ClaimsRay Kurzweil

“But the reason it’s gone up is because we’ve basically enhanced our own capabilities by using these machines as opposed to them just competing with us.”

Ray Kurzweil, interviewee 16 September 2022 Ray Kurzweil: Google's prophet of superintelligent AI who will not slow down (EDRM) archived copy

Factual AI, the economy and work

Employment has risen because people enhanced their own capabilities by using machines rather than competing with them.

Unresolvable The public record could not settle it.

Factual: Statements about the present or the past, checked against the record: did they hold up?

Reasoning

Causal explanation of employment growth is too broad and contested to settle with a record.

Cite this claim

Ray Kurzweil, “Employment has risen because people enhanced their own capabilities by using machines rather than competing with them.” (said 16 September 2022). Verdict: unresolvable. Reliability API, claim c_2e4e537083de, method 0.1.0+28da144b, dataset release v1.1.2. https://epistacklabs.com/claims/c_2e4e537083de

This claim is in dataset release v1.1.2, with the same verdict.

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For Ray Kurzweil, or someone speaking for them: a correction or counter-evidence. Replies are read before anything is shown; an approved reply shows your name, role, date, statement and link. Your email address is never shown and is deleted 30 days after the decision (privacy).

More factual claims by Ray Kurzweil

  1. Resolved true Factual 9 July 2024
    “They were correct that things like the cotton jenny and so on did eliminate lots of these jobs.”

    Inventions like the spinning jenny did eliminate many jobs, as the Luddites claimed.

  2. Mixed Factual March 2017
    “Yet for every job that was eliminated, we invented several new ones”

    For every job that was eliminated, several new ones were invented, with the work force growing from 24 million people (31 percent of the population) in 1900 to 142 million (44 percent of the population) in 2015.

  3. Mostly false Factual March 2017
    “The average job today pays 11 times as much per hour in constant dollars as it did a century ago.”

    The average job today (as of 2017) pays 11 times as much per hour in constant dollars as it did a century ago.

  4. Mostly false Factual 4 June 2026
    “That was not true a year ago. But that’s true today.”

    Large language models being roughly 50% better than human doctors at diagnosing conditions and recommending treatments was not true a year ago but is true today.

  5. Resolved true Factual 20 January 2026
    “In 1999, I predicted 2029 for AGI and I still predict 2029.”

    Kurzweil predicted in 1999 that AGI would arrive in 2029.

All of them

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