Kurzweil, inventor of the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, founder of Singularity University and the “rightful heir to Thomas Edison,” according to Forbes, compared medical advances to other technological advances, arguing that biology now is subject to the same law of accelerating returns.

Kurzweil predicted that scientists will soon be able to “reprogram” the information processes that form the foundations of biology. “The brain is a big pattern recognizer,” Kurzweil said, citing research from his book How to Create a Mind. […]