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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.

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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With

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Speaker 1: tech stuff from how stuff works dot com. This podcast

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Speaker 1: is brought to you by Audible dot com, the Internet's

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Speaker 1: leading provider of spoken word entertainment. Get a free audio

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Speaker 1: book download of your choice when you sign up today.

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Speaker 1: Log onto audible podcast dot com slash stuff today for details.

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Speaker 1: Here there, everybody, welcome to the podcast. My name is

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Speaker 1: Chris Poulett. I'm an editor here at How Stuff Works.

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Speaker 1: And next to me, as always is senior writer Jonathan Strickland.

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Speaker 1: How do folks? And uh, we're going to continue our series,

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Speaker 1: this being the second series, so I guess technically it's

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Speaker 1: not a serious yet we have to have one more,

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Speaker 1: okay unless you're the Braves in case those two games

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Speaker 1: are winning streak. Now, Um, we're going to talk about

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Speaker 1: some uh, some famous tech people here and there in

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Speaker 1: our podcasts, and today we have chosen to speak of Ray.

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Speaker 1: That's right, Ray Kurtzwile. Uh and if you haven't heard

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Speaker 1: the name before, um, shame on you. No, No, We're

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Speaker 1: we're gonna fix that. We'll start off slow. I want

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Speaker 1: to talk about kind of his entry into the whole

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Speaker 1: tech world. He was interested in computers back when computers

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Speaker 1: were pretty much brand new. Yeah, we're talking punch cards. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and um uh he was known for being he was

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Speaker 1: one of the people first people who was really interested

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Speaker 1: in artificial intelligence for computers. Um, starting off with simple

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Speaker 1: pattern recognition, where you could teach a computer to recognize

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Speaker 1: a pattern of information and identify it and respond when

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Speaker 1: it detects that pattern. Uh. And one of the famous

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Speaker 1: first attempts that he made was a program that he

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Speaker 1: created for a computer where it could um analyze classical

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Speaker 1: music and look at all the different uh features of

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Speaker 1: classical music from famous composers, and then compose music itself

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Speaker 1: based upon the information that it gleaned by looking at

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Speaker 1: this music. And uh. He actually went on a kind

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Speaker 1: of a goofy little game show where they played this

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Speaker 1: music and they had the contestants had to guess that

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Speaker 1: it was the computer that made it. But anyway, I

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Speaker 1: just thought it was kind of cool that he created

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Speaker 1: this computer program in the first place. You know, I

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Speaker 1: gotta say it's a classic game show. It was I've

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Speaker 1: Got a Secret with with Ray Allen and his host

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Speaker 1: and uh, I just did point out this was in

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Speaker 1: ve and he was in high school when he was

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Speaker 1: on national TV doing this with a computer program that

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Speaker 1: he had created that that did that had this pattern

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Speaker 1: recognition ability. That's pretty amazing. That's pretty awesome, I gotta

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Speaker 1: say so. But that's just the very beginning of his

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Speaker 1: amazing career. Oh yeah, yeah. Um. He went on to

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Speaker 1: UH to work at m I T yep UM and

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Speaker 1: there he actually created a program that would try to

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Speaker 1: match kids and colleges together for the best fit and

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Speaker 1: not necessarily hit with the parents. No, because it left

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Speaker 1: out some pretty important schools. It seemed it didn't seem

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Speaker 1: to recommend certain big name schools like Harvard and Yale.

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Speaker 1: Is there a call, Yes, well, you know, if you're

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Speaker 1: suited for Podunk Community College. It was going to tell

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Speaker 1: you the truth, right right. But he sold that business

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Speaker 1: and made the tidy profit. I think it was for

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Speaker 1: about a hundred thousand dollars, which is a good chunk

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Speaker 1: of change. And uh, that was not the first time

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Speaker 1: that he founded a company and then later sold it.

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Speaker 1: In fact, he's kind of made a career of that.

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Speaker 1: Speaking of pattern recognition, we've noticed as we were doing

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Speaker 1: the research for Mr Kurtzwild that he has sold off

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Speaker 1: several of his companies, and I think all of them

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Speaker 1: are still in existence in some form. All the all

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Speaker 1: of the four major companies are still operating in some

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Speaker 1: form or another. That's a good that's a good h

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Speaker 1: that's not a bad track record at all. And you

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Speaker 1: look at the companies that are around these days and

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Speaker 1: which ones aren't around. So yeah, In nineteen seventy four

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Speaker 1: he founded UH, the Kurtswild Computer Products Incorporated Company UM

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Speaker 1: and that was one where again pattern recognition came into play.

