Meet Ray
Kurzweil, prophet of the techno rapture. By 2045, he says, computers
wl'11
surpass us in ]t.
,1
rntelllgence, tne
universe itseif
willbecome conscious, and humans
will
live {orever By David Kushner Photo-illustrationby Jonathan Barkat
HE MOST RADICAL FUTURIST ON EARTH
sinks into alarge black chair in the corner
ofhis clutteredoffice. He'sjet-lagged. His skin seemswaxen, asicklyyellowagainst the dark blue of his rumpled suit. As he gazes wearily at the floor, his wide black glasses cling desperatelyto his prominent nose. His collection of cat statues - more than 3oo and counting - crowds every available surface in the room. Slumped at his desk, surrounded by his plaster cats, he looks more like a harried, slightly odd accountant at the height of tax season than the man who has been called the rightful heir to Thomas Edison. Over the pastfour decades, Ray Kurzweil has establishedhimselfas one of the world's most prolific and influential inventors. His specialty is pattern recognition - teachingmachines to ciassifydata andlearn. He created the first program to enable computers to read text - the basis ofmodern scanning - as well as the firstprogram to translate text into speech. Stevie Wonder, a close friend ofKurzweil, calls the inventort print-to-speech technology a "breakthrough that changed mylife." In 1983, with Wonder as an adviser, Kurzweil built the Kurzweil 25o - a synthesizerthat revolutionizedthe musicworld with its uncannily realistic re-creations of acoustic orchestral instruments. For his contributions to artificial intelligence, Kurzweil has been enshrined in the Inventors Hall of Fame and has received White House honors from three presidents - including the highest prize in his field, the National Medal of Technology. But nothing he has done in the past has shaken the scientific community as profoundly as his latest prediction. In our lifetime, Kurzweil believes, machines will not only surpass humans in intelligence - they will irrevocably alter what it means to be
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SINGULARITY human. Cell-size robots will zao disease from our bloodst ream. Superintelligent nanotechnology, operating on a molecular scale, will scrub pollution from our atmosphere. Our minds, our skills, our memories, our very consciousness will be backed up on computers - allowing us, in essence, to live forever, all our data saved by supersmart machines.
"Right now, people think it's irresponsible not to back up our PCs," Kurzweil says. "But increasingly, we'll be backing up the information in ourbrains. People n'ill think it was remarkable that *".ouldn't back up our brains in 2O1O." Kurzweil is verl' specific about when this epic shift will take place. By 2045, he predicts, machines andhumanswill merge, redefining life as we know it. The moment is known as the Singularity, referring to the term used in astrophysics to describe the point inside ablackhole wherethe ordinary laws of physics cease to apply. To prepare himself and the rest of the world for the era of conscious machines, Kurzweil has turned himselfinto the chiefprophet ofthe coming Techno Rapture. He crisscrosses the globe to rally top scientists, hosts an annual Singularity Summit that drarvs leaders from places like Google and MII and has even
tions about what will happen between now and 2045.
"Maybe the Singularity takes a few years longer to get here," he finally replies.
ofnutritional supplements to extend people s lives until the day rvhen their existence can be endlessly preservedbytechnology. At 61, Kurzweil pops 15O of his own pills every day, determined
"But I cant really imagine that I'm significantly off."
