Ray Kurzweil Interview (page: 6 / 6) Pioneer in Artificial Intelligence	Print Interview

In this process of your work, you must have suffered detours, setbacks, frustrations, disappointments. It's not a straight line, is it?

Ray Kurzweil: Sure, it's not a straight line.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. If I sort of commit myself to a particular project or vision, I can't recall ever really dropping any of those commitments. It's kind of a profound commitment I make with myself to see something through. That doesn't mean that there won't be tactical shifts and certain specific little projects might get dropped. But I do ultimately try to see these projects through, and it's kind of a great adventure. You don't know what you're going to find. Probably the biggest thing I struggle with is just the sort of triage of these ideas, because I haven't really accelerated my own thinking process and those of my colleagues sufficiently yet that we can pursue all of the exciting ideas that come our way. So that's one reason I'm interested in writing about other people's work, because I can then get excited about the accomplishments of others and see other people who are pursuing exciting ideas and don't feel that I necessarily have to be involved in everything myself. I can share in them by being a student of technology.

How do you deal with people who say your thinking is too far out? How do you deal with that kind of criticism?

Ray Kurzweil: It doesn't really bother me. I've been thinking about these ideas for decades. They're not just idle thoughts I've pulled out of the air. There's a whole theory behind them, and sometimes people will just look at one aspect. I think very often the biggest issue that will cause someone to reject something I've said is that they're not really internalizing and realizing the implications of the acceleration of technical progress. They say, "Well, that's going to take hundreds of years," not realizing that we're going to see hundreds of years of progress in decades because of this acceleration. They don't really incorporate it into their thinking. I'm not saying I have a perfect crystal ball. Ideas have come along that caused me to readjust my thinking.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Criticism ultimately is more useful than praise. I mean, praise is nice but it doesn't give you the ingredients to improve your thinking. Even if there's a criticism that I don't accept, I'll think about, "Okay, how does one deal with that criticism? How do you address it?" And that may lead to some other useful ideas. Or there may be some validity to a criticism that will also cause an improvement or some increment of my thinking about an issue. So criticism is really quite useful. We do that actually in our projects as a methodology, not just sit around and praise ourselves, but "What could be improved? What's wrong with this?" Technology never emerges perfect. It's always a glass half-full. So we try to fill it more. Artificial intelligence has been called the field of computer science dealing with problems that haven't been solved yet. Every time we solve a problem, people go, "Oh well, yeah, that was really easy to begin with, and now we understand, and it's lost its mystery, and well, computers still can't X, Y, Z..." And that will always be the case until computers fully reach human intelligence. By that time, this issue will be put to bed. But until that time, people are always going to be pointing out something it doesn't do. All right, so it does play chess. All right, so it can guide cruise missiles. All right, it does do medical diagnoses. All right, it can predict financial markets better than human analysts. But it still can't tell the difference between a dog and a cat. Oh, there's a new system that can do that. Oh, well all right, it can't deal with human language and give us a synopsis of a plot of a movie yet. When that happens, we'll find some other things computers can't do. But criticism is useful, to really point the direction how we can improve our thinking.

Have you ever doubted your ability to do what you've set out to do?

Ray Kurzweil: Not really. I hope that doesn't sound arrogant. That's just a personal commitment to a personal program and to a set of ideas. I think if that kind of confidence were to lead someone to be arrogant, to doggedly pursue the wrong ideas, I think that would be unfortunate. I do try to listen to criticism, not with the idea that criticism is necessarily wrong, but to feel there is value in some goals that I've set, and to try to stay on that course. To really keep an open mind. You know, any of the ideas that I have, or that others have, and a lot of the common wisdom that we all share, is very often found to be wrong. So keep questioning everything.

How do you measure success, achievement?

Ray Kurzweil: I think there are different ways. Very often we don't understand the significance of something until generations after the person has departed us. But I measure it in terms of impact on people's lives, and we can certainly see that in technology. I think technology is a double-edged sword. I think there are dangers. There's a whole issue there. But...

Get the Flash Player to see this video. I think, on balance, we have really raised our species' ability. I really see it as part of evolution. The sort of evolution of our own cultural knowledge and science and technology is part of the evolutionary process on this planet, and we have overcome great suffering if you compare our lives to the lives of most humanity several hundred years ago. We live longer. Many more people can live fulfilling lives and pursue careers that give them gratification. That wasn't true of most humanity centuries ago, and it's really science and technology that enables us to do that. So we can measure this in concrete ways, seeing the impact these things have on people's lives. But it's true also cultural expressions -- music -- moves us, as do all the arts, and gives us greater insight into the human condition. So at different levels of our existence, these different intellectual expressions from art to science to technology have a direct impact on human beings.

