5 amazing predictions by futurist Ray Kurzweil that came true — and 4 that haven't

Google Glass
Google Glass came true — or did it?
Google+ / Google Glass

Ray Kurzweil is probably the world's foremost futurist, authoring bestselling books like "The Age of Spiritual Machines," "The Singularity Is Near," and "How to Create a Mind."

Advertisement

He's so influential that Google (now Alphabet) hired him to lead its artificial intelligence efforts. 

Kurzweil is known for making predictions about the future, which are right about 86% of the time

Here are a few of the predictions he's made about life up to 2015. They're shockingly accurate.

And also inaccurate.

 

Advertisement

In 1990, Kurzweil said that by 1999 "consumers will be able to sit down at their home computers and design their own clothes to their own precise measurements and style requirements using friendly, computer-assisted design software."

Tuxedo Rentals
Getty / Spencer Platt

Kurzweil made this prediction in "The Age of Intelligent Machines," where he discussed the idea that there's going to be customization in online retail unlike anything we've seen before. 

"When the user issues the command 'Make clothes,' the design parameters and measurements will be transmitted to a remote manufacturing facility, where the clothes will be made and shipped within hours," he writes.

That's still a way off — though startups like The Black Tux are starting to make online tailoring a thing

File under: inaccurate.

Advertisement

1999: Kurzweil predicts that "personal computers are available in a wide range of sizes and shapes, and are commonly embedded in clothing and jewelry such as wristwatches, rings, earrings and other body ornaments" by 2009.

fitbit
Wikimedia Commons

By 2009, wearable computers were just starting to become popular, with the help of the iPod Nano, which you could clip to your jacket, and the 2008 launch of the Fitbit, which initiated the ongoing fitness tracker trend.

File under: accurate. 

Advertisement

In 1999, Kurzweil said "Most text created using speech recognition" by 2009.

apple siri zoe deschanel
YouTube/Apple

While Kurzweil cited the voice recognition software Dragon Dictation, first released in 2009,  as evidence that speech-to-text had become popular, the shrinking of computers into smartphones really just turned us all into a population that messages — to the tune of 20 billion SMSes and 30 billion WhatsApp messages sent each day.  

And everybody is still super annoyed by Siri.

File under: inaccurate.

Advertisement

In 2000, he said that by 2010 "we’ll have very high-bandwidth wireless communication to the Internet at all times."

365607591_20a9e6c6c6_o
oskay / flickr

The "always on" mentality wasn't yet widespread by 2010. 

LTE networks (which can be as fast as a cable modem) started to first roll out in 2010 on Verizon, allowing people to be constantly online — for better or worse.

According to Nielson, about 21% of Americans who had a phone owned a smartphone in the fourth quarter of 2009. The first LTE phone didn't drop until 2011, and smartphones didn't overtake feature phones until 2013, which gave people the tools to always be connected to the Internet. 

File under: Almost accurate.

Advertisement

In 1990, Kurzweil said that "Lifetime patient records and histories will be maintained in nationally (or internationally) coordinated data banks" by the 2000s.

nurse
U.S. Navy/Wikimedia Commons

In the 1990 book "The Age of Intelligent Machines," Kurzweil said that an international database of patient records will replace "today's disorganized system of partial, fragmented, and often illegible records" and be searchable by "human machine experts."  

His vision includes "wristwatch monitoring systems" by the early 2000s. Which, today, we see in things like the Apple Watch.

File under: sadly far from reality. While wearable tech is making it easier to constantly monitor health data, the American healthcare system is so fractured that transferring data between medical institutions is impossible

Advertisement

In 1999: "Individuals primarily use portable computers" by 2009.

guy on laptop
Shutterstock

In "The Age of Spiritual Machines," published in 1999, Kurzweil said that portable computers were going to take over stationary ones. 

More laptops were sold than desktops worldwide for the first time in 2008. Things only got more mobile: in 2011, smartphone sales outpaced personal computers as a whole

File under: accurate.

Advertisement

By 2009, "intelligent roads are in use, primarily for long-distance travel."

Google self driving car
Google's self-driving cars are already in a few cities.
Google

In 1999 Kurzweil predicted that self-driving cars would be used for long-distance driving by 2009. 

"Once your car’s computer guidance system locks onto the control sensors on one of these highways, you can sit back and relax," he writes. "Local roads, though, are still predominantly conventional." 

While Google's self-driving cars have logged 1.2 million miles in autonomous mode since 2009, they're still not consumer ready — though BI Intelligence predicts 10 million of them are slated to be on the road by 2020

File under: inaccurate.

Advertisement

In 2000 Kurzweil said that by 2010 "[Computers] will tap into the worldwide mesh (what the World Wide Web will become once all of its linked devices become communicating Web servers, thereby forming vast supercomputers and memory banks) of high-speed communications and computational resources."

cloud
Nicholas Hunt/PatrickMcMullan.com

Basically, Kurzweil was predicting a fully matured version of cloud computing, a sector that's been growing since the invention of mainframe computers in the 1950s

Cloud computing — where you use remote computers to manage data rather than local ones — was coming into its own by 2010. One case study: Amazon Web Services, a service used by companies to outsource their data processing, was founded in 2006 and by 2010 made $500 million in revenue

File under: Startlingly accurate.

Advertisement

In 2000, Kurzweil predicted that by 2010 "displays will be built into our eyeglasses and contact lenses and images projected directly onto our retinas."

Google Glass
Google+ / Google Glass

Turning our eyes into screens remains tantalizingly close to reality. 

Google started piloting its mega-hyped Google Glass eyewear in 2013, and then promptly folded up its consumer-facing business in January 2015 — though there are still enterprise applications for the product.

And the release date of Magic Leap — the vaunted "augemented reality" device that turns your living room into a video game by way of headset — still remains a mystery

File under: Almost accurate. While the technology does exist, nobody's really using it.

Advertisement

For Kurzweil, the "law of accelerating returns" rules the future.

computing exponential growth
Wikimedia Commons

To arrive at his predictions, Kurzweil draws upon a reliable theory.

"My core thesis, which I call the 'law of accelerating returns,' is that fundamental measures of information technology follow predictable and exponential trajectories, belying the conventional wisdom that 'you can’t predict the future,'" Kurzweil wrote in a 2010 essay.

To Kurzweil, telling whether a company is going to win in the marketplace or if there will ever be peace in the Middle East is unpredictable, but the increasing capabilities of technology are "remarkably predictable" — allowing him to project into the future. 

Advertisement
Close icon Two crossed lines that form an 'X'. It indicates a way to close an interaction, or dismiss a notification.