RAY KURZWEIL HAS invented a few things in his time. In his teens, he built a computer that composed classical music, which won him an audience with President Lyndon B. Johnson. In his 20s, he pioneered software that could digitize printed text, and in his 30s he cofounded a synthesizer company with Stevie Wonder. More recently, he’s known for popularizing the idea of the singularity—a moment sometime in the future when superintelligent machines transform humanity—and making optimistic predictions about immortality. For now, though, Kurzweil, 69, leads a team of about 35 people at Google whose code helps you write emails.
His group powers Smart Reply, the feature on the Gmail mobile app that offers three suggested email replies for you to select with a tap. In May it rolled out to all of the service’s English-speaking users, and last week was presented to Spanish speakers too. The responses may be short—“Let’s do Monday” “Yay! Awesome!” “La semana que viene”—but they sure can be useful. (A tip: You can edit them before sending.) “It’s a good example of artificial intelligence working hand in glove with human intelligence,” Kurzweil says.
If you are finding it difficult to communicate, stop blaming lack of face-to-face visual contact. If you can’t communicate in writing, it may be because you can’t write properly. There is a cure for that: education and practice.
Tom Morris (via kvasir)
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