[x] Kurzweil is Google Director of Engineering

[Jim Andrews]

As Steve Dipaola pointed out to me on Facebook, Kurzweil's work as a 
software inventor and business man has been pretty spectacular. He was a 
leader in three quite advanced areas: optical character recognition; music 
synthesizers; and speech recognition. In all three cases, he developed 
successful software and associated businesses and sold them. He has been 
developing and selling software since his MIT days.

His writings as a futurist/transhumanist etc. and his writings about "the 
age of spiritual machines" are probably more high-profile than his very 
solid accomplishments as an inventor and software guy. He's even written a 
poetry generator. He's a bit wacky on some points; he says he believes it 
could be possible to live indefinitely into the future. Which makes you 
wonder if he has a grasp on what makes life worth living. But he's clearly a 
good choice for Google if they're looking for vision concerning AI and a 
proven business track record.

Anyway, I guess we're all wondering what he can do at Google about 'the age 
of spiritual machines'.

ja

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jesse Scott" <jessecolinscott at gmail.com>
To: "Computer Art Vancouver" <x at vispo.com>
Sent: Monday, January 28, 2013 12:05 PM
Subject: Re: [x] Kurzweil is Google Director of Engineering


> He is one of the first AI / transhumanists, no ?
>
>
> On 2013-01-28, at 12:01 PM, B. Bogart <bbogart at sfu.ca> wrote:
>
>> Indeed, odd! I'm curious if there are any singularity proponents on here?
>>
>> I recommend the documentary "Transcendent Man" for anyone who is not
>> familiar with Ray: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1117394/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1
>>
>> B.
>>
>> On 13-01-26 11:54 PM, Jim Andrews wrote:
>>> Not quite sure what to make of it, but surely 'group of x newsworthy':
>>> Ray Kurzweil has been appointed Google Director of Engineering. See, for
>>> instance,
>>> http://www.engineeringontheedge.com/2013/01/kurzweil-focuses-on-ai-at-google
>>> .
>>>
>>> ja
>>>
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