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Speaker 1: Here there, everybody, welcome to the podcast. My name is
Speaker 1: Chris Poulett. I'm an editor here at How Stuff Works.
Speaker 1: And next to me, as always is senior writer Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: How do folks? And uh, we're going to continue our series,
Speaker 1: this being the second series, so I guess technically it's
Speaker 1: not a serious yet we have to have one more,
Speaker 1: okay unless you're the Braves in case those two games
Speaker 1: are winning streak. Now, Um, we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: some uh, some famous tech people here and there in
Speaker 1: our podcasts, and today we have chosen to speak of Ray.
Speaker 1: That's right, Ray Kurtzwile. Uh and if you haven't heard
Speaker 1: the name before, um, shame on you. No, No, We're
Speaker 1: we're gonna fix that. We'll start off slow. I want
Speaker 1: to talk about kind of his entry into the whole
Speaker 1: tech world. He was interested in computers back when computers
Speaker 1: were pretty much brand new. Yeah, we're talking punch cards. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and um uh he was known for being he was
Speaker 1: one of the people first people who was really interested
Speaker 1: in artificial intelligence for computers. Um, starting off with simple
Speaker 1: pattern recognition, where you could teach a computer to recognize
Speaker 1: a pattern of information and identify it and respond when
Speaker 1: it detects that pattern. Uh. And one of the famous
Speaker 1: first attempts that he made was a program that he
Speaker 1: created for a computer where it could um analyze classical
Speaker 1: music and look at all the different uh features of
Speaker 1: classical music from famous composers, and then compose music itself
Speaker 1: based upon the information that it gleaned by looking at
Speaker 1: this music. And uh. He actually went on a kind
Speaker 1: of a goofy little game show where they played this
Speaker 1: music and they had the contestants had to guess that
Speaker 1: it was the computer that made it. But anyway, I
Speaker 1: just thought it was kind of cool that he created
Speaker 1: this computer program in the first place. You know, I
Speaker 1: gotta say it's a classic game show. It was I've
Speaker 1: Got a Secret with with Ray Allen and his host
Speaker 1: and uh, I just did point out this was in
Speaker 1: ve and he was in high school when he was
Speaker 1: on national TV doing this with a computer program that
Speaker 1: he had created that that did that had this pattern
Speaker 1: recognition ability. That's pretty amazing. That's pretty awesome, I gotta
Speaker 1: say so. But that's just the very beginning of his
Speaker 1: amazing career. Oh yeah, yeah. Um. He went on to
Speaker 1: UH to work at m I T yep UM and
Speaker 1: there he actually created a program that would try to
Speaker 1: match kids and colleges together for the best fit and
Speaker 1: not necessarily hit with the parents. No, because it left
Speaker 1: out some pretty important schools. It seemed it didn't seem
Speaker 1: to recommend certain big name schools like Harvard and Yale.
Speaker 1: Is there a call, Yes, well, you know, if you're
Speaker 1: suited for Podunk Community College. It was going to tell
Speaker 1: you the truth, right right. But he sold that business
Speaker 1: and made the tidy profit. I think it was for
Speaker 1: about a hundred thousand dollars, which is a good chunk
Speaker 1: of change. And uh, that was not the first time
Speaker 1: that he founded a company and then later sold it.
Speaker 1: In fact, he's kind of made a career of that.
Speaker 1: Speaking of pattern recognition, we've noticed as we were doing
Speaker 1: the research for Mr Kurtzwild that he has sold off
Speaker 1: several of his companies, and I think all of them
Speaker 1: are still in existence in some form. All the all
Speaker 1: of the four major companies are still operating in some
Speaker 1: form or another. That's a good that's a good h
Speaker 1: that's not a bad track record at all. And you
Speaker 1: look at the companies that are around these days and
Speaker 1: which ones aren't around. So yeah, In nineteen seventy four
Speaker 1: he founded UH, the Kurtswild Computer Products Incorporated Company UM
Speaker 1: and that was one where again pattern recognition came into play.