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Speaker 1: That's where he was looking at ways for computers to

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Speaker 1: recognize printed text and UH to be able to actually

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Speaker 1: read that printed text. So this came in very handy

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Speaker 1: for people who are visually impaired. You could have a

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Speaker 1: computer that could when when you scanned a sheet of

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Speaker 1: paper that text on, it could interpret that text UM

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Speaker 1: and read it back. And and this is trickier than

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Speaker 1: you would first think. I mean you might think, oh, well,

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Speaker 1: you just have to teach it. One A looks like

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Speaker 1: you can't just teach a computer. One A looks like

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Speaker 1: you have to teach it, teach it. What a times

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Speaker 1: New Roman A an aerial A, A comic sans A

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Speaker 1: a handwritten A. I mean no, you know, not all

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Speaker 1: a's are created equally. And you had to do this

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Speaker 1: for every single letter. It had to be able to

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Speaker 1: interpret on the fly sometimes because you don't always have

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Speaker 1: the most clean copy of text either. Um. So Kurt's

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Speaker 1: well dedicate a lot of time and energy into perfecting this,

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Speaker 1: and um he got a lot of attention for it. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: You might know this technology by by its initials O

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Speaker 1: c R, which is optical character recognition. And you say, oh, yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's the uh, that's the system they use on my

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Speaker 1: flatbed scanner. Well, funny you should mention that because, as

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Speaker 1: Jonathan pointed out, this is this is a very useful

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Speaker 1: thing for people who can't see because, um, a suggestion

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Speaker 1: came in from a visually impaired person and said, you know,

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Speaker 1: it'd be really cool if you could use this for that.

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Speaker 1: And so they invented the flatbed scanner and a text

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Speaker 1: to speech program to work together with this optical character

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Speaker 1: recognition and do exactly that. And it ended up being

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Speaker 1: called the kurtswhile Reading Machine, which debuted in January of

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Speaker 1: seventy six. And uh, that that you know there was

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Speaker 1: a reasonably well known fan of that system. Oh wait,

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Speaker 1: I think I know who you're talking about, not Wondering, No,

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Speaker 1: I now I know Stevie Wonder. Stevie Wonder. I did

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Speaker 1: read that. I was thinking, you know, I think I

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Speaker 1: know who said that. But and you know, Stevie Wonder

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Speaker 1: was he was the first customer, wasn't it he about

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Speaker 1: the first one. He bought the very first one. And

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Speaker 1: and just this a note before, you know, let Jonathan

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Speaker 1: get back on that. But when I started, we were

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Speaker 1: talking about ideas for people, famous people. Um I kurs

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Speaker 1: Wild has been on on my reading list for a while.

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Speaker 1: He has several books out. We'll talk about that in

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Speaker 1: a minute. But um, I thought, you know, that's the

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Speaker 1: guy who makes the musical instruments. Well, this is the

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Speaker 1: start of all that. When he became friends with Stevie

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Speaker 1: Wonder as a result of developing this reading machine, they

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Speaker 1: developed a partnership for music. Uh you know, which we'll

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Speaker 1: talk about a minute. But that's where I knew him from,

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Speaker 1: was the musical instrument. So delving into his past, he's

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Speaker 1: got all these different things that he's done. It's just

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Speaker 1: a personal note. Sorry, no, no no, no, look, I think

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Speaker 1: I think we should just keep on building on that. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and and he he founded h kurts Wild Music and U.

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Speaker 1: Together with Stevie Wonder, he managed to create a synthesizer

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Speaker 1: that sounded more like a an actual piano than any

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Speaker 1: synthesizer up to that time. And in fact, in blind tests,

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Speaker 1: many musicians could not tell the difference between the synthesizer

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Speaker 1: and a real grand piano um which of course was

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Speaker 1: a huge, huge achievement because up to that point computer

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Speaker 1: instruments sounded a lot like a craft work record, right,

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Speaker 1: computer instruments, I was gonna say they sounded they sounded

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Speaker 1: did They sounded artificial? They did not sound natural at all.

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Speaker 1: So Kurtswild really made some some great progress into U

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Speaker 1: into breaking that barrier so that you could have a

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Speaker 1: more natural sound coming from a digital instrument. Yep, and UH.

