Comment by rpm4321 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rpm4321 | Hacker News Reader

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God damn it... Not this again.

=================MY PREVIOUS POSTS=================

I don't think that's a very fair assessment of Kurzweil's role in technology.

He was on the ground, getting his hands dirty with the first commercial applications of AI. He made quite a bit of money selling his various companies and technologies, and was awarded the presidential Medal of Technology from Clinton.

As I was growing up, there was a series of "Oh wow!" moments I had, associated with computers and the seemingly sci-fi things they were now capable of.

"Oh wow, computers can read printed documents and recognize the characters!"

"Oh wow, computers can read written text aloud!"

"Oh wow, computers can recognize speech!"

"Oh wow, computer synthesizers can sound just like pianos now!"

I didn't realize until much later that Kurzweil was heavily involved with all of those breakthroughs.

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In addition, I'd rank Minsky, Larry Page, Bill Gates, Dean Kamen, Peter, Norvig, Rafael Reif, Tomaso Poggio, Dileep George, and Kurzweil's other supporters as much more qualified to judge the merits of his ideas, than Kurzweil's detractors like Hofstadter, Kevin Kelly, Mitch Kapor, and Gary Marcus. It seems that Hofstadter is the only one of that group who is really qualified to render a verdict.

http://howtocreateamind.com/

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Here's Peter Norvig himself on Kurzweil:

“Ray’s contributions to science and technology, through research in character and speech recognition and machine learning, have led to technological achievements that have had an enormous impact on society – such as the Kurzweil Reading Machine, used by Stevie Wonder and others to have print read aloud. We appreciate his ambitious, long-term thinking, and we think his approach to problem-solving will be incredibly valuable to projects we’re working on at Google.”

and him effusively praising Ray at a Google Talks event: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zihTWh5i2C4 - @1:25

You sound like a Kurzweil press release.

People always list his accomplishments in this fashion. They state some things that he was "heavily involved in" which are impressive when they sound as if he alone created them in a vacuum.

The reality is a lot of different people were working on a lot of these same things, and it's not as if everyone agrees that Kurzweil was the first to accomplish most of these, or even that he indeed did accomplish them in a satisfactory manner.

Yes, the Kurzweil keyboard was very popular and groundbreaking, but "the first to sound just like pianos"? No. They did not sound "just like pianos." They sounded more like pianos than the keyboards that came before, and less like pianos than the ones that came after.

This is the problem with Kurzweil (and others like him), he paints himself as an iconoclastic, groundbreaking figure; standing alone among a sea of might-have-beens. But the reality is that he was just one of many people working in a field which has had a lot of impact in our lives, and which he likes to wax ecstatic about.

The reality is that his main job for the last 20 years has been making a litany of ridiculous predictions nearly non-stop and then when some of them hit anywhere close to the mark he and his supporters claim that he was visionary.

It's absurd and it annoys me to no end.

I really wish you would read my comment further down the thread about not being a Kurzweil fan boy (I've copied it below for your convenience.)

Kurzweil's theories deserve scrutiny and thoughtful criticism, just not the emotional middlebrow dismissal you're engaging in - to borrow PG's favorite expression.

I guess it's possible that Kurzweil is The Talented Mr. Ripley of the technology world, and that your "horseshit pattern recognizers" are just that much more astute than those of Gates, Page, Brin, Minsky, Norvig, Wolfram, Kamen, Reif, etc., but I hope you'll understand if I'm leaning a bit more towards their take on this one.

Also, I realize endtime is about to jump in here any minute now with his Argument from Authority wikipedia link, so I'll freely admit that given imperfect information, yes, I'm allowing people I respect, who are extremely knowledgeable about the relevant subject matter, and in many cases have worked closely with Kurzweil (Page, Wolfram, Gates, Norvig, Reif, George, etc.) - to help confirm my own fairly well researched opinion.

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Honestly, I think you're barking up the wrong tree here. Even his strongest critics generally concede that he's a brilliant man who has contributed significantly to technology.

Please understand, I'm not a Kurzweil fan boy. I do think a lot of his conclusions are inevitable in the long term - say 100 years out - but I'd guess it's 50/50 whether or not his timelines are too optimistic to benefit any of us here personally.

What I'm reacting strongly to here is the knee-jerk dismissal of his credentials and accomplishments by some on HN due to their incredulity towards his later ideas. It doesn't encourage an informed debate, and quite frankly smacks of a religious or political argument - which admittedly many of his supporters are just as guilty of.

I love how you keep falling back on name dropping as if I'm supposed to suddenly be ashamed and let go of my own long held opinion because it goes against that of rich/famous people.