Speaker 1: That's where he was looking at ways for computers to
Speaker 1: recognize printed text and UH to be able to actually
Speaker 1: read that printed text. So this came in very handy
Speaker 1: for people who are visually impaired. You could have a
Speaker 1: computer that could when when you scanned a sheet of
Speaker 1: paper that text on, it could interpret that text UM
Speaker 1: and read it back. And and this is trickier than
Speaker 1: you would first think. I mean you might think, oh, well,
Speaker 1: you just have to teach it. One A looks like
Speaker 1: you can't just teach a computer. One A looks like
Speaker 1: you have to teach it, teach it. What a times
Speaker 1: New Roman A an aerial A, A comic sans A
Speaker 1: a handwritten A. I mean no, you know, not all
Speaker 1: a's are created equally. And you had to do this
Speaker 1: for every single letter. It had to be able to
Speaker 1: interpret on the fly sometimes because you don't always have
Speaker 1: the most clean copy of text either. Um. So Kurt's
Speaker 1: well dedicate a lot of time and energy into perfecting this,
Speaker 1: and um he got a lot of attention for it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You might know this technology by by its initials O
Speaker 1: c R, which is optical character recognition. And you say, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the uh, that's the system they use on my
Speaker 1: flatbed scanner. Well, funny you should mention that because, as
Speaker 1: Jonathan pointed out, this is this is a very useful
Speaker 1: thing for people who can't see because, um, a suggestion
Speaker 1: came in from a visually impaired person and said, you know,
Speaker 1: it'd be really cool if you could use this for that.
Speaker 1: And so they invented the flatbed scanner and a text
Speaker 1: to speech program to work together with this optical character
Speaker 1: recognition and do exactly that. And it ended up being
Speaker 1: called the kurtswhile Reading Machine, which debuted in January of
Speaker 1: seventy six. And uh, that that you know there was
Speaker 1: a reasonably well known fan of that system. Oh wait,
Speaker 1: I think I know who you're talking about, not Wondering, No,
Speaker 1: I now I know Stevie Wonder. Stevie Wonder. I did
Speaker 1: read that. I was thinking, you know, I think I
Speaker 1: know who said that. But and you know, Stevie Wonder
Speaker 1: was he was the first customer, wasn't it he about
Speaker 1: the first one. He bought the very first one. And
Speaker 1: and just this a note before, you know, let Jonathan
Speaker 1: get back on that. But when I started, we were
Speaker 1: talking about ideas for people, famous people. Um I kurs
Speaker 1: Wild has been on on my reading list for a while.
Speaker 1: He has several books out. We'll talk about that in
Speaker 1: a minute. But um, I thought, you know, that's the
Speaker 1: guy who makes the musical instruments. Well, this is the
Speaker 1: start of all that. When he became friends with Stevie
Speaker 1: Wonder as a result of developing this reading machine, they
Speaker 1: developed a partnership for music. Uh you know, which we'll
Speaker 1: talk about a minute. But that's where I knew him from,
Speaker 1: was the musical instrument. So delving into his past, he's
Speaker 1: got all these different things that he's done. It's just
Speaker 1: a personal note. Sorry, no, no no, no, look, I think
Speaker 1: I think we should just keep on building on that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and he he founded h kurts Wild Music and U.
Speaker 1: Together with Stevie Wonder, he managed to create a synthesizer
Speaker 1: that sounded more like a an actual piano than any
Speaker 1: synthesizer up to that time. And in fact, in blind tests,
Speaker 1: many musicians could not tell the difference between the synthesizer
Speaker 1: and a real grand piano um which of course was
Speaker 1: a huge, huge achievement because up to that point computer
Speaker 1: instruments sounded a lot like a craft work record, right,
Speaker 1: computer instruments, I was gonna say they sounded they sounded
Speaker 1: did They sounded artificial? They did not sound natural at all.
Speaker 1: So Kurtswild really made some some great progress into U
Speaker 1: into breaking that barrier so that you could have a
Speaker 1: more natural sound coming from a digital instrument. Yep, and UH.
