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I tend to agree with you. I am not aware of any major contributions he has made to AI and his recent work on the human brain is shallow and unscientific. Howev

by rohern 14y ago

I tend to agree with you. I am not aware of any major contributions he has made to AI and his recent work on the human brain is shallow and unscientific. However, Google is not dumb. They have Peter Norvig heading Google X and a team of AI engineers recruited by Norvig. Perhaps Kurzweil is just the hand guiding the ship, but not the one pulling the oars?

taligent 14y ago
> However, Google is not dumb. They did buy Motorola Mobility.
- Lost_BiomedE 14y ago
  Well, in the 'they did for the patents' defense, it is hard to quantify the value there. We also need to wait and see if they have more plans for it. Google buying youtube was considered dumb until quite recently.
iandanforth 14y ago
Norvig is a very very smart guy, however he wrote the textbook on a period of AI that is very far removed from the biologically inspired machine learning techniques (Hinton, Hawkins) that I would classify as cutting edge and 'most likely to succeed.' His decision to work with Hinton lately I think is a testament to his intelligence. Kurzweil has recognized the value of Hawkins' ideas and based his latest book on them, though I and others (http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/11/ray-kurzweils-dubious-new-theory-of-mind.html http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/11/ray-kurz...) don't think he did a great job on it. Full Disclosure: I work at Numenta (Hawkins company) but these opinions are my own.
- jimbokun 14y ago
  From the New Yorker article: Even more disappointing is the fact that Kurzweil never bothers to do what any scientist, especially one trained in computer science, would immediately want to do, which is to build a computer model that instantiated his theory, and then compare the predictions of the model with real human behavior. This is quite damning, if true, and reconciles the apparent discrepancy in this discussion between "Kurzweil, brilliant inventor" and "Kurzweil, futurist hack." Is it possible that Kurzweil, at some point, stopped being an implementer of ideas and became a pure pontificater?
  - pjscott 14y ago
    If so, it looks like he's decided to go implementing again. Have you heard that he got hired at Google to do AI development work? I think it was mentioned on Hacker News at some point.
- rohern 14y ago
  You make an excellent point and I agree with you. The natural route seems most promising. Maybe they can steal Hinton from the University of Toronto and have the whole package? Thanks for bringing Numenta to my attention. It appears to be a very interesting company.

by rohern 14y ago

taligent 14y ago

> However, Google is not dumb. They did buy Motorola Mobility.

Lost_BiomedE 14y ago
Well, in the 'they did for the patents' defense, it is hard to quantify the value there. We also need to wait and see if they have more plans for it. Google buying youtube was considered dumb until quite recently.

iandanforth 14y ago

Norvig is a very very smart guy, however he wrote the textbook on a period of AI that is very far removed from the biologically inspired machine learning techniques (Hinton, Hawkins) that I would classify as cutting edge and 'most likely to succeed.' His decision to work with Hinton lately I think is a testament to his intelligence. Kurzweil has recognized the value of Hawkins' ideas and based his latest book on them, though I and others (http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/11/ray-kurzweils-dubious-new-theory-of-mind.html http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/11/ray-kurz...) don't think he did a great job on it. Full Disclosure: I work at Numenta (Hawkins company) but these opinions are my own.

jimbokun 14y ago
From the New Yorker article: Even more disappointing is the fact that Kurzweil never bothers to do what any scientist, especially one trained in computer science, would immediately want to do, which is to build a computer model that instantiated his theory, and then compare the predictions of the model with real human behavior. This is quite damning, if true, and reconciles the apparent discrepancy in this discussion between "Kurzweil, brilliant inventor" and "Kurzweil, futurist hack." Is it possible that Kurzweil, at some point, stopped being an implementer of ideas and became a pure pontificater?
- pjscott 14y ago
  If so, it looks like he's decided to go implementing again. Have you heard that he got hired at Google to do AI development work? I think it was mentioned on Hacker News at some point.
rohern 14y ago
You make an excellent point and I agree with you. The natural route seems most promising. Maybe they can steal Hinton from the University of Toronto and have the whole package? Thanks for bringing Numenta to my attention. It appears to be a very interesting company.