto "Only the Best is Good Enough" is controversial to someone who believes that that second best may be good enough for some cases.

Re: Ray Kurzweil joins Google

#128

Post by DanBC »

gavanwoolery wrote: post #93
rpm4321 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm reposting this comment I made a couple of months ago. He's no John McCarthy, but he was a true pioneer in the commercial applications of AI: ================================== I don't think that's a very fair assessment of Kurzweil's role in technology. He was on the ground, getting his hands dirty with the first commercial applications of AI. He made quite a bit of money selling his various companies and technol…

Not to be a downer, but text-to-speech, speech recognition, music synthesis, and so forth are all fairly obvious applications of computer science that anyone could have pioneered without being a genius. Likewise, predicting self-driving cars is nothing science fiction has not already done. I'm sure he is a smart guy, but I think we have put him on a pedestal when he probably is not as remarkable as we want him to be.

Text to speech is easy, right? You just get a bunch of white noise and squirt it out a speaker with a bit of envelope shaping. Short rapid burst is a 'tuh'. Or maybe a 'kuh'. Or a 'puh' or 'duh' or 'buh'. More gentle with a bit of sustain is a 'luh' or 'muh' sound. I had a speech synth on a CP/M computer that did this. You might understand what was being said, if you knew what was being said.

People had a lists of phonemes and improved those.

Then people experimented with different waveforms.

Here's a collection of different voices. (Poor quality sound, unfortunately.) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFQOYBNAMHg)

Why did all those people take so long to make the jump to biphones, to smoothing out the joins between individual phonemes?

You had the Japanese with their '5th generation' research who were physically modelling the human mouth, tongue, and larynx, and blowing air through it. (You don't hear much about the Japanese 5th generation stuff nowadays. I'd be interested if there's a list of things that come from that research anywhere.)

Saying "talking computers" is easy; doing it is tricky.

EDIT: (http://www.japan-101.com/business/fifth_generation_computer....)

> By any measure the project was an abject failure. At the end of the ten year period they had burned through over 50 billion yen and the program was terminated without having met its goals. The workstations had no appeal in a market where single-CPU systems could outrun them, the software systems never worked, and the entire concept was then made obsolete by the internet.

Re: Ray Kurzweil joins Google

#129

Post by jere »

swombat wrote: post #116
jere wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 (…

An interesting set of questions to follow up this fair hypothesis are: Is it better or worse than existing religions? In what way? Societally? Individually? Scientifically? Is it better or worse than no religion? In what way? Societally? Individually? Scientifically? Religion is arrogant, for sure. And it all started when some of our very distant ancestors decided to bury their dead instead of leaving them in a pile…

Good questions, but hard to answer of course. I'd say the singularity is better if it encourages people to go into science as a result and try to make it happen. Much like how science fiction sometimes inspires technology.

Is that happening? I don't know. I'm worried that people are so confident that the singularity is not only inevitable, but just around the corner, that they're simply buckling up for the ride.

I would say that it doesn't matter much; we only have to live with the consequences of the belief for a few decades.... but then again failed predictions don't often discourage those who believed.

Re: Ray Kurzweil joins Google

#130

Post by loup-vaillant »

jere wrote: post #85
orangecat wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 (…

> It wouldn't be so bad if Kurzweil's dates didn't line up conveniently with his own mortality.

His age had probably little influence on his predictions. The Maes-Garreau law, as fun as it sounds, is probably not true[1]

> 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.

I'm personally skeptical of b), except for frozen people (cryonics). If entropy wiped out the information, there's no way to resurrect someone. a) and c) however seem to be merely obvious consequences of Friendly AI (I assume immortality and wicked IQ are good things). And intelligence explosion is quite plausible. You're a bit quick to dismiss those ideas just because they happen to pattern-match religion. (Now, I agree more with this[2] than with the specifics of Kurzweil ideas.)

> As far as I know, neither is God.

Current physics are reductionist. A supernatural God wouldn't fit into that. Current physics are deterministic (modulo the many-world lingering controversy), and universal. Miracles, as direct violations of the laws of physics, wouldn't fit into that. A Lord Outside the Matrix, maybe, but that's a different beast.

[1]: http://lesswrong.com/lw/e36/ai_timeline_predictions_are_we_g... [2]: http://intelligenceexplosion.com/primer.html

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