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, that company got sold They
Speaker 1: actually created Kurtzwild Music Systems, and that company got sold
Speaker 1: off to uh UM, Asian company called Young Chang Um
Speaker 1: and it's still doing business. He was actually a consultant
Speaker 1: for a while. Apparently is no longer, but he's got
Speaker 1: some other stuff he's done. Um, you know, like speech recognition.
Speaker 1: For example, he came up with the first large vocabulary
Speaker 1: speech recognition system. Yeah, you might be sensing a pattern here,
Speaker 1: pattern recognition. Hey. Now instead of text, he's looking at speech.
Speaker 1: This was part of the kurts While Applied Intelligence initiative
Speaker 1: that you made. Um, yeah, it's uh so once again,
Speaker 1: he's looking at ways that computers and people interact, trying
Speaker 1: to break those barriers down as much as possible so
Speaker 1: that the interaction becomes very natural and almost to the
Speaker 1: point ideally, you get to the point where you're not
Speaker 1: even conscious of the interface anymore. It's just it just happens.
Speaker 1: And of course we're we're miles away from that right now,
Speaker 1: but it's because of things like like the speech recognition
Speaker 1: and the text recognition that Kurtswhile worked on, that we're
Speaker 1: making progress toward that goal. True. So yes, And speaking
Speaker 1: of print to speech, there was another company founded, Chris
Speaker 1: Wild Educational Systems. Yet yet another program, and there were
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of other little things that he's done.
Speaker 1: They're just fascinating. Um fat cat, for example, I thought
Speaker 1: it was really cool using a computer algorithms to predict
Speaker 1: the patterns of the markets, right, you would you're essentially
Speaker 1: trying to create a a an artificially intelligent stock market trader,
Speaker 1: So you would you would follow the the guidance of
Speaker 1: an artificially intelligent you know, I've met some stock market traders.
Speaker 1: I would suggest that a lot of their intelligence is
Speaker 1: completely artificial. So I don't see this as a big stretch. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the whole thing is it's not really their fault.
Speaker 1: The markets just do what the markets do. You wonder, like,
Speaker 1: can you program in that kind of intuition? I am
Speaker 1: very curious as to how fat cat performs actually, because
Speaker 1: uh so much of the stock market is beyond just
Speaker 1: just logic. I mean, you have to you have to
Speaker 1: take in so many factors into account, just crowds ecology
Speaker 1: for one. We're we're seeing right now in the markets
Speaker 1: where they're bouncing up and down, that that as people
Speaker 1: gain confidence and lose confidence, so goes the market. And
Speaker 1: you know, it's kind of hard to just predict that
Speaker 1: all on its own. Yeah, I think we probably have
Speaker 1: all experienced in proof of that. Wise, Right, let's let's
Speaker 1: not think of our ferro One case at the moment,
Speaker 1: showing um other things Mr Kurtzwil has been involved with,
Speaker 1: you know, the Medical Learning Company which has a patent
Speaker 1: for online doctor training. Yeah. Um, and uh, the Kurtswild
Speaker 1: cyber Art, which is a digital art software company that
Speaker 1: apparently no longer has its program available for download. But
Speaker 1: essentially it was tricking your computer into drawing things for you,
Speaker 1: which was kind of cool. I think it was more
Speaker 1: of a just a messing around type thing, but um,
Speaker 1: messed around with some other stuff. I know that if
Speaker 1: you go to the Kurtswild ai uh site, he has
Speaker 1: a was it roberta the artificially intelligent creature that you
Speaker 1: can ask it questions and answers. I played with that
Speaker 1: a little bit before the podcast and uh, and it's
Speaker 1: definitely not up to the touring test just yet. But um,
Speaker 1: but you know, you can see where where his interests are.
Speaker 1: In fact, we should probably talk about that as kurtswell
Speaker 1: is is. You know, we're talking about a lot of
Speaker 1: his past accomplishments, but you might be saying, well, what's
Speaker 1: he up to today? He's right on the forefront of
Speaker 1: all the people who are talking about something that, um, well,
Speaker 1: you might call it a convergence. You might call it
Speaker 1: the singularity. But it's this idea of reaching a point
Speaker 1: where we have artificially intelligent machines. He likes to call
Speaker 1: it accelerated intelligence, UM, but artificially intelligent machines that can
Speaker 1: create new, smarter, artificially intelligent machines. And we just reached
Speaker 1: this point where it becomes is the tipping point really
Speaker 1: where innovation comes at at shorter and shorter gaps, so
Speaker 1: eventually get to a point where it's just con stantly innovation,
Speaker 1: and no one really knows what that's going to look like. UM.