to live long enough to see the day when,
sonal need that has driven him to pursue the Singularity. ii all
developed his own line
URZWEIL MAKES NO secret
thanks to machines, he will never age. To say that Kurzweilt prediction is controversial is to understate the scientific firestorm it has generated. No less a prag-
matistthan Bill Gates has hailed Kurzweil's vision, calling him "the best person I know at predicting the future ofartificial intelligence." Butto otherleadingthinkers, Kurzweil has gone offthe deep end, venturing into an almost messianic fervor with his promises of life everlasting. "The Singularity is a new religion - and a particularly kooky one at that," says Jaron Lanier, a top
computer scientist who pioneered the realm
ofvirtual reality. "The Singularity is the coming of the Messiah, heaven on Earth, the Armageddon, the end of times. And fanatics always think that the end of time comes in their own lifetime." Kurzweil shrugs off such criticism: He has the self-confidence ofa man who is used
to being so far ahead ofthe curve that others can't see where he's headed. The only time he falters is when het asked ifhe could be wrong about the
Singularity. For a moment he stares blankly into space, as ifreceiving an otherworidly transmission. But he's actuallyjust crunching numbers, mentally double-checking his complex calculaDavro KusnNnx, aregular RS contributor, is the author of 'Levittoun," the story of the legendary suburb's f,rst black familg. 58 . RoLLTNG SroNE, FEBRUARY 19, 2OOg
ofthe deep per-
comes back to the shadowy portrait that looms over the desk in his offce in suburban Boston. The middle-aged man in the
painting shares Kurzweils eyes and receding hairline: his late father, Fredric. "i have 50 boxes of his things at home -
his letters and music and bills and doctoral
thesis," Kurzweil says. "He was a pack rat like me." As a boy growing up in Queens in the 195Os, Ray worked hard to please his father. An acclaimed composer from Vienna, Fredric began giving Ray piano lessons at age six. But Ray already had another obsession: invention. While other kids were out playing stickball, Kurzweil sat in bed reading books \ike Tom SaijI in the Car:es of Nuclear Fire - dusty copies ofwhich now line his desk between two feline bookends. It wasnt just the giant robots and atomic earth blasters that sparked his imagination - it was the nascent promise they offered to a geeky young kid. "The moral of the tales was simple," Kurzweil later u,rote. "There is no problem so great that it cannot be overcome through application ofcreative humanthought. Thatsimple paradigmhas animated ail my subsequent endeavors." Encouraged by his father, Ray spent his weekends
troliing for spare parts in junky
electronics stores in Manhattan, building backyard rockets and eventually learning to code on a computer. Their relationship was both lovingly paternal and chummily nerdy. "We talked a lot about the nature of music and mathematical structure, and the fact that computers and music had nat-
ural affinity to each other," Kurzweil recalls, glancing up at the portrait over his desk. "He said, 'Somedayyou'll get involved
synthetic music. using computers.' He recognized that eventually computers couid do a betterjob." In 1965, taking his father's prophecy to heart, the 16-year-old inventor appeared as a guest on the game show 1 oe Got a Secret. The gawky young Ray appeared in a stiff suit playing a dissonant song on a piano; the secret was that the tune had been composed by a computer program he created. The music-composition program won him first place in the International Science Fair, and the first ofseveral invitations to the White House. But today, 4,4, years later, what Kurzweil remembers is not the accolades but howpleased the invention made his dad. "He was proud, because it stemmed from the conversation we had," he says. "I'm glad he got to be able to see that." Kurzweil's voice trails offfor a moment. "But I'm sorrv he didn't get to see ihe synthesizer work i did in the Eighties," he adds. His father did live long enough to see Ray accepted by MIT, the university that was i
z
n creal ing
; tr
I si
; a
d
E
pioneering artificial intelligence. Even in
gives another 20 presentations all over the
such abrainiacwonderland, Kurzweil stood
him the Phantom,"
world without leaving his oIfice - thanks to an invention (not his) called the Teleportec Teleporter, which beams a holographic Kurzweil behind a distant podium with eerie precision. "Even though it's not as compelling as what virtual reality will be in the future, it does look pretty realis-
