Quotes from Ray Kurzweil

This effect occurs relatively quickly, unlike the requirement to build up levels in the bloodstream that accompanies some prescription drugs for depression. It is, therefore, an effective, natural, and quick-acting treatment for mild depression. Human trials have also shown benefits for strengthening the liver and for relief from osteoarthritis.

A machine is as distinctively and brilliantly and expressively human as a violin sonata or a theorem in Euclid. —GREGORY VLASTOS

Once you're on the road to slowing down aging and dramatically reducing your risk of disease, you'll find that you will discover new ideas on a regular basis as our knowledge of how biology works continues to grow exponentially.

Where some people see a divine hand, others see a multiverse spawning an evolution of universes with the boring (non-information-bearing) ones dying out. But regardless of how our universe got to be the way it is, we can start our story with a world based on information.

Although I'm not prepared to move up my prediction of a computer passing the Turing test by 2029, the progress that has been achieved in systems like Watson should give anyone substantial confidence that the advent of Turing-level AI is close at hand. If one were to create a version of Watson that was optimized for the Turing test, it would probably come pretty close.

Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and perhaps weigh 1.5 tons. —POPULAR MECHANICS

Once nonbiological intelligence gets a foothold in the human brain (this has already started with computerized neural implants), the machine intelligence in our brains will grow exponentially (as it has been doing all along), at least doubling in power each year.

The statistical methods underlying productivity measurements tend to factor out gains by essentially concluding that we still get only one dollar of products and services for a dollar, despite the fact that we get much more for that dollar.

Two billion years ago, our ancestors were microbes; a half-billion years ago, fish; a hundred million years ago, something like mice; ten million years ago, arboreal apes; and a million years ago, proto-humans puzzling out the taming of fire. Our evolutionary lineage is marked by mastery of change. In our time, the pace is quickening. —CARL SAGAN

Von Neumann makes two important observations here: acceleration and singularity. The first idea is that human progress is exponential (that is, it expands by repeatedly multiplying by a constant) rather than linear (that is, expanding by repeatedly adding a constant).

To this day, I remain convinced of this basic philosophy: no matter what quandaries we face—business problems, health issues, relationship difficulties, as well as the great scientific, social, and cultural challenges of our time—there is an idea that can enable us to prevail.

Intelligence is the ability to solve problems with limited resources, including limitations of time. The Singularity will be characterized by the rapid cycle of human intelligence—increasingly nonbiological—capable of comprehending and leveraging its own powers.

Evolution works through indirection: each stage or epoch uses the information-processing methods of the previous epoch to create the next.

Computers are about one hundred million times more powerful for the same unit cost than they were a half century ago. If the automobile industry had made as much progress in the past fifty years, a car today would cost a hundredth of a cent and go faster than the speed of light. As

Fredkin was quoted by Robert Wright in the 1980s as saying, There are three great philosophical questions. What is life? What is consciousness and thinking and memory and all that? And how does the universe work? …

Innovations created by evolution encourage and enable faster evolution. In the case of the evolution of life-forms, the most notable early example is DNA, which provides a recorded and protected transcription of life's design from which to launch further experiments

A universe saturated with intelligence at 1090 cps would be one trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion times more powerful than all biological human brains on Earth today.3 Even a one-kilogram "cold" computer has a peak potential of 1042 cps, as I reviewed in chapter 3, which is ten thousand trillion (1016) times more powerful than all biological human brains.

Ray Kurzweil La Singularidad está cerca Cuando los humanos transcendamos la biología

inventar se parece mucho a hacer surfing: tienes que anticiparte y coger la ola justo en el momento adecuado).

Our ability to create models—virtual realities—in our brains, combined with our modest-looking thumbs, has been sufficient to usher in another form of evolution: technology. That development enabled the persistence of the accelerating pace that started with biological evolution. It will continue until the entire universe is at our fingertips.

Así fue como desarrollé una teoría a la que llamo ley de los rendimientos acelerados, que explica por qué la tecnología y los procesos evolutivos en general progresan de forma exponencial.

cualquier tecnología suficientemente avanzada es indistinguible de la magia".

That confirmation will be in the form of a functional simulation of human intelligence that passes the Turing test, which I believe will take place by 2029.119

Knowledge is precious in all its forms: music, art, science, and technology, as well as the embedded knowledge in our bodies and brains. Any loss of this knowledge is tragic.