Why AGI Is Close but Not Here Yet | Ray Kurzweil | EP #261

**Peter Diamandis** (0:00)
We just saw a story where Demos Asabas, who you know, said 50-50, whether we need another breakthrough to get to AGI. What do you think?

**Ray Kurzweil** (0:09)
Well, I think we need two things.
So we've made a 75,000 million, trillion fold increase over this 75 years. But AGI will happen by 2029 Large language models have only been effective for the last six months. We're being really affected by the exponential growth. A year ago, large language models were okay. Now they're really very effective. And we're really going to be able to feel that in the future.

**Alexander Wissner-Gross** (0:40)
If you could send a message back in time to the 1960s or 1970s for how to avoid plateaus and just speed up progress toward the singularity, what message would you send back in time?

**Ray Kurzweil** (0:51)
I think we have to consider......the future.

**Steven Kotler** (0:56)
Now that's a Moonshot, ladies and gentlemen.

**Peter Diamandis** (1:05)
It's a pleasure to invite everybody to an afternoon with an extraordinary man, Ray Kurzweil, with my Moonshot mates, my co-author Steven. So, Ray, you've been a mentor, a business partner, a co-author for me personally, and just an incredible guide for many of us. Ray Kurzweil is called the relentless genius by The Wall Street Journal, the ultimate thinking machine by Forbes, the rightful heir to Thomas Edison by Ink Magazine. PBS named him as one of the 16 revolutionaries who made America. He invented the first CCD flatbed scanner, the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, the first text-to-speech synthesizer, and the first music synthesizer capable of recreating a grand piano. He's a National Inventors Hall of Fame inductee, a National Medal of Technology recipient, a Grammy Award winner. He holds 21 honorary doctorates and has been honored by three US presidents.
He's authored five national bestsellers, including Singularity is Near and How to Create a Mind. He proposed the concept of pattern recognition theory of mind, arguing that human neocortex is composed of roughly 300 million hierarchical patterns processors. That theory became his engineering blueprint. In 2012, he got his first job as the director of engineering at Google with a singular mission, teach machines to understand human language, not just match key words, but grasp meaning and context. His team helped build the knowledge graph and advanced semantic search so that when you typed Apple, Google finally understood whether you meant the fruit or tech company.
His arrival helped trigger Google's massive AI talent grab. Shortly after he joined, Google acquired DeepMind, brought on Jeffrey Hinton, and expanded Google Brain, the research team that brought the transformer. His team advanced hierarchical deep learning and natural language understanding, helped shift AI from a niche academic pursuit to the core engine of the world's most powerful information company. He didn't build a digital mind. He helped build the foundation for machines that can finally talk back to us. He's made 147 predictions, with an 86% accuracy rate. And his long-standing prediction that AI would reach human-level intelligence by 2029? Well, we're here to discuss that. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Ray Kurzweil to the stage.
All right, right, center seat here, my friend. Okay.
It's been quite the journey.

**Ray Kurzweil** (4:23)
Yeah, how long has it been?

**Peter Diamandis** (4:25)
Oh, God, we met, I think, Martine Rothblatt first introduced us.

**Ray Kurzweil** (4:29)
Okay, so it's about 20 years.

**Peter Diamandis** (4:31)
Yeah, well, let's see, I is-

**Steven Kotler** (4:33)
2009, yes.

**Peter Diamandis** (4:34)
2009, okay, well, the journalist here is telling the story here. Well, no, it was before that, because we launched Singularity in 2009 I think we met when 2007, and the Singularity is Near came out in 2005, right? I think so, 2005 I remember I took the Singularity is Near, which is quite a thick book.
I took it backpacking in Chile, and I read the book Making Notes in the Margins. I had started with Bob Richards and Todd Hawley, something called the International Space University back in 1987, at the founding conference. And when I read your book, it changed my world. How many folks here in the room did the Singularity is Near change your world, right? I mean, amazing.
And I said, there needs to be a university that teaches this stuff, because all universities, you go down a very narrow niche, you become a hyper super specialist, and no place could you learn a broad version. I pitched you over a lunch and then off to the races.

**Ray Kurzweil** (5:43)
It was a dinner, wasn't it?

**Peter Diamandis** (5:45)
Yeah, I was there.

**Ray Kurzweil** (5:48)
Yeah. Can you hear me?

**Peter Diamandis** (5:50)
Yeah.

**Ray Kurzweil** (5:51)