enlightenment by other means. "LSD was a pretty imperfect technology because you couldnt control it,"he says. "Thatwasntmy idea of transcendence." For Kurzweil, the more compelling revolution of the 196os rvas in microcomputers. Every year, he observed, IBM was reieasing smallerbutmore powerful machines. Kurzweil became obsessed with howto exploit them. During his sophomoreyear,hecreatedacomputerprogram to match high school kids with colleges that suited their profiles. Kurzweil sold the idea for $100.ooo. plus royalties. He ended up spending most of the money on medical bills. Kurzweil's father was dying ofheart disease, and nothing seemed to help - cutting sait, losing weight, taking
tic," he says. "People have been fooled." As a kid, Kurzweii loved magic, and theres abit ofshtickto his current routine. At one point, he reaches into his suit pocket and reveals his latest invention: the Mobile Reader, a cel\rhone version ofhis reading devicefortheblind, which was released last year. After installingthe software on a camera phone, a blind person can simply snap a photo ofa street sign or menu, then hear a computerized voice read the text back. Business travelers can also aim it at a Spanish menu in Barcelona and hear an automatic translation. To demonstrate, Kurzweil aims his phone at an open copy ofhis book The Singularity Is Near and snaps a photo. Seconds later, the phonebegins to readthe text in a robotic voice: "If all the AI systems in the world suddenly stopped functioning, our economic infrastructure would grindto ahalt. Your bank would cease doing business. Most
out: His goal, he announced, was to make the deafhear, the blind see and the handicapped walk. His frat brothers gave Kurzlveii a nickname for his habit of disappearing to tinker on some invention. '.We called says his roommate, Aaron Kleiner. "But he was also the social chairman of the fraternity. He was never around, but he could organize a great party'' While his classmates were turning on to Timothy Leary, Kurzweil sought cosmic
know what technology will be on the market by the time his product is released. To calculate what s ahead, Kurzweil extrapolates from historicai data. By charting microprocessor clock speeds since 1975, for example, he found they were doubling every three years. "It's like skeet-shooting," he says. "Things are moving very quickly." Kurzweil proved himself an astonishinglygood shot - so good, in fact, thathebegan to make sweeping predictions about politics and society. During the 198os, he correctlypredicted the fall ofthe Soviet Union due to decentralized technologies, the rise
ofthe Internet and the ubiquity ofwireless networks. He announced that a computer would be a world chess champion by 1998 - a reality that occurred in May 1992 when Deep Blue defeated Gary Kasparov. "There's something inexorable about these progressions," Kurzweil says. "We realiycan
predict
- not exactly whats going to hap-
pen, but the power ofthese technoiogies." Then one day, as hewas plotting the time between innovations from the wheei to the Worid Wide Web, Kurzweil made a discovery: Technological change is accelerating at a far more rapid pace than we understand. Atthe current rate, he wrote, "We wont experience 1oo years ofprogress in the 21st
of all rnatter, Kurzweil predicts, turning rocks and trees into liwing cornputers. "'We won't experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century - it will be rnore like 20,000 years of progress. vitamin E. In 1970, Fredric died of a heart attack at the age of58. When Kurzweil speaks about his father, his words come slowly, and he talks of his loss in abstract terms. "Death represents the loss of knowledge and information," he says, kneading his hands. 'A person is a mind file. A person is a software program a very profound one, and we have no backup. So when our hardware dies, our soft-
-
ware dies with it." Just after graduating from college, Kurzweil was looking for a way to bring his father back to life. "I ve made an issue of overcoming death," he says.'And the strongest experience I ve had rv'ith death is as a tragedy."
transportation rvould be crippled. Most communications would fail. . . . Of course. our A I sysiems are not sma rt enough - yel - to organize such a conspiracy." The crowd erupts in applause - notjust
for the invention but for Kurzweil's artful segue to the topic about which they all wantto hear. The idea ofsuperhuman intelligence - intelligence that comes when humans merge with machines - is not new. It dates back to the 195os, when mathematician John von Neumann observed that the ever-faster pace of technology would reach "some essential singularity in the history
of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could not continue." By 1993, sci-fi novelist Vernor Vinge was pre-
ATER THAT EVENING,
dicting that "within 30 years, we will have
nearby Cambridge,
the technoiogical means to create superhu-
standing-room-only crowd of computer sci-
man intelligence. " But the Singularity still seemed like something out ofthe Tom Swift books Kurzweil read as a child. "It wasnt very quantified," he says. "It was more impressionistic. It neededto be fleshed out, so that's what I sought to do."
