I, Robot

Ray Kurzweil's wildest dream is to be turned into a cyborg—a flesh-and-blood human enhanced with tiny embedded computers, a man-machine hybrid with billions of microscopic nanobots coursing through his bloodstream. And there's a moment, halfway through a conversation in his office in Wellesley, Mass., when I start to think that Kurzweil's transformation has already begun. It's the way he talks—in a flat, robotic monotone. Maybe it's just because he's been giving the same spiel, over and over, for years now. He does 70 speeches annually at $30,000 a pop, and draws crowds of adoring fans who worship him as a kind of prophet. Kurzweil is a legend in the world of computer geeks, an inventor, author and computer scientist who bills himself as a futurist. The ideas he's espousing are as radical as anything you've ever heard. But the strangest thing about Ray Kurzweil is that when you sit down for a one-on-one chat with him, he's absolutely boring.

Listen closely, though, and you may be slightly terrified. Kurzweil believes computer intelligence is advancing so rapidly that in a couple of decades, machines will be as intelligent as humans. Soon after that they will surpass humans and start creating even smarter technology. By the middle of this century, the only way for us to keep up will be to merge with the machines so that their superior intelligence can boost our weak little brains and beef up our pitiful, illness-prone bodies. Some of Kurzweil's fellow futurists believe these superhuman computers will want nothing to do with us—that we will become either their pets or, worse yet, their food. Always an optimist, Kurzweil takes a more upbeat view. He swears these superhuman computers will love us, and honor us, since we'll be their ancestors. He also thinks we'll be able to embed our consciousness into silicon, which means we can live on, inside machines, forever and ever, amen.

Kurzweil calls this moment "The Singularity," and says it represents the next great leap in human evolution, when humans will transcend biology by merging with technology. Kurzweil truly believes this is going to happen—and he can't wait to be part of it. All he has to do is stay alive until 2045, when he believes the necessary technologies will be available. So he lives on a strict diet, and every day he swallows 150 dietary supplements in order to "reprogram" his body's biochemistry. Today he is 61 years old and in very good health. In 2045 he will be 97. In other words, it's doable.

Over four decades, Kurzweil has amassed a set of high-tech bona fides that compel people to listen to his ideas, even if they are farfetched. He pioneered development of flatbed scanners, optical-character-recognition software, text-to-speech software and speech-recognition software. He's launched and sold companies that make reading machines for the blind and electronic-music synthesizers. Four of his books have been national bestsellers. He's won a string of awards, including the National Medal of Technology, and has been granted 15 honorary doctorates in science, engineering and even music. He's been an adviser to the U.S. military and has testified before Congress about nanotechnology.

Still, a lot of people think Kurzweil is completely bonkers and/or full of a certain messy byproduct of ordinary biological functions. They include P. Z. Myers, a biologist at the University of Minnesota, Morris, who has used his blog to poke fun at Kurzweil and other armchair futurists who, according to Myers, rely on junk science and don't understand basic biology. "I am completely baffled by Kurzweil's popularity, and in particular the respect he gets in some circles, since his claims simply do not hold up to even casually critical examination," writes Myers. He says Kurzweil's Singularity theories are closer to a deluded religious movement than they are to science. "It's a New Age spiritualism—that's all it is," Myers says. "Even geeks want to find God somewhere, and Kurzweil provides it for them."

Yet Kurzweil's ideas are catching on. What makes him especially convincing is that he's not some wild man leaping around a stage. He is calm and pleasant and soft-spoken. He wears dark suits and ties. He's married, and lives in the suburbs of Boston, and drives a Lexus. He and his wife, Sonya, a psychologist, have two grown children. Yes, Kurzweil has an ego. But he's also happy to discuss his detractors, and is respectful toward them, like some kindhearted professor. He presents himself as a bright, sweet-natured computer nerd who happens to have the time and resources to pursue a somewhat eccentric passion. And his shtik is working. Transcendent Man, a new documentary about Kurzweil, debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival in April. Another film, produced by Kurzweil himself, lays out the ideas contained in his book The Singularity Is Near; it will be in theaters later this year. Even the big brains at Google have been swept up in Kurzweil's vision. Google cofounder Larry Page has worked with Kurzweil on a study about the future of solar power, and in February of this year launched Singularity University, a nine-week summer program that will bring together thinkers from nanotechnology, bioinformatics, robotics and artificial intelligence, with Kurzweil in charge. But even some of Kurzweil's associates secretly think he's a bit off his rocker, and that his ideas are driven more by fear of death than by solid science. "Ray is going through the single most public midlife crisis that any male has ever gone through," says one scientist who will be teaching at Singularity University and who asked for anonymity because he didn't want to criticize a colleague publicly.

Kurzweil knew at the age of 5 that he wanted to be an inventor. When he was 8 he built an elaborate mechanized puppet show featuring a character called Ramona—sort of a female alter ego for Ray. As a teenager he began tinkering with computers, and in high school Kurzweil wrote a computer program that could compose music. At 16 he found himself on national TV, showing it off. He zipped through MIT, acing his math and science courses without attending class, and graduating in 1970 with a double degree in computer science and creative writing.