Speaker 1: And Uh, he's one of the people who really is
Speaker 1: is kind of a proponent of this idea. UM. He's
Speaker 1: talked about the singularity many times, and it seems very
Speaker 1: very enthusiastic about it, UM, as opposed to some people
Speaker 1: who are really scared of it. Yeah, that's that's true. Um.
Speaker 1: The singularity was actually proposed some time back by a
Speaker 1: mathematician named John von Newman. UM. And he was saying,
Speaker 1: you know, this is a point after which human affairs
Speaker 1: cannot continue as normal. That's short of vague description. Verner VINGI, Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is an article that that Jonathan just wrote not
Speaker 1: too long ago. UM, he was talking about the possibility
Speaker 1: that machines will become artificially intelligent and you know, design
Speaker 1: venter machines and decide we're irrelevant and that you know,
Speaker 1: we should just go away right or the other out
Speaker 1: of the coin. He doesn't say that that's necessarily what
Speaker 1: would happen. Um. He does say that no matter what,
Speaker 1: our lives will be completely different, and to the point
Speaker 1: where it's almost it's almost pointless to try and imagine
Speaker 1: what our lives will be like because there's no way
Speaker 1: of knowing right now. But we it could be the opposite.
Speaker 1: We could be living in a paradise where machines are
Speaker 1: doing everything we need them to do for us. Um.
Speaker 1: We don't have to do anything for ourselves, and we
Speaker 1: can pretty much spend our lives just you know, learning
Speaker 1: new things or uh, pursuing art or fooling around, you know,
Speaker 1: whatever happens to be your your purpose for life. You
Speaker 1: don't necessarily have to clock in and clock out every
Speaker 1: day because machines are doing it for you. Um. I'm
Speaker 1: sure that psychologists and psychiatrists will still be in great demand.
Speaker 1: Doctors will probably still be in demand. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: farmers definitely I mean, some things humans will probace still
Speaker 1: have a hand in, although a lot of those tasks,
Speaker 1: even in those fields, will be automated by machines according
Speaker 1: to this vision. And I even get to a point
Speaker 1: where we don't even need them anymore, perhaps our consciousness
Speaker 1: will merge with some sort of computer network, which sounds
Speaker 1: really far out right now. But these are the kind
Speaker 1: of things that hurts Weill and and Verne as I'll
Speaker 1: like to call him talk about. I mean, they they
Speaker 1: they are not outside the realm of possibility in their minds. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's funny, uh, that you said that, because I
Speaker 1: was going to point out that Ray kurtzwill is believe
Speaker 1: that this is actually going to be a good thing. Um,
Speaker 1: And instead of being the end of human conscious consciousness,
Speaker 1: thank you. Um, it's actually kind of be that the
Speaker 1: start of something really cool where it's going to prolong
Speaker 1: human consciousness and preserve human consciousness, which is why he's
Speaker 1: been doing a lot of preparation. An article and Wired
Speaker 1: earlier in two thousand and eight, Um, I read that
Speaker 1: he is taking massive doses of vitamin supplements and doing
Speaker 1: a lot of exercise to try to prolong his life
Speaker 1: in order to catch up to the singularity so that
Speaker 1: his consciousness can be among those preserves. He actually he
Speaker 1: wrote a book about that, in fact, about about living
Speaker 1: a healthy lifestyle. He was able to uh beat heart
Speaker 1: disease and diabetes. Diabetes. Yeah, that's pretty serious stuff. So
Speaker 1: um yeah, he's definitely determined to see this come about.