in a
entists crams into the Broad Institute Auditorium at MIT. Kurzweil gives about 60 presentations each year to everyone from nursing executives to game developers, earning as much as $3o,ooo a pop for showing up in person. He also
Kurzweil had already been forecasting technology for years. Itt an essential part of any inventor's trade, because he has to
century - it will be more like 2o,0oo years ofprogress." The rapidly decreasing cost of technology, he predicted, coupled with the exponentially increasing power of computers, will lead inevitablyto a single moment: +ho einorrlqri+rr
The takeoff starts with computers embeddingthemseives - from GPS systems to iPhones - into the fabric ofour lives. Then, loyears from now, computing pon'erwill finally catch up with our brains. For $1,ooo, you'll be able to store as much memory on a chip as you can inyourhead. By 2O3O,arlificial intelligence will make computerized voices on telephone help lines as realisticsounding as anyhuman s (think HAL from 2Oo1).Yirttal realities - projected directly onto your retinas - will become indistinguishable from your own. Kurzu.eil compares this leap to when humans learned how to fly. "Once we figured out the secret to flight - the subtle scientific principles we created the world of aviation," he says. "Once we can build and create inteliigence that doesn't have the limitations of our brain, there's nothing it cant do." But the eventrippier stuffhappens in the 2o3os, when nanobots - microscopic ma-
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F' ffi.,
T
'i:,j:.
SINGULARITY
'a
chines built from molecular components start to infi ltrate your everydaylife. "Nano-
bots in our physical bodies
will destroy
pathogens, remove debris, repair DNAand reverse aging," Kurzweii predicts. "We will be able to redesign all the systems in our bodies and brains to be far more caoable and durable." By scanning ihe contents of yourbrain, nanobots will be able to transfer everything you know, everything you have ever experienced, into a robot or a virtualreality program. If something happens to your physical body, no problem. Your mind will live on - forever. But as computer intelligence surpasses that of humans, machines will also make
smarter andsmarterversions ofthemselves - without any help from us. After 2045, Kurzweil predicts, nanobots will replicate and spread throughout the tiniest recesses ofmatter, transformingthe host - say, atree or a stone - into a computational device. He calls this intelligence-infested matter "computronium, which is matter and energy organized at optimum levelfor computation. Using nanotechnology, we're going to turn a rock into a computer." As the nanobots spread computer intelligence beyond our planet, the universe itself will awaken as if a giant switch is finaliy being turned on. "The universe is not conscious - yet," Kurzweil has written. "But it will be." Ofcourse, all this begs the central question: What happens to us? If we're just dis-
embodied computer programs, why will the superintelligent machines even bother to keep us around at all? As the MIT lecture ends, a graying professor stands up in the back and asks Kurzweil if humans will eventually become obsolete. Kurzweil pushes up his glasses and steps forward on the stage. He replies with almost blas6 matter-of-factness. "If we fail to extend our physical and mental capabilities rvith ourtechnology, we could become obsolete," he says. "But that, in fact, is what rve've always been doing with our machines. We routinely perform intellectual feats thatwould notbe possible without our machines." Kurzweil slips outhis cellphone andholds it up. "It's now in your pockets, and it will make its way into our bodies and brain," he concludes. All of human progress, he suggests, hasbeen movingtowardthe moment when we merge with technology, when all of our BlackBerries and Facebook pages and instant messages and Wiis become fully integrated with humanity. Given how much time we already spend staring into screens and interacting with computers, the future he predicts doesnt seem that far off. "We'll extend rvho we are and become smarter," Kurzweil tells the crowd. "That is the nature of technology. We are a humanmachine eivilization. We wont be able to say humans on the right and machines on the left. We're not obsolescing ourselves w e' r e e xten din g ourselves." 60 . RoLLTNG SroNn, FnenueRy 19, 2OO9
OT EVERYONE IS AS
proceeds to wipe outthe entire human race
optimistic about the Singularity as Kurzweil. Indeed, anyone
in a matter ofhours. This prospect is being taken seriously in high places.Arecent congressional studyby the Joint Economic Committee titied "The Future Is Coming SoonerThanYou Think" warns that "whether or not one believes in the Singularity, it is difficultto overestimate
who has ever watched Ihe Terminator or read Isaac Asimov's classic Robot Series knows the terrifying scenarios in which intelligent machines come to dominate the human race. Bill Joy, the cofounder of Sun Microsystems, was deeply spooked when he spoke with Kurzweil at a technology conference in 1998. "I had always felt sentient robots were in the realm of science fiction," he recalled. "But now, from someone I respected, I was hearing a strong argument that they were a nearterm possibilitl'. I rvas taken aback, especially given Ray's proven ability to imagine and create the future."
