Synthetic Super Intelligence and the Transmutation of Humankind

Chapter 1: Dr. Ray Kurzweil---A Short Introduction
Chapter 1:
Dr. Ray Kurzweil—A Short Introduction
Who is Ray Kurzweil?
R
aymond Kurzweil is still relatively unknown to the
great majority of people. Since his mid-teens, he has been on a
passionate mission to develop Artificial Intelligence (AI), but his
ideas actually started already in his earlier childhood.
In 1953, at the age of five, he decided that he wanted to become an
inventor. At the age of seven or eight, he built a robotic puppet theater and
robotic games. When he was twelve years old, at a time when computers
were rare and not in the public domain, he took a great interest in them and
built computer devices and statistical programs. Although his father, being
a musician and a conductor and his mother being a visual artist, the family
often discussed technology at home, further inspiring the young Ray to later
in life become a brilliant inventor and computer scientist. He invented the
charge-coupled flatbed scanner, the first print-to-screen reading machine
for the blind, and he also developed the first text-to-speech synthesizer,
named Kurzweil K250, which was able to simulate the sound from
instruments, such as the grand piano. 13 These are just a handful of
inventions he’s completed over the years.
In 1999, he received the National Medal of Technology and Innovation
from President Bill Clinton at the White House, and in 2001, he received
the Lemelton-MIT Prize; the largest prize in the world for innovation, 14
making him $500,000 richer. He is also the author of seven books, of which
The Singularity is Near (2005) 15 is the latest. It became a New York Times best
seller and is the book that I frequently will refer to because it is his most
13
http://www.kurzweilai.net/ray-kurzweil-biography
14
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Kurzweil
15
http://www.singularity.com/
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