Transcript | Ray Kurzweil: Sometimes people think that emotion and art are sort of sideshows to human intelligence and the real essence of intelligence is thinking logically. If that were true, computers are already smarter than we are because they’re much better at logical thinking than we are. It’s actually things like being funny, being sexy or expressing a loving sentiment; maybe in a poem or in a musical piece. That’s the cutting edge of human intelligence.

It has to do with the hierarchy of the neocortex and at the low levels things might seem cold and mechanical because we’re – our neocortex can recognize very simple objects and make very simple decisions. At a high level, it’s dealing with concepts like the beauty of a poem by Emily Dickinson or the ability to create a poem like that. And we can come back to creativity I believe it’s an exercise in metaphors and the neocortex is a metaphor machine. […]

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