Are you confident that we can use science and technology to our benefit rather than to our detriment?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Ray Kurzweil: I think technology's always been a double-edged sword. I mean it's power, and it's power to advance all of humankind's varied objectives. Certainly the destructiveness of human conflict has been amplified by human technology, and we've seen that in the 20th century. I think, on balance, the benefits outweigh the dangers and the actual destruction that the technology has made possible. And I think confidence is probably the wrong word. I'm hopeful that that will be the case in the 21st century. The story of the 21st century hasn't been written yet, and we have much more powerful technologies that will emerge in the next century, and the opportunity to really overcome age-old problems, but also exacerbate our complex and destructive potential as well. So I think the moral dimension and the ethical issues are also very important in that regard, and that's something that concerns me as well.

Do you think about these things?

Ray Kurzweil: Oh definitely. I write about them.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. I think we have no choice but to proceed. I mean, there have been calls recently -- and there have, actually, ever since the Luddite movement emerged in the English textile industry two centuries ago -- calls for relinquishing technology that is just too dangerous. I think we have no choice, because there's a great economic imperative to move forward, and it's a road paved with gold, and we have received tremendous benefit from technology. Short of creating a totalitarian system that would ban any form of economic incentive, we're going to be advancing technology. I think the right way to deal with it is to be very concerned with the ethical dimension and with the application of technology, and I think it's not something that's done in one field of technology ethics. I think it's something that everybody, and not just the technologist, needs to be actively concerned with, because we have the power to actually create our future world, very literally, including really redesigning our bodies and brains and our experiences at very profound levels. So it's something that everybody needs to understand, and contribute to that dialogue so that we do advance our human values. Not that we have a consensus on what those are, but I think there is, at least at some levels, emerging consensus on what human values are.

[ Key to Success ] Integrity

What do you say to young people, such as students here at the Academy, who ask you for advice on how to achieve something with their lives?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Ray Kurzweil: To an individual, I would say to follow your passion, because the greatest value we have is ideas and knowledge. And new knowledge, which is really, I think, the purpose of evolution and the purpose of the human civilization, comes from passion. It's not a matter of learning dry formulas. Creating something new has to come from some passion, and passionate devotion to an idea. So if you're passionate about music or graphic arts or writing or science and technology, that's what you should pursue. That's how you will contribute. And we can clearly see in the era of the Internet that, for example, graphic arts have suddenly become enormously valuable. All of the different ways of expressing ourselves have tremendous value. There's tremendous thirst for content of all kinds on the Internet, and that's going to deepen as the technology gets more sophisticated. So follow your passion, and if you become committed to an idea, then go with it. And secondly, question all assumptions. Not to the point of inaction, I mean, we have to make certain assumptions just to get up in the morning and go through the day, but reserve part of your thinking for questioning the common wisdom. In every sphere, even outside of your area of expertise, there's always a deeper wisdom if we can break through certain assumptions.

And something I would say in general is to appreciate what a remarkable time lies ahead.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. One of the things that's actually growing exponentially is human life span, and I've got charts that show that. We're actually adding, today, 120 days every year to human longevity. In the 19th century it was only a couple of weeks a year. Now we're adding a third of a year a year, and within ten years it's actually going to be adding more than a year every year. And most of these -- the vast majority of these young people here -- will see the 22nd century. By that time we will have even other things, so they'll see the 23rd century. And that century, this 21st century, will be a thousand times more profound and see a thousand times more change than the 20th century. And that was pretty significant. They can contribute to that, and there's going to be no shortage of opportunity to be a player in this sort of next stage of evolution.

What does the American Dream mean to you?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Ray Kurzweil: The American Dream is pushing beyond our boundaries and to new frontiers. Some of those new frontiers centuries ago were conquering new landmasses, but now our frontiers are intellectual. And in the area of knowledge, and in all of our cultural and scientific endeavors, there's a respect for taking risks. There's a tolerance and even a respect for failure -- which some other cultures have some difficulty with -- for experimenting, and for learning, and the trial and error that goes with that. A respect for the individual, and that we're all different, and all have a contribution to make in respect for diversity and tolerance of differences. Even though we see a lot of prejudice and intolerance, our ideals reflect a tolerance for diversity, and I think we'll see greater diversity in the century ahead. So that's what the American ideal -- the American Dream -- means, and I think it's a perfect set of ideals and philosophies for this new era.

[ Key to Success ] The American Dream

Thank you.

Ray Kurzweil: My pleasure.

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