How To Create A Mind

Authors at Google: Ray Kurzweil on How to Create a Mind

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If you still haven’t heard about Ray Kurzweil‘s new book titled How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed, this video from the Author’s at Google series is a great place to start.

About the book:

In How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed, the bold futurist and author of The New York Times bestseller The Singularity Is Near explores the limitless potential of reverse engineering the human brain. Ray Kurzweil is arguably today’s most influential—and often controversial—futurist. In How to Create a Mind, Kurzweil presents a provocative exploration of the most important project in human-machine civilization—reverse engineering the brain to understand precisely how it works and using that knowledge to create even more intelligent machines. Kurzweil discusses how the brain functions, how the mind emerges from the brain, and the implications of vastly increasing the powers of our intelligence in addressing the world’s problems. He thoughtfully examines emotional and moral intelligence and the origins of consciousness and envisions the radical possibilities of our merging with the intelligent technology we are creating. Certain to be one of the most widely discussed and debated science books of the year, How to Create a Mind is sure to take its place alongside Kurzweil’s previous classics.

Early praise for the book:

“It is rare to find a book that offers unique and inspiring content on every page. How To Create A Mind achieves that and more. Ray has a way of tackling seemingly overwhelming challenges with any army of reason, in the end convincing the reader that it is within our reach to create non-biological intelligence that will soar past our own. This is a visionary work that is also accessible and entertaining.”

Rafael Reif, President of MIT

“Kurzweil’s new book on the mind is magnificent, timely, and solidly argued!! His best so far!”

Marvin Minsky, Co-founder of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab

“One of the eminent AI pioneers, Ray Kurzweil, has created a new book to explain the true nature of intelligence, both biological and non-biological. The book describes the human brain as a machine that can understand hierarchical concepts ranging from the form of a chair to the nature of humor. His important insights emphasize the key role of learning both in the brain and AI. He provides a credible roadmap for achieving the goal of super human intelligence which will be
necessary to solve the grand challenges of humanity.”

Raj Reddy, founder, Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University

“If you have ever wondered about how your mind works, read this book. Kurzweil’s insights reveal key secrets underlying human thought and our ability to recreate it. This is an eloquent and thought-provoking work.”

Dean Kamen, founder of FIRST

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Glenn Beck Interviews Ray Kurzweil

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This is the video of Glenn Beck interviewing Ray Kurzweil. Some of the topics discussed during their 30 minute conversation are issues such as the technological singularity, artificial intelligence, the law of accelerating returns and Ray’s latest book How To Create A Mind.

I don’t know if you are a fan of Glenn Beck’s or not. I myself am far from it. Still, I always enjoy hearing Kurzweil’s thoughts on a variety of topics and this time they are accompanied by a few hilarious Glenn Beck gems such as:

“For instance, there is a difference between Yahoo and Google. I use Yahoo and try not to use Google, much of it your [Ray Kurzweil’s] work. I try not to use Google but Google is by far… I mean I can type like 5 different things and I’m not finding it with Yahoo. […] I use Yahoo and not Google because I am helping you create artificial intelligence if I use Google. And I am not a technophobe, I like technology. I just don’t trust…”

[…]

“What is the difference between you [Ray Kurzweil] and somebody who worked in the eugenics program in the 1930s?!…”

[…]

“I have to tell you – I am both celebrating and despise you [Ray Kurzweil] at the same time. I am torn because I just don’t know how it’s gonna end…”

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Ray Kurzweil on How To Create A Mind: Be Who You Would Like To Be

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Ray Kurzweil‘s impact on my life in general but especially on what I have been doing for the past 3 or 4 years is hard to exaggerate. It is a simple fact that, if I haven’t read his seminal book The Singularity is Near, I would be neither blogging nor podcasting about exponential technologies, not to mention going to Singularity University. And so it was with great excitement and some trepidation that I went to interview Dr. Kurzweil in his office in Boston.

Part of my trepidation came from some technical concerns: I wish I could buy a better camera. I wish I could hire a team of audio and video professionals so that I can focus on the interview itself. I wish I did a better job with the setup. I wish I had noticed that Ray’s lavalier mic has slipped out of its holder… The list is exponential. Still, if there is one thing that I’ve learned since I started podcasting is that we do get better. But it takes time. Meanwhile, my consolation is that eventually, I will have to do another interview with Ray Kurzweil just so I get it right at that time. For now, however, I hope that the content of this one will make up for its technical deficiencies.

During our conversation with Dr. Kurzweil we cover a wide variety of topics such as: how and why at age 5 Ray decided to become an inventor; his unique background of being born to Jewish parents but brought up in a Unitarian Church; his early interest in issues such as religious tolerance, poverty, social inequality and justice; 3D printing, open-source, patents, progress, and intellectual property rights; Watson, artificial intelligence, the Turing Test and human rights for AI, the technological singularity and some criticism thereof; his upcoming book How To Create A Mind and his Pattern Recognition Theory of Mind; the evolutionary advantages of intelligence; the benefits of reverse-engineering the human brain for the creation of AI and whether the latter would be interested in pondering and solving humanity’s greatest problems.

My favorite quote that I will take away from this interview with Ray Kurzweil is:

Don’t be too concerned about what’s practical. Follow your passion and be who you would like to be.

As always you can listen to or download the audio file above or scroll down and watch the video interview in full. To show your support you can write a review on iTunes, make a direct donation, or become a patron on Patreon.

 

Behind The Curtain: Images of My Interview with Ray Kurzweil

Ray Kurzweil Working
The Office of a Creative Genius
Julie Danaylov: Best Looking Camera Woman Ever
Ray Kurzweil on Singularity 1on1
Ray Kurzweil and the White Rabbit
Ray Kurzweil with his father’s portrait
Socrates trying to make a point
Thank you, Dr. Kurzweil
Ray Kurzweil “I Support Singularity 1 on 1”
Nikola Danaylov aka Socrates with Ray Kurzweil

 

Ray Kurzweil: I Support Singularity 1 on 1

https://www.singularityweblog.com/donate-and-support-singularity-weblog/

 

Who is Ray Kurzweil?

Ray Kurzweil has been described as “the restless genius” by the Wall Street Journal, and “the ultimate thinking machine” by Forbes. Inc. magazine ranked him #8 among entrepreneurs in the United States, calling him the “rightful heir to Thomas Edison,” and PBS included Ray as one of 16 “revolutionaries who made America,” along with other inventors of the past two centuries.

As one of the leading inventors of our time, Ray was the principal developer of the first CCD flat-bed scanner, the first omni-font optical character recognition, the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, the first text-to-speech synthesizer, the first music synthesizer capable of recreating the grand piano and other orchestral instruments, and the first commercially marketed large-vocabulary speech recognition. Ray’s web site Kurzweil AI.net has over one million readers.

Among Ray’s many honors, he is the recipient of the $500,000 MIT-Lemelson Prize, the world’s largest for innovation. In 1999, he received the National Medal of Technology, the nation’s highest honor in technology, from President Clinton in a White House ceremony. And in 2002, he was inducted into the National Inventor’s Hall of Fame, established by the US Patent Office.

He has received nineteen honorary Doctorates and honors from three U.S. presidents.

Ray has written four national best sellers. The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence has been translated into 9 languages and was the #1 best selling book on Amazon in science. Ray’s latest book, The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology, was a New York Times best seller, and has been the #1 book on Amazon in both science and philosophy.