Speaker 1: And according to uh to Urn, uh, we should expect
Speaker 1: it before the year. Say, I think it was a
Speaker 1: thirty something like that, so so not too far off,
Speaker 1: I mean, uh. And the whole point on that is
Speaker 1: just the idea of this development cycle. It's getting shorter
Speaker 1: and shorter and shorter for us to make more and
Speaker 1: more powerful machines. Now, whether or not we hit a
Speaker 1: barrier before we can hit the artificial intelligence slash accelerated
Speaker 1: intelligence goal post that remains to be seen. We may
Speaker 1: not be able to achieve it as fast as everyone thinks,
Speaker 1: because we might actually hit physical limitations on what we
Speaker 1: can what we can really do, and that could slow
Speaker 1: us down. Next thing, you know, it might be twenty six.
Speaker 1: Yeould be really depressing. They're always putting off good stuff
Speaker 1: like that, you know, when the machines take over. Anyway,
Speaker 1: the book that I was most interested in was the
Speaker 1: the age of spiritual machines when human computers exceed human intelligence,
Speaker 1: and that that sort of gives you an idea of
Speaker 1: the um the concept that he's got the crush Wells
Speaker 1: got of what he expects from the singularity in in
Speaker 1: in the future. So it would be interesting to check out. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll definitely have to keep our eyes on that. You know. Um,
Speaker 1: I've got something a similar field that Kurt Swell is
Speaker 1: actually interested in that relates to this that I want
Speaker 1: to talk about. But before we do, Okay, I'd like
Speaker 1: to take a moment to thank our sponsor. Yes, so
Speaker 1: we have our sponsor, audible dot com And if you
Speaker 1: sign up at www dot audible podcast dot com slash
Speaker 1: text stuff, you'll get a free download when you when
Speaker 1: you sign up, you can download any book for free,
Speaker 1: and they have fifty thousand books on audible dot com.
Speaker 1: It's a huge library. And we each came up with
Speaker 1: a an a book to suggest that kind of sort
Speaker 1: of relates to our topic. Christy, want to you want
Speaker 1: to go first? Sure, since we were talking about verner VINGI.
Speaker 1: He is a noted science fiction author and his book
Speaker 1: Rainbows end is available now at audible podcast dot com.
Speaker 1: Nice and uh, you know it could be an interesting
Speaker 1: and worthwhile reading insight into his uh his background there right, mine, mine,
Speaker 1: I I played a little bit here. Um. I'm also
Speaker 1: a science fiction fan. But I chose Pattern Recognition by
Speaker 1: William Gibson. Yeah, so, um, yeah, I wanted to go
Speaker 1: with neuromancwer but I didn't see that on audible dot com.
Speaker 1: But they have Pattern Recognition, which is another William Gibson book.
Speaker 1: It's not actually about the same sort of pattern recognition
Speaker 1: that Kurt Swell was talking about, but it's a great mystery.
Speaker 1: But and and it is a good book. It is
Speaker 1: a good but a real real page turner. Or if
Speaker 1: you're listening to it on audible dot com, it's an
Speaker 1: excellent listen. You should definitely listen to it. That could
Speaker 1: be one of your that could be your free download
Speaker 1: if you wanted, right, so, you can sign up for
Speaker 1: that at www dot audible podcast dot com. Slash tech
Speaker 1: stuff And now let's get back to what I was
Speaker 1: going to talk about. The technology I was going to
Speaker 1: talk about. The Kurtswell is very much interested in nanotechnology.
Speaker 1: It's definitely part of this whole concept of the singularity
Speaker 1: um building devices that are on the nanoscale, which is
Speaker 1: incredibly tiny. We're talking like on the atomic level. And uh,
Speaker 1: nanotechnology is one of those things that probably is going
Speaker 1: to be necessary in order to achieve these goals. I mean,
Speaker 1: we're already building transistors that are on the nanoscale. So
Speaker 1: if you want to learn more about that, I recommend
Speaker 1: you read How Nanotechnology Works. That's by Jonathan Strickland. Not
Speaker 1: to toot my own horn, but how Manamail Technology Works.
Speaker 1: And it's live right now at how stuff works dot
Speaker 1: com and we'll talk to you again soon. Let us
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