Ray Kurzweil Quotes

Terminator' is a reflection of how the world is changing.

And we should keep our minds open, or at least ajar, to concepts on the fringe of science fiction. Flaky American futurologists aren't always wrong. They remind us that a superintelligent machine is the last instrument that humans may ever design - the machine will itself take over in making further steps.

So one begins to wonder what is going to happen to the human race. Technology keeps on advancing with greater and greater power, either for good or for destruction.

We are still fearful, superstitious and all-too-human creatures. At times, we forget the magnitude of the havoc we can wreak by off-loading our minds onto super-intelligent machines, that is, until they run away from us, like mad sorcerers' apprentices, and drag us up to the precipice for a look down into the abyss.

I have argued above that we cannot prevent the Singularity, that its coming is an inevitable consequence of the humans' natural competitiveness and the possibilities inherent in technology.

Artificial Intelligence is one of those areas where we should be proactive in controlling it rather than reactive. If we are reactive, by the time we will do the necessary things, it will be too late. Robots can do everything better than we [humans] can.

I love stories like 'The Terminator' movies and 'The Matrix,' where our machines become self-aware and turn on us.

If you ask people whether a computer can be smarter than a human, 99.9 percent will say that's science fiction. Actually, it's inevitable. It's guaranteed to happen.

It's only a matter of time before machinery becomes sentient. It's going to happen because we're already slaves to all of it.

Although we will hate and fight the machines, we will be supplanted anyway, and rightly so, for the intelligent machines to which we will give birth may, better than we, carry on the striving toward the goal of understanding and using the Universe, climbing to heights we ourselves could never aspire to.

Technological change is both familiar and easy to observe.

Make no mistake about why these babies are here - they are here to replace us.

Our computers double in capability on time scales of only a few years. It's hardly outrageous to believe that we will successfully develop thinking machines within a handful of decades, or at most a century or two. If that happens, these artificial sentients will quickly leave us behind.

Technology and robotics are advancing and will reduce the need for workers in the future.

Our culture already has a number of well known stories about artificial life and non-human intelligence. In 'Exegesis,' I've tried to not only tell a new and engaging story but also to comment on those well known stories through the details of my novel.

Pretty soon we'll have robots in our society, you're going to have a lot of automated processes that used to be done by people - this is happening. Society and technology is changing so fast, and the impact of the change on society and technology is global, not local.

At times, we forget the magnitude of the havoc we can wreak by off-loading our minds onto super-intelligent machines, that is, until they run away from us, like mad sorcerers' apprentices, and drag us up to the precipice for a look down into the abyss.

I believe that at the end of the century the use of words and general educated opinion will have altered so much that one will be able to speak of machines thinking without expecting to be contradicted.

I had a great time creating the future on 'Minority Report,' and it's a future that is coming true faster than any of us thought it would.

How will the approach of the Singularity spread across the human world view?

Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence.

Science fiction has done a really good job of scaring us into thinking that computers shouldn't get too smart, because as soon as they get really smart, they're going to take over the world and kill us, or something like that. But why would they do that?

I particularly felt that my job in management was safe from the incursion of machines with friendly faces painted on the front of their heads, or whatever you call the metal constructions atop their shoulders, if those are indeed shoulders.

We're fascinated with robots because they are reflections of ourselves.

But if the technological Singularity can happen, it will.