How to Create a Mind | Ray Kurzweil | Talks at Google

How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed

About the book:

In How to Create a Mind, The Secret of Human Thought Revealed, the bold futurist and author of The New York Times bestseller The Singularity Is Near explores the limitless potential of reverse engineering the human brain. Ray Kurzweil is arguably today's most influential—and often controversial—futurist. In How to Create a Mind, Kurzweil presents a provocative exploration of the most important project in human-machine civilization—reverse engineering the brain to understand precisely how it works and using that knowledge to create even more intelligent machines. Kurzweil discusses how the brain functions, how the mind emerges from the brain, and the implications of vastly increasing the powers of our intelligence in addressing the world's problems. He thoughtfully examines emotional and moral intelligence and the origins of consciousness and envisions the radical possibilities of our merging with the intelligent technology we are creating. Certain to be one of the most widely discussed and debated science books of the year, How to Create a Mind is sure to take its place alongside Kurzweil's previous classics.

Early praise for the book:

It is rare to find a book that offers unique and inspiring content on
every page. How To Create A Mind achieves that and more. Ray has a
way of tackling seemingly overwhelming challenges with any army of
reason, in the end convincing the reader that it is within our reach
to create non-biological intelligence that will soar past our own.
This is a visionary work that is also accessible and entertaining.

-Rafael Reif, President of MIT

Kurzweil's new book on the mind is magnificent, timely, and solidly
argued!! His best so far!

-Marvin Minsky, Co-founder of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab

One of the eminent AI pioneers, Ray Kurzweil, has created a new book
to explain the true nature of intelligence, both biological and
non-biological. The book describes the human brain as a machine that
can understand hierarchical concepts ranging from the form of a chair
to the nature of humor. His important insights emphasize the key role
of learning both in the brain and AI. He provides a credible roadmap
for achieving the goal of super human intelligence which will be
necessary to solve the grand challenges of humanity.

-Raj Reddy, founder, Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon
University

If you have ever wondered about how your mind works, read this book.
Kurzweil's insights reveal key secrets underlying human thought and
our ability to recreate it. This is an eloquent and thought-provoking
work.

-Dean Kamen, founder of FIRST

About the Author

Ray Kurzweil has been described as "the restless genius" by the Wall
Street Journal, and "the ultimate thinking machine" by Forbes. Inc. magazine ranked him #8 among entrepreneurs in the United States, calling him the "rightful heir to Thomas Edison," and PBS included Ray as one of 16 "revolutionaries who made America," along with other inventors of the past two centuries.

As one of the leading inventors of our time, Kurzweil was the
principal developer of the first CCD flat-bed scanner, the first omni-font optical character recognition, the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, the first text-to-speech synthesizer, the first music synthesizer capable of recreating the grand piano and other orchestral instruments, and the first commercially marketed large-vocabulary
speech recognition. His website Kurzweil AI.net has more than one
million readers.

Among Kurzweil's many honors, he is the recipient of the $500,000 MIT-Lemelson Prize, the world's largest for innovation. In 1999, he received the National Medal of Technology, the nation's highest honor in technology, from President Clinton in a White House ceremony. And in 2002, he was inducted into the National Inventor's Hall of Fame, established by the US Patent Office. He has received 19 honorary Doctorates and honors from three U.S. presidents. Kurzweil is the author of five books, four of which have been national best sellers.
The Age of Spiritual Machines has been translated into nine languages. His last book, The Singularity is Near, was a New York Times-best seller and has been translated into eight languages.

This talk was hosted by Boris Debic on behalf of Authors at Google.