Ray Kurzweil Quotes

By the time of the Singularity, there won't be a distinction between humans and technology. This is not because humans will have become what we think of as machines today, but rather machines will have progressed to be like humans and beyond. Technology will be the metaphorical opposable thumb that enables our next step in evolution.

Within a few decades, machine intelligence will surpass human intelligence, leading to The Singularity -- technological change so rapid and profound it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history. The implications include the merger of biological and nonbiological intelligence, immortal software-based humans, and ultra-high levels of intelligence that expand outward in the universe at the speed of light.

Does God exist? Well, I would say, 'not yet'.

When you talk to a human in 2035, you'll be talking to someone that's a combination of biological and non-biological intelligence.

Find your passion, learn how to add value to it, and commit to a lifetime of learning.

The past is over; the present is fleeting; we live in the future.

Our technology, our machines, is part of our humanity. We created them to extend ourselves, and that is what is unique about human beings.

Machines will follow a path that mirrors the evolution of humans. Ultimately, however, self-aware, self-improving machines will evolve beyond humans' ability to control or even understand them.

Time would become meaningless if there were too much of it.

By 2029, computers will have emotional intelligence and be convincing as people.

What we spend our time on is probably the most important decision we make.

There are downsides to every technology. Fire kept us warm, but also burned down our villages.

So what used to fit in a building now fits in your pocket, what fits in your pocket now will fit inside a blood cell in 25 years.

Biology is a software process. Our bodies are made up of trillions of cells, each governed by this process. You and I are walking around with outdated software running in our bodies, which evolved in a very different era.

As you go out to the 2040s, now the bulk of our thinking is out in the cloud. The biological portion of our brain didn't go away but the nonbiological portion will be much more powerful. And it will be uploaded automatically the way we back up everything now that's digital.

The profound aspect of technology is that once secrets are revealed, the magic doesn't disappear.

Mobile phones are misnamed. They should be called gateways to human knowledge.

Death is a great tragedy…a profound loss…I don’t accept it…I think people are kidding themselves when they say they are comfortable with death.

Information defines your personality, your memories, your skills.

Biological evolution is too slow for the human species. Over the next few decades, it's going to be left in the dust.

Those with engineering skills will build tomorrow's genius computers. But those with the ability to create knowledge of any kind will be the ones who are best able to extract great value from them. The way to create value in the age of genius machines will be to compile and disseminate knowledge that other people will find useful.

To transcend means to "go beyond," but this need not compel us to an ornate dualist view that regards transcendent levels of reality (e.g., the spiritual level) to be not of this world. We can "go beyond" the "ordinary" powers of the material world through the power of patterns. Rather than a materialist, I would prefer to consider myself a "patternist." It's through the emergent powers of the pattern that we transcend.

Evolution is a process of creating patterns of increasing order....I believe that it's the evolution of patterns that constitutes the ultimate story of our world. Evolution works through indirection: each stage or epoch uses the information-processing methods of the previous epoch to create the next.

The Singularity denotes an event that will take place in the material world, the inevitable next step in the evolutionary process that started with biological evolution and has extended through human-directed technological evolution. however, it is precisely in the world of matter and energy that we encounter transcendence, a principal connotation of what people refer to as spirituality.

Death gives meaning to our lives. It gives importance and value to time. Time would become meaningless if there were too much of it.