You could tell me that literally every other person on the planet (never mind people who are wealthy and successful in tech) thinks Kurzweil is the second coming, and it would not change my opinion of him.

Now why is that? Is it just because I'm obstinate?

No. It's because I've been reading his asinine screeds for decades and reading the fawning baloney that comes from talking heads like those you've listed, and adoring groupies like yourself as well. And it's all a bunch of horseapples.

If anyone were doing what he's been doing for the last 20+ years and getting the same response from the press and public, I would be annoyed. It doesn't matter who it is.

It's the act of spewing out a bunch of half baked theories as if they are revolutionary and thought provoking when it's really a bunch of trite garbage which wouldn't even pass for a low grade scifi novel. Then the fact that a number of people -- including the poorly informed general media which you expect to be gullible -- most disappointingly, some tech folks, treat it seriously is beyond obnoxious.

Anyway, clearly I'm not going to change your mind. You're very convinced by the sheer fact that other rich and famous people think he's great, so I'm not going to waste my time any further. You're not going to convince me either (since the only thing that would convince me is Kurzweil actually putting out something thoughtful and well considered), so let's let it go.

What does it mean to say that Kurzweil was "heavily involved" in those breakthroughs? Did he contribute in a significant way to the science? Did he commercialize pre-existing ideas from academia?

As founder of Kurzweil Computer Products, Inc, Select College Consulting Program, Medical Learning Company, etc., one would assume he was some combination of visionary, manager and (very occasionally) programmer. You assume he will be something similar at Google.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Kurzweil

Honestly, I think you're barking up the wrong tree here. Even his strongest critics generally concede that he's a brilliant man who has contributed significantly to technology.

Please understand, I'm not a Kurzweil fan boy. I do think a lot of his conclusions are inevitable in the long term - say 100 years out - but I'd guess it's 50/50 whether or not his timelines are too optimistic to benefit any of us here personally.

What I'm reacting strongly to here is the knee-jerk dismissal of his credentials and accomplishments by some on HN due to their incredulity towards his later ideas. It doesn't encourage an informed debate, and quite frankly smacks of a religious or political argument - which admittedly many of his supporters are just as guilty of.

I just want to know what that contribution was exactly.

Go to the 'Life, inventions, and business career' section here, as well as the overview section:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Kurzweil

I read that, and I'm still not sure what you're talking about. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Kurzweil#Recognition_and_a... is a pretty good summary of his accomplishments. He's had a full life, no question, but how much of it was AI? His biggest AI accomplishment seems to be in OCR technology with the Reading Machine back in the 70s. Other than that his strengths seem to be in commercializing inventions, and in attaching his name to his products.

The section you referenced is thin and poorly cited. I still don't know his specific role and contributions. I am trying to dig deeper than the veneer.

Medal of Technology from Clinton

Political awards don't mean anything, just that you have good PR. Hilary Clinton has a Grammy, Barack Obama has a Nobel Peace Prize, and Al Gore has an Oscar. Nate Silver is doing things publicly in statistics but that doesn't mean he's the end-all be-all.

Some of us don't buy into the Kurzweil hype. Frankly, I think he's delusional. But my mother always said that there's a fine line between an idiot and a savant.

Eh, I'd tend to agree with you in general, and that was probably the weaker of my arguments, but the recipient list is pretty impressive: Gordon Moore, Robert Noyce, Gates, Jobs, Wozniak, David Packard, etc:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Medal_of_Technology

It's definitely not a Cracker Jack prize.

He's also racked up a pretty impressive list of Inventor of the Year and Lifetime Achievement awards from more technically astute sources like MIT, Carnegie Mellon, etc.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_kurzweil - under Recognition and awards

I guess the main point I was trying to make is that he's definitely not this dilettante interloper that some of the more off-base commenters are alleging here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority is still a fallacy, even if you said it a while ago.

If Google wanted to build AGI, we'd hire Eliezer Yudkowsky and Luke Muehlhauser. Kurzweil is an evangelist and a public figure, but do you honestly think he is actually going to design an AGI?

(disclaimer: I work for Google, but this is all my own unofficial opinion.)

As far as I'm aware, neither Yudkowsky nor Muehlhauser have built anything, and were primarily bloggers before getting involved with the Singularity Institute. How about Ben Goertzel, if you really want an AGI?

Google has plenty of builders. AI is an insight problem. (I probably should have said "design" rather than "build" in my previous comment.)

That said, I did nearly including Ben Goertzel in my comment. But I am familiar with Eliezer and Luke's work (and know them personally); I'm much less familiar with Ben, so I didn't feel I could make such a strong statement about him.

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