#321 – Ray Kurzweil: Singularity, Superintelligence, and Immortality

**Lex Fridman** (0:00)
The following is a conversation with Ray Kurzweil, author, inventor and futurist, who has an optimistic view of our future as a human civilization, predicting that exponentially improving technologies will take us to a point of a singularity, beyond which super-intelligent, artificial intelligence will transform our world in nearly unimaginable ways. 18 years ago, in the book Singularity is Near, he predicted that the onset of the singularity will happen in the year 2045 He still holds to this prediction and estimate. In fact, he's working on a new book on this topic that will hopefully be out next year. And now, a quick few second mention of each sponsor. Check them out in the description, it's the best way to support this podcast. We got Shopify for e-commerce, NetSuite for business management software, Linode for Linux systems, MasterClass for online learning and Indeed for hiring. Choose wisely, my friends. And now, on to the full ad reads. As always, no ads in the middle. I try to make this interesting, but if you skip them, please still check out our sponsors. I enjoy their stuff, maybe you will too. This show is brought to you by Shopify, a platform designed for anyone to sell anywhere with a great looking online store that brings you idea to life and tools to manage day to day operation. I am so long overdue on merch. As a fan of a lot of people in podcasts and shows and stuff like that, I love getting their merch. It's a cool way to just celebrate the thing you love. Shopify is an exemplary company in this whole space. It seems like a fun thing to do. Merch is fun. And so anyway, Shopify is a platform that enables that kind of thing super easy. Very easy to set up, very easy to buy from. That's why, what is it? 1.7 million entrepreneurs use it. That's wild. Get a free trial and full access to Shopify's entire suite of features when you sign up at shopify.com/lex. That's all lowercase, shopify.com/lex.
This show is also brought to you by NetSuite. An all-in-one cloud business management system. It manages financials, human resources, inventory, e-commerce, and many business-related details. I talked to a lot of people that run large and medium-sized and small companies. A lot of them are becoming good friends of mine. It's just clear to me that running a company at every stage of it, from startup when it's just you, one founder or co-founder to when it's many thousands of people, it's just so complicated. There's so many things involved. So many more things than just the kind of engineering or the brainstorming or the idea development or product development, that kind of stuff. And that's the stuff I love, of course, but you have to get everything else right, too. Like from the human resource, from the hiring process, the hiring process alone is just so fascinating. So whatever sort of machinery of running a business, you need to get right. You should use the best tool for the job. That's what NetSuite is. You can go to netsuite.com/lex to access their one of a kind financing program. This episode is also brought to you by Linode, Linux virtual machines. I mean, the best operating system, the best interface in terms of cloud compute I've ever used is Linode. The best operating system is Linux. What else do you want from life, friends? The best operating system in the best cloud service that makes it super easy. You can create as many machines as you want. You can get your computer infrastructure for a small project, for a huge project. You can develop, you can deploy any scale. It works. There's also really good customer service, 24-7, all days of the year. It's lower cost than AWS, but I mean, there's so many things I just love, including the interface, just the little things, the little things about the online interface, managing the computer instances, creating new ones, monitoring them, just everything. The whole thing, super intuitive. I love it. Visit lino.com/lex for free credit. This show is brought to you by MasterClass. $180 a year gets you an all access pass to watch courses from the best people in the world in their respective disciplines. The list here friends is ridiculous. I can mention a few. A few of the ones I've listened to, and there's actually a few I'm not going to mention that I've listened to that are amazing as well. But Chris Hadfield, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Blue Wright on gaming, Carlos Santana, probably my favorite guitar player, Gary Kasparov on chess, Daniel Negrano, Daniel Negrano on poker. And Daniel Negrano is soon going to be a guest. Martin Scorsese, if there's a person that's a dream guest on this podcast is probably Martin Scorsese. He's definitely up there. If you want to learn about a thing, learn it from the best people in the world, period. Not the best educators of a thing, but the best doers of a thing. Anyway, I highly recommend you check it out, get unlimited access to every MasterClass and get 15% off an annual membership at masterclass.com/lex.