Innovator, futurist, and writer Ray Kurzweil ’70 emphasised his optimism about synthetic intelligence, and technological progress typically, in a lecture on Wednesday whereas accepting MIT’s Robert A. Muh Alumni Award from the Faculty of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (SHASS).
Kurzweil supplied his signature high-profile forecasts about how AI and computing will completely mix with human performance, and proposed that AI will result in monumental positive aspects in longevity, drugs, and different realms of life.
“Folks don’t recognize that the speed of progress is accelerating,” Kurzweil mentioned, forecasting “unimaginable breakthroughs” over the following 20 years.
Kurzweil delivered his lecture, titled “Reinventing Intelligence,” within the Thomas Tull Live performance Corridor of the Edward and Joyce Linde Music Constructing, which opened earlier in 2025 on the MIT campus.
The Muh Award was based and endowed by Robert A. Muh ’59 and his spouse Berit, and is among the main alumni honors granted by SHASS and MIT. Muh, a life member emeritus of the MIT Company, established the award, which is granted each two years for “extraordinary contributions” by alumni within the humanities, arts, and social sciences.
Robert and Berit Muh had been each current on the lecture, together with their daughter Carrie Muh ’96, ’97, SM ’97.
Agustín Rayo, dean of SHASS, supplied introductory remarks, calling Kurzweil “some of the prolific thinkers of our time.” Rayo added that Kurzweil “has constructed his life and profession on the assumption that concepts change the world, and alter it for the higher.”
Kurzweil has been an innovator in language recognition applied sciences, growing advances and founding firms which have served people who find themselves blind or low-vision, and helped in music creation. He’s additionally a best-selling writer who has heralded advances in computing capabilities, and even the merging of human and machines.
The preliminary section of Kurzweil’s lecture was autobiographical in focus, reflecting on his household and early years. The households of each of Kurzweil’s dad and mom fled the Nazis in Europe, searching for refuge within the U.S., with the assumption that folks might create a brighter future for themselves.
“My dad and mom taught me the facility of concepts can actually change the world,” Kurzweil mentioned.
Displaying an early curiosity in how issues labored, Kurzweil had determined to change into an inventor by concerning the age of seven, he recalled. He additionally described his mom as being tremendously encouraging to him as a toddler. The 2 would take walks collectively, and the younger Kurzweil would discuss all of the issues he imagined inventing.
“I might inform her my concepts and irrespective of how fantastical they had been, she believed them,” he mentioned. “Now different dad and mom may need merely chuckled … however she truly believed my concepts, and that truly gave me my confidence, and I believe confidence is vital in succeeding.”
He turned curious about computing by the early Sixties and majored in each pc science and literature as an MIT undergraduate.
Kurzweil has a long-running affiliation with MIT extending far past his undergraduate research. He served as a member of the MIT Company from 2005 to 2012 and was the 2001 recipient of the $500,000 Lemelson-MIT Prize, an award for innovation, for his improvement of studying know-how.
“MIT has performed a significant function in my private {and professional} life through the years,” Kurzweil mentioned, calling himself “really honored to obtain this award.” Addressing Muh, he added: “Your longstanding dedication to our alma mater is inspiring.”
After graduating from MIT, Kurzweil launched a profitable profession growing modern computing merchandise, together with one which acknowledged textual content throughout all fonts and will produce an audio studying. He additionally developed modern music synthesizers, amongst many different advances.
In a corresponding a part of his profession, Kurzweil has change into an brisk writer, whose best-known books embody “The Age of Clever Machines” (1990), “The Age of Religious Machines” (1999), “The Singularity Is Close to” (2005), and “The Singularity Is Nearer” (2024), amongst many others.
Kurzweil was just lately named chief AI officer of Past Creativeness, a robotics agency he co-founded; he has additionally held a place at Google in recent times, engaged on pure language applied sciences.
In his remarks, Kurzweil underscored his view that, as exemplified and enabled by the expansion of computing energy over time, technological innovation strikes at an exponential tempo.
“Folks don’t actually take into consideration exponential progress; they consider linear progress,” Kurzweil mentioned.
This idea, he mentioned, makes him assured {that a} string of improvements will proceed at outstanding velocity.
“One of many greater transformations we’re going to see from AI within the close to time period is well being and drugs,” Kurweil mentioned, forecasting that human medical trials shall be changed by simulated “digital trials.”
Kurzweil additionally believes computing and AI advances can result in so many medical advances it can quickly produce a drastic enchancment in human longevity.
“These unimaginable breakthroughs are going to result in what we’ll name longevity escape velocity,” Kurzweil mentioned. “By roughly 2032 once you reside by a yr, you’ll get again a whole yr from scientific progress, and past that time you’ll get again greater than a yr for yearly you reside, so that you’ll be going again into time so far as your well being is worried,” Kurweil mentioned. He did provide that these advances will “begin” with people who find themselves essentially the most diligent about their well being.
Kurzweil additionally outlined certainly one of his best-known forecasts, that AI and folks shall be mixed. “As we transfer ahead, the traces between people and know-how will blur, till we’re … one and the identical,” Kurzweil mentioned. “That is how we be taught to merge with AI. Within the 2030s, robots the scale of molecules will go into our brains, noninvasively, by the capillaries, and can join our brains on to the cloud. Consider it like having a cellphone, however in your mind.”
“By 2045, as soon as we’ve totally merged with AI, our intelligence will not be constrained … it can increase a millionfold,” he mentioned. “That is what we name the singularity.”
To make certain, Kurzweil acknowledged, “Expertise has at all times been a double-edged sword,” given {that a} drone can ship both medical provides or weaponry. “Threats of AI are actual, should be taken significantly, [and] I believe we’re doing that,” he mentioned. In any case, he added, we’ve “an ethical crucial to appreciate the promise of latest applied sciences whereas controlling the peril.” He concluded: “We aren’t doomed to fail to regulate any of those dangers.”
