Key People in Artificial Intelligence: Ray Kurzweil

Over the next few posts, we’ll launch a series that aims to get you acquainted with the key figures in the Artificial Intelligence space, from its inception up to the present time.

In doing this, it is hoped that the thinking that drove the evolution and will drive the future direction of the industry, will become easy to understand. Overall, with this knowledge going forwards, the “why” of “AI” shouldn’t be a mysterious concept.

Who is Ray Kurzweil?

The man who is often credited as being the inventor of the modern idea of “the Singularity,” seems like a logical personage to start with.

Ray Kurzweil grew up in the heart of New York City and from an early age, he always knew that he wanted to create novel things and ideas. In high school, he began learning Computer Science with the help of an uncle who worked at Bell Labs, which is now a series of research laboratories that are owned by Nokia. By the time he had finished studying every Computer Science course that was currently offered at MIT, in 1970, he had already started and sold one company. In 1974, Kurzweil started another company called “Kurzweil Computer Products,” which he again, then flipped for a profit in 1978. As if his two successes in the overall technology industry weren’t enough, he moved into the music niche of the technology space in 1982.

That year, he began a company that produced and sold new forms of synthesizers, which, he successfully sold to a South Korean company in 1990.

Kurzweil’s Foray into AI

At the same time that he began experimenting with and producing musical instruments, Kurzweil began developing speech recognition systems for computers under the umbrella of yet another company, which he called, “Kurzweil Applied Intelligence.”

After releasing KAI’s first product in 1987, he essentially went on a flurry of activity related to starting and selling companies as well as creating products that seem to still have clear applications in the AI space.

If you’re interested in learning more about Kurzweil’s inventions, look no further than the Wiki link, below.

The Singularity

Over the course of his life, Ray Kurzweil hasn’t just invented various technical products. He’s also written a wealth of what can be considered, foundational works for the Artificial Intelligence industry, beginning in 1990. Perhaps his most widely-known work, is titled, “The Singularity is Near.”

All in all, it included the basis for the idea that one day, machine intelligence will increase so much that it will be more powerful than all human intelligence, combined. In short, if this does occur, then one robot will be smarter than every human in existence, together.

As if this wasn’t ominous enough, Kurzweil also predicted that at the time of the “Singularity,” human intelligence and machine intelligence will merge. When the theory is looked at more closely, however, it becomes clear that it isn’t necessarily trying to say that robots will render humans obsolete. Kurzweil actually articulates a sort of situation in which the rise of machine intelligence causes a new Renaissance related to human intelligence.

At this time, it’s posted that our former mental limits will be shattered and new highs will also be reached related to human intelligence.

The Practical Singularity?

How this actually plays out is the question.

How will machines help humans to reach new heights? Certain solutions appear to exist in the field of nanotechnology, related to the integration of the internet and other technologies with the human brain. Straight out of the AI industry, there’s also the possibility that one day, AI systems will be inside of our brains.

Despite the intriguing notions that these ideas bring, let’s pump the breaks on this train of thought for a while for a very specific reason.

To understand how these two scenarios could come about, it’s important to begin with an understanding of how AI has been advancing and what kind of future we are looking towards based on these advances. Kurzweil also suggests that part of the answer that we seek lies in the law of accelerating returns.

The Law of Accelerating Returns Simplified

This idea boils down to a few key points.

First, if we take the Law of Accelerating Returns to be true, then we need to assume that technological change occurs exponentially and not in a linear way. That means that the relative progress that we experience in the technology industry, overall, is not directly proportional to the number of years that this experience happens in.

In other words, as Kurzweil also says, over the course of the 21st century, we might even experience upwards of several thousand years of technological progress.

This assumption is, however, only the beginning of Kurzweil’s development of this law. In the interest of avoiding a jargon-filled, lengthy explanation of everything that it contains, let’s skip ahead to the seven points that Ray Kurzweil boils the law down to.

Seven-Pronged Approach to Technological Acceleration

All in all, the seven simplified facets of this law can be understood as(according to Kurzweil).

1. Evolution uses what has worked for it in the past to continue to move forwards.

2. Therefore, the essentially numerical measurement of evolutionary progress goes up exponentially as time goes on. In relation to this, as time passes, the importance of all information related to survival, that helps evolution function, increases. Overall, the more important the process of evolution deems a piece of information, the more related it is to the survival of an organism or an agent(AI).

3. Related to the two above points, as they increase, so does the speed of evolution as well as the extent to which it significantly changes the world around us.

4. Exponential growth increases as the biological processes that “run” evolution allocate more resources to the processes that are termed most important to its overall success.

For example, in AI, if more computation of data at a certain speed yields a better performance, then the AI will give more of its evolutionary efforts towards making this process work in a better way.

It is suggested here by Kurzweil, that this allocation of more efforts or resources yields more exponential growth in the AI system. Essentially, this exponential growth could be said to compound on any that is already occurring.

5.+6. These two points can go with point four, because here, Kurzweil essentially states that they relate to how humans grow as biological systems and therefore, how AI mirror this growth or attempt to do so. In other words, he states that the biological growth in humans relates directly to the more technological growth of AI systems.

7. Finally, when a specific method for solving a problem stops working, the exponential growth related to it stops until a new solution is developed that consistently works. At this point, over time, new exponential growth starts up.

All in all, the key point of the Law of Accelerating Returns related to AI seems to be that when data proves that something consistently works towards optimal performance, exponential growth follows suit. Even so, this is somewhat of an over-simplification.

If you are interested in learning more, check out the link to Kurzweil’s essay on the LoAR, below.

Going back to the start…

In our next post, we’ll introduce the man who is often considered the founding father of Artificial Intelligence, John McCarthy. In future posts, we’ll also use Kurzweil’s not-yet mentioned work in Nanotechnology to begin to describe the existing connection between this industry and the Artificial Intelligence industry.

Finally, we’ll also introduce the key critics of the AI space. It’s hoped that with this info, as well as with our theoretical-info at your fingertips, you’ll begin to feel that you have a balanced view of the AI space and its development.