A search engine that could tell you want you want to know before you ask it a question may be on the horizon, thanks to Google’s most recent addition to its team.
Reknowned inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil, known for his theories on artificial intelligence technologies, is Google’s new director of engineering, TechCrunch reported Sunday.
Kurzweil had hoped to start a company to build his dream of an artificially intelligent computer, when he was approached by Google CEO Larry Page with an offer to do it for Google.
Since the search engine giant has access to vast amounts of human knowledge, and it knows the personal search preferences of its users, Kurzweil’s project could produce the type of super intelligence in which he has long been a believer.
While Kurzweil is not receiving unlimited funds to complete the project, like TechCrunch originally suggested, he told the publication that Google is giving him “sufficient resources for a very important project.”
This is not the first time Kurzweil and Google have collaborated. In 2009, along with the NASA Ames Research Center, the two cofounded Singularity University, a futuristic high-tech school in silicon valley. Another co-founder was Peter Diamandis, co-founder of Planetary Resources Inc., a company dedicated to mining near-Earth approaching asteroids.
Other well-known engineering minds working with Google include Vinton Cerf, often called one of the ‘fathers of the Internet’, who often speaks as Google’s chief Internet evangelist.