Perfect partnership? Famed futurist Raymond Kurzweil joins Google as director of engineering
Notable inventor will help company turn ‘unrealistic’ ideas into reality
In what looks like a match made in technology heaven, futurist / inventor Raymond Kurzweil has announced that he will be joining Google as the company’s new director of engineering.
A photo of Raymond Kurzweil from 2009.
The 65-year-old author, whose books include The Age of Spiritual Machines and Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever, said that he is going to help the company “turn the next decade’s ‘unrealistic’ visions into reality.”
Similar thinking
Kurzweil has often made headlines for his outside-the-box solutions and where-did-he-come-up-with-that ideas. But of all the things he’s predicted in his previous years, perhaps most notable is what he came up with in 1999 — it was then that he stated that within 10 years the world would see technologies like self-driving cars and mobile phones that could answer one’s questions.
Unfortunately, at the time his ideas were dismissed as “unrealistic.”
“Fast forward a decade — Google has demonstrated self-driving cars, and people are indeed asking questions of their Android phones,” he said. “We’re really on a remarkable trajectory of quickening innovation, and Google is at the forefront of much of this development.”
Perfect partnership
Kurzweil has long held a particular fascination with technology; in particular, machine learning. He’s designed software that provides computers with the ability to write original music, and he can count among his many inventions the world’s first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind.
“I’ve always worked to create practical systems that will make a difference in people’s lives, which is what excites me as an inventor,” Kurzweil said. “I’m thrilled to be teaming up with Google to work on some of the hardest problems in computer science so we can turn the next decade’s ‘unrealistic’ visions into reality.”
Google, meanwhile, understands the value that Kurzweil brings to the table, and sees this as a major signing for the company. Research Director Peter Norvig was asked by Agence France-Presse what he and the rest of the Google staff thought of Kurzweil. Norvig was quick to point to his contributions to technology, specifically citing the aforementioned eponymous reading machine that allows users to have written works read aloud, adding “We appreciate his ambitious, long-term thinking, and we think his approach to problem-solving will be incredibly valuable to projects we’re working on at Google,” ■
Story via: phys.org
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