Joyt response came in a 2OOO essay in Wiredtitled"The Future Doesnt Need Us." In it, Joy cites a grim vision ofa planet devoured by tiny, self-replicating nanobots that decide humans are in the way: "They could spread like blowing pollen, replicate swiftly, and reduce the biosphere to dust in a mal.ter ofdays."VernorVinge envisions an arms race for superhuman power, in which competing nations ultimately surrender "all human control and judgment" to aTerminaforlike version of SkyNet - r,vhich then
nanotechnology's 1ike1y implications for society." Even Kurzweil acknowledges the potential risk of superintelligent machines he has taken the time to quantify the danger. "How long would it take an out-of-
- and
control replicating nanobot to destroy the Earth's biomass?"he asks. The answer: only about a couple ofmonths.
Others doubt that the Singularity will happen in Kurzweils time frame, if at all. Thomas Ray, a renowned biologist who has developed some of the most compelling simulations of artificial life, insists that computers will never be advanced enough to reach the Singularity. "I dont see engineers sitting attheir desks at Microsoftprogramming software thats intelligent," he notes. "They're strugglingjust to keep the operating system from collapsing." Lanier, the virtual-reality pioneer, boils the problem dor.vn to seven words: "The Singularity won't happen because software sucks." Others believe that even the greatest advances in technology will not lead to
anything approaching fully conscious machines. "I'm very impressed by Rays work on speech recognition, music synthesis and other existingtechnologies," says Peter Nor-
vig, director ofresearch at Google. "But I have await-and-see reaction to some of his other futurist ideas. I dont think there's a
direcLlink between CPU processing power and the ability to simulate human brains. I have no idea whether it will ever be possible to upload a mind/personality/consciousness into another machine/body, nor whethersuch a thingwould experience consciousness in the same or similar way." John Searle, a noted philosopher who is critical of artificial intelligence, puts it more succinctly. "I think the Singularity is demonstrably bullshit," he says. "But that doesnt alter the fact that it's very thrilling." Some colleagues wonder privately if Kurzweil evenbelieves his own predictions. There are whispers about the seemingly convenient timing ofthe Singularity - that it will happen just in time for Kurzweil to live forever. Although Kurzweil is too lowkey and reasoned to be a fanatic, he doesnt deny the religious implications of promising eternal life. In his book, he even pokes fun at the notion by posing with an endtimes sandwich board that reads trrr srx-
cur-ARrry rs Nnan, Once you come to terms
with the exponential power oftechnology, youbecomewhathe calls aSingularitarian.
now I'11 be /5," he says, "but I expect to be biologically 4,O." Kurzweil - who markets Ray and Terry's Longevity Products, a line ofnutritional supplements he developed with an anti-aging specialist - takes his pills throughout the day: on the go, during meals, at the office. "This is awake-up call for mybaby-boomer peers," he says. "Most have a conventional
concept
oflife span: They think they're
going to work a few more years and retire and
notlivethatlong. Iftheycanbe more ag-
gressive, they can actuallybe quite healthy. In another 15 years, we get to the tipping point." Bythen, hesays, we'llhavethe means
to reverse-engineer "the information processes underlying biology" - giving us the power to ensure our immortality.
