There was an odd but interesting combination of fireside chats at DEMOFall this year: Ray Kurzweil and Ev Williams both took the stage over the course of the 2.5 day event in Santa Clara, CA.
Kurzweil, known for his work in voice recognition, natural language processing, singularity and future predictions, I’m always curious to hear what he’s going to share, especially when he moves onto the brain.
Says Ray in a response to the question of why natural language processing has taken so long to advance”
“You have to take a hierarchial approach just like human language – you have to build it that way.”
“We learn things layer by layer and we have to educate our synthetic neocortexes too.”
When you start to dive deep into a discussion about synthetic neocortexes, where do you go from there, particularly when the majority of the audience are Web 2.0 and mobile geeks not scientists or researchers.
Venture Beat’s Matt Marshall interviewed Ray, his next to last stage interview before leaving the DEMO Conferences as producer.
Matt asked about ethics, which was a perfect segway into artificial intelligence. You can’t have a discussion with Ray without artificial intelligence coming up at least once.
“Technology has always been a double edged sword,” says Ray. “Just like fire has been used for good and evil, AI can be as dangerous as fire when put in the wrong hands.” He reminded the audience that AI is already widely distributed however and that it’s not just being used in a dark lab in some government building.
And, look how far we’ve come. A kid in Africa now has access to more knowledge and information than the President of the United States did 20 years ago. If that’s not an example of exponential growth, I don’t know what is…
See below for the interview on video. He talks about mapping the human brain, the continuing evolution of technology and continued rise of artificial intelligence.
Renee Blodgett is the founder of We Blog the World. The site combines the magic of an online culture and travel magazine with a global blog network and has contributors from every continent in the world. Having lived in 10 countries and explored nearly 80, she is an avid traveler, and a lover, observer and participant in cultural diversity.
She is also the CEO and founder of Magic Sauce Media, a new media services consultancy focused on viral marketing, social media, branding, events and PR. For over 20 years, she has helped companies from 12 countries get traction in the market. Known for her global and organic approach to product and corporate launches, Renee practices what she pitches and as an active user of social media, she helps clients navigate digital waters from around the world. Renee has been blogging for over 16 years and regularly writes on her personal blog Down the Avenue, Huffington Post, BlogHer, We Blog the World and other sites. She was ranked #12 Social Media Influencer by Forbes Magazine and is listed as a new media influencer and game changer on various sites and books on the new media revolution. In 2013, she was listed as the 6th most influential woman in social media by Forbes Magazine on a Top 20 List.
Her passion for art, storytelling and photography led to the launch of Magic Sauce Photography, which is a visual extension of her writing, the result of which has led to producing six photo books: Galapagos Islands, London, South Africa, Rome, Urbanization and Ecuador.
Renee is also the co-founder of Traveling Geeks, an initiative that brings entrepreneurs, thought leaders, bloggers, creators, curators and influencers to other countries to share and learn from peers, governments, corporations, and the general public in order to educate, share, evaluate, and promote innovative technologies.
