Why AGI Is Close but Not Here Yet | Ray Kurzweil | EP #261

Moonshots with Peter Diamandis

PHD Ventures

Business

4.8 • 604 Ratings

🗓️ 3 June 2026

⏱️ 93 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode, the mates and Steven Kotler sit down with Ray Kurzweil to discuss AGI, the future, and more. Get access to metatrends 10+ years before anyone else - https://qr.diamandis.com/metatrends Ray Kurzweil is an American inventor and futurist best known for his pioneering work in optical character recognition and his predictions regarding the technological singularity. Peter H. Diamandis, MD, is the Founder of XPRIZE, Singularity University, ZeroG, and A360 Salim Ismail is the founder of Open ExO, a GP at Exponential Venture Capital/The Organizational Singularity Fund and a sought after global speaker and thought leader. Dave Blundin is the founder & GP of Link Ventures Dr. Alexander Wissner-Gross is a computer scientist and founder of Reified Steven Kotler is a New York Times bestselling author, and founder of the Flow Research Collective and Flow Institute, known for his work on flow and human performance. – My companies: Apply to Dave's and my new fund:https://qr.diamandis.com/linkventureslanding Go to Blitzy to book a free demo and start building today: https://qr.diamandis.com/blitzy Your body is incredibly good at hiding disease. Schedule a call with Fountain Life to add healthy decades to your life, and to learn more about their Memberships: https://www.fountainlife.com/peter _ Connect with Peter: X Instagram Substack Website Xprize Connect with Dave: Web X LinkedIn Instagram TikTok Connect with Salim: LinkedIn X Apply for Salim’s Pilot Program Subscribe to Salim’s YouTube channel Exponential Venture Capital Connect with Alex Website LinkedIn X Email Substack Spotify Threads Listen to MOONSHOTS: Apple YouTube – *Recorded on May 4th, 2026 *The views expressed by me and all guests are personal opinions and do not constitute Financial, Medical, or Legal advice. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	We just saw a story where Demis,
0:02.0	Asabas, who you know, said 50-50,
0:05.0	whether we need another breakthrough to get to AGI.
0:08.0	What do you think?
0:09.0	Well, I think we need two things.
0:14.0	So we've made a 75,000 million trillion
0:17.0	fold increase over this 75 years. But AGI will happen by 2029. The large language
0:24.1	models have only been effective for the last six months. We're being really affected by the
0:30.1	exponential growth. A year ago, large language models were okay. Now they're really very effective,
0:39.5	and we're really going to be able to feel that in the future. If you could send a message back in time to the 1960s or 1970s for how to avoid
0:45.6	plateaus and just speed up progress toward the singularity, what message would you send back in time?
0:50.9	I think we have to consider...
0:53.7	Now that's a moonshot, ladies and gentlemen.
1:02.0	It's a pleasure to invite everybody to an afternoon with an extraordinary man, Ray Kurzweil with my Moonshot
1:13.9	mates, my co-author Steven. So, Ray, you've been a mentor, a business partner, a co-author
1:22.4	for me personally, and just an incredible guide for many of us.
1:30.7	Rick Kurzweil is called The Relentless Genius by the Wall Street Journal,
1:32.9	The Ultimate Thinking Machine by Forbes,
1:36.7	The Rightful Air to Thomas Edison by Inc. Magazine.
1:41.4	PBS named him as one of the 16 revolutionaries who made America.
1:47.4	He invented the first CCD flatbed scanner, the first print to speech reading machine for the blind, the first text to speech synthesizer, and the first music synthesizer
1:53.4	capable of recreating a grand piano. He's a national inventors hall of fame inductee, a National Medal of Technology recipient,
	...

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