Founder and Chief Technology Officer, Kurzweil Applied Intelligence, and Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Kurzweil Educational Systems
Ray Kurzweil is the principal developer of the world's:
First Print-to-Speech Reading Machine for the Blind (the "Kurzweil Reading Machine") in 1976. In 1998 Ray's latest reading machine, the Kurzweil 1000, won the first $150,000 SAP / Stevie Wonder Vision Award for Product of the Year.
First Omni-Font (i.e., "any" font) Optical Character Recognition (OCR) in 1976. Today, the latest generation of the original Kurzweil OCR is called Xerox TextBridge, one of the market leaders.
First CCD (Charge Coupled Device) Flat Bed Scanner in 1975. Today CCD flat bed scanners are a multi billion dollar industry.
First Text-to-Speech Synthesizer in 1975. Text-to-speech technology is also a large industry today.
First Music Synthesizer capable of recreating the grand piano and other orchestral instruments in 1984. Today, Kurzweil Music synthesizers continue as a market and technology leader, marketed in 45 countries.
First Commercially Marketed Large Vocabulary Speech Recognition in 1987. Today, Kurzweil speech recognition (products include Kurzweil Clinical Reporter for physicians and Lernout & Hauspie Voice Xpress for the retail market) continue as market leaders.
Ray has successfully founded, built and sold four high-tech companies, all using artificial intelligence and pattern recognition technologies.
Called the "ultimate thinking machine" by Forbes Magazine, he is one of the world's leading authorities on artificial intelligence.
Ray's presentation is titled, "Promise and Peril: Deeply Intertwined Poles of Twenty First Century Technology."
