Ray Kurzweil will have implications far beyond the fun projects at Google. His machine learning knowhow could impact networks, data centers and algorithms too.

Google has brought on futurist and artificial intelligence expert Ray Kurzweil as director of engineering, and there could be some real returns on the company’s high-profile hire.In a statement, Kurzweil confirmed that he’d be joining Google. He noted that his interest in reading technology, artificial intelligence, driving cars and those other things from the Jetsons lines up nicely with Google’s efforts. […]