Kanye West is watching a TED Talk from the Google exec who predicted that computers will become super-intelligent by 2030 and humans will live forever by 2045
- Kanye West was spotted watching a video from Google exec Ray Kurzweil, the company's chief futurist and director of engineering.
- The specific video was Kurzweil's TED Talk "The Accelerating Power of Technology."
Musician and fashion designer Kanye West sparked a million tweets on Monday when he shared short videos of him listening to right-wing personalities like Scott Adams.
But a small clue hidden on his Apple laptop screen shows he's been mainlining other controversial opinions - some from Google's chief futurist and director of engineering Ray Kurzweil.
In his latest video posted on Monday, Kanye has a tab open pointing to a TED Talk by Kurzweil called "The Accelerating Power of Technology."
Here's the footage from Kanye's tweet:
Zoom in on the top tab:
That tab says it's a 2007 talk from the renowned futurist - it's also worth noting that it sure looks like Kanye taped over the webcam on his MacBook.
Who is Ray Kurzweil and what does he believe?
Kurzweil's big idea is that the rate of technological change is increasing - so fast, actually, that by 2030 there will be super-intelligent computers.
"But if we go to 2029, we really have the full maturity of these trends, and you have to appreciate how many turns of the screw in terms of generations of technology, which are getting faster and faster, we'll have at that point," Kurzweil said during the 2007 talk. "We'll have completed the reverse-engineering of the human brain - $1,000 of computing will be far more powerful than the human brain in terms of basic raw capacity."
And then, at some point, he thinks human intelligence is going to merge with these super-powerful computers.
"But it's not just an alien invasion of intelligent machines. We are going to merge with our technology," he continued.
Kurzweil is describing an idea that some people call "the singularity," after a book he wrote. Basically, when computers become intelligent enough, humans will transcend "the limitations of our biological bodies and brain" by merging with computers, giving them immortality.
In a recent interview, he's predicted that humans will live forever by the year 2045. He's also said that basic income, or governments giving money to every citizen without requirements, will be widespread by the 2030s.
These are far-out ideas, but many people in the tech industry take them seriously - including Google's leadership, which gave him a job at the tech giant looking into the future. Maybe Kanye is looking to tap into some of that futuristic thinking for his two upcoming albums or line of Adidas shoes.
Neither Kanye nor Kurzweil responded to tweets, but Kanye has been flirting with singularity-like thought during his recent tweetstorms.
You can watch the entire TED Talk from Kurzweil below: