レイ・カーツワイル（Ray Kurzweil、1948年–）は、アメリカの発明家、未来学者、AI研究者。マサチューセッツ工科大学（MIT）在学中に起業し、文字認識（OCR）、視覚障害者向け読み上げ装置、音楽シンセサイザーなどの開発を手がけてきた。米国国家技術賞を受賞し、全米発明家殿堂入りを果たしたほか、Googleでは機械学習や自然言語処理をはじめとするAI研究に携わっている。技術の進歩が指数関数的に加速するという「収穫加速の法則」を提唱し、AIが人間の知能を超え、人間とテクノロジーの融合が進む「シンギュラリティ」の議論を広く知らしめた。代表作『シンギュラリティはより近く 人類がAIと融合するとき』（原題 "The Singularity Is Nearer"）では、AI、バイオテクノロジー、ナノテクノロジーなどの進歩を検討しながら、知能の拡張、仕事の変化、寿命の延長、AIがもたらすリスクを論じ、2045年のシンギュラリティ到来という自身の予測を改めて提示している。
Ray Kurzweil (born 1948) is an American inventor, futurist, and artificial intelligence researcher. He founded his first company while studying at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and went on to pioneer technologies in optical character recognition, reading machines for the visually impaired, and electronic music synthesizers. A recipient of the U.S. National Medal of Technology and Innovation and an inductee into the National Inventors Hall of Fame, he has also worked at Google on artificial intelligence, including machine learning and natural language processing. Kurzweil is known for his “law of accelerating returns,” which argues that technological progress advances exponentially, and for popularizing the idea of the technological singularity, when artificial intelligence and human capabilities become increasingly intertwined. In "The Singularity Is Nearer," he reassesses the rapid development of AI, biotechnology, and nanotechnology and examines their implications for intelligence, employment, longevity, and technological risk while reaffirming his prediction that the singularity will occur around 2045.
