Predicting the Future of Artificial Intelligence: Ray Kurzweil

Ray Kurzweil, arguably today’s most influential—and often controversial—futurist, is one of the leading inventors of our time and a pioneer in the field of artificial intelligence. Among his inventions, Kurzweil was the principal developer of the first CCD flat-bed scanner, the first omni-font optical character recognition device, the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, the first text-to-speech synthesizer, the first music synthesizer capable of recreating the grand piano and other orchestral instruments, and the first commercially marketed large-vocabulary speech recognition. In his book How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed, Kurzweil presents a provocative exploration of the limitless potential of reverse engineering the human brain. He examines emotional and moral intelligence and the origins of consciousness, while envisioning the radical possibilities of our merging with the intelligent technology we are creating. Kurzweil was the featured guest at the University of Louisville Kentucky Author Forum on Nov. 26, 2012, and he was interviewed by Jim Fleming, Peabody Award-winning host of Public Radio International's To the Best of Our Knowledge.