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Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, that company got sold They

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Speaker 1: actually created Kurtzwild Music Systems, and that company got sold

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Speaker 1: off to uh UM, Asian company called Young Chang Um

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Speaker 1: and it's still doing business. He was actually a consultant

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Speaker 1: for a while. Apparently is no longer, but he's got

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Speaker 1: some other stuff he's done. Um, you know, like speech recognition.

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Speaker 1: For example, he came up with the first large vocabulary

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Speaker 1: speech recognition system. Yeah, you might be sensing a pattern here,

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Speaker 1: pattern recognition. Hey. Now instead of text, he's looking at speech.

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Speaker 1: This was part of the kurts While Applied Intelligence initiative

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Speaker 1: that you made. Um, yeah, it's uh so once again,

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Speaker 1: he's looking at ways that computers and people interact, trying

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Speaker 1: to break those barriers down as much as possible so

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Speaker 1: that the interaction becomes very natural and almost to the

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Speaker 1: point ideally, you get to the point where you're not

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Speaker 1: even conscious of the interface anymore. It's just it just happens.

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Speaker 1: And of course we're we're miles away from that right now,

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Speaker 1: but it's because of things like like the speech recognition

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Speaker 1: and the text recognition that Kurtswhile worked on, that we're

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Speaker 1: making progress toward that goal. True. So yes, And speaking

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Speaker 1: of print to speech, there was another company founded, Chris

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Speaker 1: Wild Educational Systems. Yet yet another program, and there were

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Speaker 1: a whole bunch of other little things that he's done.

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Speaker 1: They're just fascinating. Um fat cat, for example, I thought

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Speaker 1: it was really cool using a computer algorithms to predict

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Speaker 1: the patterns of the markets, right, you would you're essentially

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Speaker 1: trying to create a a an artificially intelligent stock market trader,

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Speaker 1: So you would you would follow the the guidance of

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Speaker 1: an artificially intelligent you know, I've met some stock market traders.

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Speaker 1: I would suggest that a lot of their intelligence is

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Speaker 1: completely artificial. So I don't see this as a big stretch. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's the whole thing is it's not really their fault.

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Speaker 1: The markets just do what the markets do. You wonder, like,

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Speaker 1: can you program in that kind of intuition? I am

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Speaker 1: very curious as to how fat cat performs actually, because

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Speaker 1: uh so much of the stock market is beyond just

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Speaker 1: just logic. I mean, you have to you have to

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Speaker 1: take in so many factors into account, just crowds ecology

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Speaker 1: for one. We're we're seeing right now in the markets

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Speaker 1: where they're bouncing up and down, that that as people

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Speaker 1: gain confidence and lose confidence, so goes the market. And

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Speaker 1: you know, it's kind of hard to just predict that

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Speaker 1: all on its own. Yeah, I think we probably have

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Speaker 1: all experienced in proof of that. Wise, Right, let's let's

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Speaker 1: not think of our ferro One case at the moment,

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Speaker 1: showing um other things Mr Kurtzwil has been involved with,

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Speaker 1: you know, the Medical Learning Company which has a patent

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Speaker 1: for online doctor training. Yeah. Um, and uh, the Kurtswild

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Speaker 1: cyber Art, which is a digital art software company that

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Speaker 1: apparently no longer has its program available for download. But

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Speaker 1: essentially it was tricking your computer into drawing things for you,

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Speaker 1: which was kind of cool. I think it was more

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Speaker 1: of a just a messing around type thing, but um,

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Speaker 1: messed around with some other stuff. I know that if

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Speaker 1: you go to the Kurtswild ai uh site, he has

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Speaker 1: a was it roberta the artificially intelligent creature that you

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Speaker 1: can ask it questions and answers. I played with that

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Speaker 1: a little bit before the podcast and uh, and it's

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Speaker 1: definitely not up to the touring test just yet. But um,

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Speaker 1: but you know, you can see where where his interests are.

