Google hires famed futurist Ray Kurzweil as 'Director of Engineering'

Washington, Dec 15 (ANI): Internet search giant Google has hired Ray Kurzweil, the famed inventor and futurist, to work on 'some of the hardest problems in computer science'.

Kurzweil announced that he would join the tech firm officially on Monday.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Kurzweil is best known for his theories about "The Singularity," or the point in the future when technology becomes so advanced that it starts outsmarting humans on its own.

The hiring of Kurzweil builds on existing ties between the author and Google, the report said.

Google has partly funded Kurzweil's Singularity University, an academic program launched a few years ago in Silicon Valley to prep students for a tech-heavy future and such concepts as nanotechnology and robotics, it added.

According to the report, Kurzweil described his new title at Google as Director of Engineering.

"In 1999, I said that in about a decade we would see technologies such as self-driving cars and mobile phones that could answer your questions, and people criticized these predictions as unrealistic," he wrote on ablog post.

"Fast forward a decade-Google has demonstrated self-driving cars, and people are indeed asking questions of their Android phones," he added. (ANI)

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Google hires famed futurist Ray Kurzweil as 'Director of Engineering'