We're delighted to make this announcement regarding Ray Kurzweil. Ray is on
Extropy Institute's Council of Advisors, and will be speaking at a special
Friday evening session at the Extro-5 conference. This award follows his
recent Presidential Medal award for technology.
Congratulations Ray!
Max More
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EMBARGOED UNTIL 10:00 A.M. EST APRIL 24, 2001
Contacts: Mark D. Harrop - 212/213-7175
Elliott Frieder - 212/213-7245
$500,000 Lemelson-MIT Prize awarded to FUTURIST
who make a career of helping others
Artificial Intelligence Innovator Raymond Kurzweil
Invented First Reading Machine for the Blind-
New York, NY, April 24, 2001 - The Lemelson-MIT Program announced today that
its annual $500,000 prize - the world's largest single award for invention
and innovation - is being presented to futurist Raymond Kurzweil, a pioneer
of pattern recognition technologies who has made a career of helping others,
while showing a flair for integrating technology and the arts. Over the
past 35 years, Kurzweil has produced a lengthy list of achievements and
innovations that have enriched society, including: advancing artificial
intelligence (AI) technologies; founding, developing and selling four
successful companies; and writing two best-selling books that support his
predictions for the 21st century. Kurzweil is being recognized by the
Lemelson-MIT Program for the breadth and scope of his inventive work, and
for his commitment to enhancing the quality of life for people with
disabilities through technology.
Kurzweil is credited with many invention "firsts" that span such diverse
fields as pattern recognition, speech technology, music and the visual arts.
These include the first omni-font optical character recognition (OCR)
computer program; the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind;
the first text-to-speech synthesizer; the first electronic
musical instrument capable of reproducing
the sounds of orchestral instruments; and the first commercially-marketed
large vocabulary speech recognition system. Kurzweil's latest innovation
represents an advance in virtual reality technology, a virtual performing
and recording artist, "Ramona."
Kurzweil's landmark invention is the Kurzweil Reading Machine, introduced in
1976, which converts print to speech. To date, the Kurzweil Reading Machine
has made it possible for many thousands of blind people to read the text of
ordinary books, magazines and other printed documents. The first owner of a
Kurzweil Reading Machine was legendary musician Stevie Wonder, who contacted
Kurzweil after hearing about the device.
"The Kurzweil Reading Machine was a breakthrough that changed my life,"
says Wonder, who helped nominate Kurzweil for the $500,000 Lemelson-MIT Prize.
"With the Kurzweil Reading Machine, I could read anything I wanted with
complete privacy: music lyrics, letters from my children, the latest best
sellers
and magazines, memos from my business associates. It gave blind people
the one thing that everyone treasures, which is independence."
Consequently, it was Kurzweil's friendship with Wonder which led to another
major innovation: the Kurzweil 250 Synthesizer (K250). On a tour through
Wonder's studio in 1982, Kurzweil learned of Wonder's frustrations with the
current technical limitations that prevented the bridging of electronic
music composition with the sounds of acoustic instruments. Introduced
commercially in 1984, the K250 was the first electronic musical instrument
to emulate successfully the complex sound response of a grand piano and
virtually all other orchestral instruments.
Currently, Kurzweil is focusing on www.KurzweilAI.net (Kurzweil Accelerating
Intelligence Network), a Web-based subsidiary of Kurzweil Technologies, Inc.
(KTI) that showcases ideas of leading technologists and "big thinkers." The
main concentration of KurzweilAI.net is on the exponential growth of
intelligence, both biological and artificial. "Ramona," Kurzweil's alter
ego and a lifelike, photo-realistic, interactive avatar (virtual
personality) with conversational abilities, simultaneously guides users
through KurzweilAI.net and showcases the latest advancements in intelligent
machines.
Other KTI companies include:
Medical Learning Company (MLC), developer of www.FamilyPractice.com, a
comprehensive online resource for family practice physicians which has also
developed a virtual patient for use in medical training. MLC is a joint
venture between KTI and the American Board of Family Practice, the second
largest medical specialty board in the U.S.
Kurzweil CyberArt Technologies (KCAT), which develops and markets
artificially intelligent software to aid the creative process, including Ray
Kurzweil's Cybernetic Poet that helps users write poetry and song lyrics,
and the forthcoming AARON (developed by computer scientist and artist,
Harold Cohen), which "paints" original art on computer screens. KCAT is
launching AARON today and free trial copies of the software are available at
www.KurzweilCyberArt.com.
FatKat, Inc. (Financial Accelerating Transactions from Kurzweil Adaptive
Technologies), which is currently developing pattern recognition-based
technology to make stock market investment decisions.
Previous recipients of the annual $500,000 Lemelson-MIT Prize include Thomas
Fogarty, surgical pioneer and inventor of the embolectomy balloon catheter;
Carver Mead, physicist who revolutionized the field of microelectronics;
Robert Langer, inventor of the first FDA-approved brain cancer treatment;
and Douglas Englebart, computing visionary and inventor of the computer
mouse.
Kurzweil will be formally presented with the Lemelson-MIT Prize on
Wednesday, April 25, at a special ceremony at the Smithsonian's National
Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. This year, the ceremony will
be held in conjunction with "Nobel Week," a series of programs honoring the
centennial of the Nobel Prizes, hosted by the Lemelson Center for the Study
of Invention and Innovation at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American
History.
Kurzweil gratefully acknowledges the role that his creative parents as well
as his teachers and peers have played in his success as an inventor over the
years. "Encouragement is necessary for young inventors to succeed. It is
important for kids to realize that they have the authority to explore their
own ideas and that it is okay to fail," he says.
ABOUT THE LEMELSON-MIT PROGRAM
Based at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, the Lemelson-MIT Program was established in 1994 by the late
independent inventor Jerome H. Lemelson and his wife, Dorothy. The Program
celebrates inventor/innovator role models through outreach activities and
annual awards including the world's largest for invention, the $500,000
Lemelson-MIT Prize. The Program encourages young Americans to pursue
careers in the fields of science, engineering, technology and
entrepreneurship. The Lemelson-MIT Program is funded by the Lemelson
Foundation, which supports other invention initiatives at the Smithsonian's
National Museum of American History, Hampshire College, the National
Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance and the University of Nevada,
Reno. For more information about the Lemelson-MIT Program, please visit its
Web site at http://web.mit.edu/invent.
# # #
Forgive the plug, but to hear Ray Kurzweil present and discuss ideas from
his forthcoming book, Singularity is Near, register for the Extro-5 conference:
http://www.extropy.org/ex5/extro5.htm
Max
_______________________________________________________
Max More, Ph.D.
max@maxmore.com or more@extropy.org
www.maxmore.com
President, Extropy Institute. www.extropy.org
Senior Content Architect, ManyWorlds Inc.: www.manyworlds.com
Chair, Extro-5: Shaping Things to Come, www.extropy.org/ex5/extro5.htm
_______________________________________________________
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