Ray Kurzweil

Talk Description

What is the Law of Accelerating Returns and how will it transform society? What are the challenges and opportunities of transcending biology: of nanobots, fuel cells, and bioterrorism? How will innovation be managed in an era of accelerating technologies? When and how will human level AI be developed? How will biotechnology and nanotechnology impact our bodies and brains? When will we see full immersion in virtual reality? Renowned inventor, entrepreneur, best-selling author, and futurist, Ray Kurzweil will expand your mind as he shares his vision of the future.

Biography

Ray Kurzweil is a legendary futurist and inventor whose work in artificial intelligence has dazzled technological sophisticates for more than three decades. A pioneer in optical character recognition (OCR), text-to-speech synthesis, speech recognition technology and electronic keyboard instruments, Kurzweil invented the CCD flatbed scanner, the first pocket-size print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, the first sonically authentic electric piano, and large-vocabulary speech-recognition software. He has launched ten companies and sold five, and has written five books on topics ranging from the union of human and artificial intelligence to nutrition. Kurzweil earned a BS in Computer Science and Literature from MIT, received 15 honorary doctorates, and has been honored by three US presidents. He was inducted into the Inventor's Hall of Fame. His 2005 bestseller, The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology, was being adapted into a film he was writing and co-producing, alongside a documentary about his career and ideas. In that book, Kurzweil deals with the fields of genetics, nanotechnology, robotics and the rapidly-changing definition of “postbiological” humanity.