Kurzweil: Ramona and KurzweilAI.net

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KurzweilAI.net is a web site by Ray Kurzweil dedicated to Artificial Intelligence. From there you can launch an avatar “Ramona” with whom you can converse. (If you have Windows you can install the FX Player and see her move and speak.) If you click on “The Brain” there is a great visualization of the connections between people, concepts, implementations (like Eliza) and related things. Clicking on items shows the connections and brings up short defintions and links. This is implemented in Java. Thanks to Alexandre Sévigny for this.

Kurzweil is now announcing a book with Terry Grossman MD titled Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever. See, Fantastic Voyage site – the book describes Ray & Terry’s Longevity Program.

Needless to say, on the site for the book there is a link to Ray and Terry’s Longevity Products! These seem to be mostly vitamin supplements and mixes for “aggressive supplementation” which is the “hallmark” of their “total care”.

It is hard to take Kurzweil seriously when he seems to be going off the deep end that Linus Pauling dived off. On the other hand, he could be right. Assuming that he follows his own advice and uses his products, let’s see if he lives long enough. According to the National Inventor Hall of Fame (TM) he was born in 1948. How long is long enough?