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Speaker 1: In fact, we should probably talk about that as kurtswell

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Speaker 1: is is. You know, we're talking about a lot of

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Speaker 1: his past accomplishments, but you might be saying, well, what's

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Speaker 1: he up to today? He's right on the forefront of

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Speaker 1: all the people who are talking about something that, um, well,

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Speaker 1: you might call it a convergence. You might call it

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Speaker 1: the singularity. But it's this idea of reaching a point

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Speaker 1: where we have artificially intelligent machines. He likes to call

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Speaker 1: it accelerated intelligence, UM, but artificially intelligent machines that can

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Speaker 1: create new, smarter, artificially intelligent machines. And we just reached

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Speaker 1: this point where it becomes is the tipping point really

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Speaker 1: where innovation comes at at shorter and shorter gaps, so

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Speaker 1: eventually get to a point where it's just con stantly innovation,

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Speaker 1: and no one really knows what that's going to look like. UM.

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Speaker 1: And Uh, he's one of the people who really is

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Speaker 1: is kind of a proponent of this idea. UM. He's

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Speaker 1: talked about the singularity many times, and it seems very

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Speaker 1: very enthusiastic about it, UM, as opposed to some people

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Speaker 1: who are really scared of it. Yeah, that's that's true. Um.

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Speaker 1: The singularity was actually proposed some time back by a

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Speaker 1: mathematician named John von Newman. UM. And he was saying,

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Speaker 1: you know, this is a point after which human affairs

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Speaker 1: cannot continue as normal. That's short of vague description. Verner VINGI, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: this is an article that that Jonathan just wrote not

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Speaker 1: too long ago. UM, he was talking about the possibility

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Speaker 1: that machines will become artificially intelligent and you know, design

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Speaker 1: venter machines and decide we're irrelevant and that you know,

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Speaker 1: we should just go away right or the other out

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Speaker 1: of the coin. He doesn't say that that's necessarily what

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Speaker 1: would happen. Um. He does say that no matter what,

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Speaker 1: our lives will be completely different, and to the point

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Speaker 1: where it's almost it's almost pointless to try and imagine

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Speaker 1: what our lives will be like because there's no way

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Speaker 1: of knowing right now. But we it could be the opposite.

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Speaker 1: We could be living in a paradise where machines are

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Speaker 1: doing everything we need them to do for us. Um.

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Speaker 1: We don't have to do anything for ourselves, and we

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Speaker 1: can pretty much spend our lives just you know, learning

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Speaker 1: new things or uh, pursuing art or fooling around, you know,

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Speaker 1: whatever happens to be your your purpose for life. You

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Speaker 1: don't necessarily have to clock in and clock out every

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Speaker 1: day because machines are doing it for you. Um. I'm

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Speaker 1: sure that psychologists and psychiatrists will still be in great demand.

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Speaker 1: Doctors will probably still be in demand. I mean, there's

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Speaker 1: farmers definitely I mean, some things humans will probace still

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Speaker 1: have a hand in, although a lot of those tasks,

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Speaker 1: even in those fields, will be automated by machines according

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Speaker 1: to this vision. And I even get to a point

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Speaker 1: where we don't even need them anymore, perhaps our consciousness

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Speaker 1: will merge with some sort of computer network, which sounds

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Speaker 1: really far out right now. But these are the kind

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Speaker 1: of things that hurts Weill and and Verne as I'll

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Speaker 1: like to call him talk about. I mean, they they

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Speaker 1: they are not outside the realm of possibility in their minds. Well, yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's it's funny, uh, that you said that, because I

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Speaker 1: was going to point out that Ray kurtzwill is believe

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Speaker 1: that this is actually going to be a good thing. Um,

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Speaker 1: And instead of being the end of human conscious consciousness,

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Speaker 1: thank you. Um, it's actually kind of be that the

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Speaker 1: start of something really cool where it's going to prolong

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Speaker 1: human consciousness and preserve human consciousness, which is why he's

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Speaker 1: been doing a lot of preparation. An article and Wired

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Speaker 1: earlier in two thousand and eight, Um, I read that

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Speaker 1: he is taking massive doses of vitamin supplements and doing

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Speaker 1: a lot of exercise to try to prolong his life

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Speaker 1: in order to catch up to the singularity so that

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Speaker 1: his consciousness can be among those preserves. He actually he

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Speaker 1: wrote a book about that, in fact, about about living

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Speaker 1: a healthy lifestyle. He was able to uh beat heart

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Speaker 1: disease and diabetes. Diabetes. Yeah, that's pretty serious stuff. So

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Speaker 1: um yeah, he's definitely determined to see this come about.

