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memories: It’s exciting to be at Google.
author: by Ray Kurzweil
date: December 2012

memories |

I joined Google in 2012 to work on new projects involving machine learning and language processing.

When I came on-board, my first Google job title was Director of Engineering. And now it’s AI Visionary + Principal Investigator.

I’ve been interested in this tech, and machine learning in particular, for a long time. When I was 14, I designed software that wrote original music. And later went on to invent the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, among other inventions. I’ve always worked to create practical systems that will make a difference in people’s lives, which is what excites me as an inventor.

In 1999, I said that in about a decade we’d see tech such as self-driving cars and mobile phones that could answer your questions, and people criticized these predictions as unrealistic.

Fast forward a decade -—  Google has demonstrated self-driving cars, and people are indeed asking questions of their Android + Apple phones. It’s easy to shrug our collective shoulders as if these technologies have always been around. But we’re really on a remarkable trajectory of quickening innovation, and Google’s at the forefront of much of this development.

It’s been thrilling  to team-up with my Google crew to work on some of the hardest problems in computer science — so we can turn the next decade’s “unrealistic” visions into reality.