HILB
KURZ-
weil is alive and well, he's busy
making plans for the future. First, he's taking steps to make sure that some larger catastrophe doesnt do away with us all before the Singularity arrives. Working as an adviser for the U.S. Army, he is designing a rapid-response system for new biological viruses. The good news, he says, is that we now have the abilitv to determine the DNA code of a
When I ask how exactly they'Il extract the knowledge from his brain, Kurzweil bristles, as if the answer should be obvious: "Just send nanobots into mybrain and reconstruct my recollections and memories." The machines will capture everything: the piggyback ride to agrocery store, the bedtime re ading of Tom Suifi, the moment he and his father rejoiced when the letter of acceptance from MIT arrived. To provide the nanobots with even more
infor-
mation, Kurzweil is safeguardingthe boxes ofhis dad's mementos, so the artificial intelligence has as much data as possibie from which to reconstruct him. Father 2.o could take many forms, he says, from a virtualreality avatar to a fully functioning robot. Kurzweil is less eager to discuss the possibility of his own reconstitution - should allhis supplements and exercise fail tokeep him alive until the Singularity arrives. "Uh, yeah," he says, "that would be a setback." In the worst-case scenario, he says, some
great artificial intelligence will harvest DNA from his cryogenically preserved body and comb through his cat statues and Jefferson Starship records to bring him back to life. Kurzweil concedes that New Ray may not be the same as Old Ray, just as his New Dad may not be the one whose loss he mourns. But he still looks forward to the reunion. "If you can do it right, it's worthwhiie," he says. "Ifyou bring back life that
Kurzweilt most ambitious plan is also his rnost personal: He plans to bring his dead father back to life. "Nanobots can extract sorne Dl\A frorn his erave site," he says. "Then they'll get rnernories frorn rny brain and put it all together. "Being a Singularitarian is a view toward
Iife," he says, sounding more evangelist than scientist. "It means you have understood and reflected on how profoundly the world is going to change and what it means for the nature of human beings." And what, I ask, does this understanding mean for you? "It means I'm trying to be healthy," he says. "I'm trying to stay alive. I have a plan
for that."
Kurzweil reaches into his pocket and pulls out a crinkled plastic bag. Inside are several pills and a torn piece ofpaper with the word "Eve," to remind him that these are for nighttime. Every day, he gobbles dozens of nutritional supplements to reprogram his biochemistry - policosanol and grapefruit powder for cholesterol, acetyl-l-carnitine for brain power, fructooligosaccharides for digestion, timethylglycine for blood vessels. Once a week, he gets an intravenous dose ofalphalipoic acid for the antioxidants, and a glutathione IVfor liver health. "Fifteen years from
virus and create an antidote that turns off the bug before it causes problems. "It took five years to sequence HIV," he says. "But we sequenced SARS in 31 days. Now we can sequence a virus in one day, and we're doubling that speed every year."
Kurzweil's most ambitious plan for life after the Singularity, however, is also his most personal: Using technology, he plans to bring his dead father back to life. Kurzweil reveals this to me near the end of our conversation. It's a bright, clear afternoon, and we can see the river that runs behind the trees outside his wide office windows. The portrait of his father looks down over him. In a soft voice, he explains how the resurrection will work. "We can find some of his DNA around his grave site - that's a lot of information right there," he says. "The AI will send down some nanobots and get some bone or teeth and extract some DNA and put it all together. Then they'Il get some information from my brain and anyone else who still remembers him."
was valuable in the past, able in the future."
it should be valu-
For a moment, I recall something Kurzweil told me earlier. If we apply ourselves, he believes, there's no problem we cant solve - even the ultimate problem of death. But in the decades he has spent immersed in these issues, there's one thing he apparentlyhasnt considered: If all this incredible sci-fi shit really does come true, and he has the chance to sit there across from his dad and speakwith him again the first thing hed say?
- whatwouldbe
Kurzweil falls silent. After an awkward pause, he begins speaking as if his father were sitting there in the empty black chair across
from him.
"Remember those conversations we had about creating musicai sound by computer, and howthey could be ultimatelybetter than analog computers?" he tells his dad. "We11, I actually did work on that." Then Kurzweil blinks a coupie of times,
coming out ofhis reverie. "I d dive right into something substantive," he says. @ RoLLING SromB, FssnulRY 19, 2oo9
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