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Speaker 1: And according to uh to Urn, uh, we should expect

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Speaker 1: it before the year. Say, I think it was a

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Speaker 1: thirty something like that, so so not too far off,

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Speaker 1: I mean, uh. And the whole point on that is

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Speaker 1: just the idea of this development cycle. It's getting shorter

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Speaker 1: and shorter and shorter for us to make more and

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Speaker 1: more powerful machines. Now, whether or not we hit a

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Speaker 1: barrier before we can hit the artificial intelligence slash accelerated

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Speaker 1: intelligence goal post that remains to be seen. We may

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Speaker 1: not be able to achieve it as fast as everyone thinks,

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Speaker 1: because we might actually hit physical limitations on what we

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Speaker 1: can what we can really do, and that could slow

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Speaker 1: us down. Next thing, you know, it might be twenty six.

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Speaker 1: Yeould be really depressing. They're always putting off good stuff

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Speaker 1: like that, you know, when the machines take over. Anyway,

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Speaker 1: the book that I was most interested in was the

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Speaker 1: the age of spiritual machines when human computers exceed human intelligence,

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Speaker 1: and that that sort of gives you an idea of

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Speaker 1: the um the concept that he's got the crush Wells

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Speaker 1: got of what he expects from the singularity in in

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Speaker 1: in the future. So it would be interesting to check out. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: we'll definitely have to keep our eyes on that. You know. Um,

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Speaker 1: I've got something a similar field that Kurt Swell is

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Speaker 1: actually interested in that relates to this that I want

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Speaker 1: to talk about. But before we do, Okay, I'd like

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Speaker 1: to take a moment to thank our sponsor. Yes, so

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Speaker 1: we have our sponsor, audible dot com And if you

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Speaker 1: sign up at www dot audible podcast dot com slash

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Speaker 1: text stuff, you'll get a free download when you when

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Speaker 1: you sign up, you can download any book for free,

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Speaker 1: and they have fifty thousand books on audible dot com.

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Speaker 1: It's a huge library. And we each came up with

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Speaker 1: a an a book to suggest that kind of sort

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Speaker 1: of relates to our topic. Christy, want to you want

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Speaker 1: to go first? Sure, since we were talking about verner VINGI.

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Speaker 1: He is a noted science fiction author and his book

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Speaker 1: Rainbows end is available now at audible podcast dot com.

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Speaker 1: Nice and uh, you know it could be an interesting

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Speaker 1: and worthwhile reading insight into his uh his background there right, mine, mine,

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Speaker 1: I I played a little bit here. Um. I'm also

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Speaker 1: a science fiction fan. But I chose Pattern Recognition by

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Speaker 1: William Gibson. Yeah, so, um, yeah, I wanted to go

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Speaker 1: with neuromancwer but I didn't see that on audible dot com.

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Speaker 1: But they have Pattern Recognition, which is another William Gibson book.

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Speaker 1: It's not actually about the same sort of pattern recognition

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Speaker 1: that Kurt Swell was talking about, but it's a great mystery.

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Speaker 1: But and and it is a good book. It is

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Speaker 1: a good but a real real page turner. Or if

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Speaker 1: you're listening to it on audible dot com, it's an

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Speaker 1: excellent listen. You should definitely listen to it. That could

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Speaker 1: be one of your that could be your free download

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Speaker 1: if you wanted, right, so, you can sign up for

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Speaker 1: that at www dot audible podcast dot com. Slash tech

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Speaker 1: stuff And now let's get back to what I was

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Speaker 1: going to talk about. The technology I was going to

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Speaker 1: talk about. The Kurtswell is very much interested in nanotechnology.

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Speaker 1: It's definitely part of this whole concept of the singularity

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Speaker 1: um building devices that are on the nanoscale, which is

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Speaker 1: incredibly tiny. We're talking like on the atomic level. And uh,

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Speaker 1: nanotechnology is one of those things that probably is going

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Speaker 1: to be necessary in order to achieve these goals. I mean,

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Speaker 1: we're already building transistors that are on the nanoscale. So

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Speaker 1: if you want to learn more about that, I recommend

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Speaker 1: you read How Nanotechnology Works. That's by Jonathan Strickland. Not

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Speaker 1: to toot my own horn, but how Manamail Technology Works.

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Speaker 1: And it's live right now at how stuff works dot

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Speaker 1: com and we'll talk to you again soon. Let us

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Speaker 1: know what you think. Send an email to podcasts at

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Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. Brought to you by the

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