Ray Kurzweil

presidents.

He's authored five national bestsellers, including Singularity is Near and How to Create a Mind.

He proposed the concept of pattern recognition theory of mind, arguing that human neocortex is composed of roughly 300 million hierarchical pattern processors.

That theory became his engineering blueprint.

In 2012, he got his first job.

As the director of engineering at Google with a singular mission, teach machines to understand human language, not just match keywords, but grasp meaning and context.

His team helped build the knowledge graph and advanced semantic search so that when you typed Apple, Google finally understood whether you meant the fruit or tech company.

His arrival helped trigger Google's massive AI talent grab.

Shortly after he joined, Google acquired DeepMind, brought on Geoffrey Hinton, and expanded Google Brain, the research team that brought the Transformer.

His team advanced hierarchical deep learning and natural language understanding, helped shift AI from a niche academic pursuit to the core engine of the world's most powerful information company.

He didn't build a digital mind.

He helped build the foundation for machines that can finally talk back to us.

He's made 147 predictions with an 86% accuracy rate.

And his longstanding prediction that AI would reach human level intelligence by 2029, well, we're here to discuss that.

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Ray Kurzweil to the stage.

All right, right center seat here my friend.

It's been quite the journey.

Yeah, how long has it been?

Oh, God, we met, I think, Martin Rothblatt first introduced us.

Okay, so it's about 20 years.