Ray Kurzweil has been called "the rightful heir to Thomas Edison." Currently an author and the Director of Engineering at Google, Kurzweil is a leading authority on futurism, transhumanism, and artificial intelligence (AI), and is one of the fathers of optical character recognition (OCR), text-to-speech synthesis, and electronic music technology.

In books like 1990's The Age of Intelligent Machines, 1999's The Age of Spiritual Machines, and 2005's The Singularity is Near, Kurzweil also laid out a complex vision for the future. He believes, among many predictions, that an artificially intelligent computer will pass the Turing Test by 2029, advances in genetics and biotechology will reverse the effects of aging, and that creating a synthetic neocortex will lead to true AI singularity. Kurzweil said his next book should hit shelves sometime between 2017-2018.

CNBC's Bob Pisani interviewed Kurzweil at the Exponential Finance conference organized by Singularity University (of which he co-founded and serves as Chancellor). Using live-streaming robot technology called Beam (the same tech Accenture used to take me inside its take me inside its Liquid Studio), Kurzweil's talking head appeared onstage to talk about the technological, cultural, and societal implications of a wide range of scientific and tech advancements, from AI to biotechnology. Below are some of his most interesting responses.

On Technology and New Jobs...

Sixty-five percent of the jobs today in America are information jobs that didn't exist 25 years ago, and we keep increasing the sophistication of jobs and enhancing our intelligence. When things occur, it becomes part of our everyday reality. Technologies creep up on us. Think back a decade ago; there we no social networks, no wikis, no blogs. Fifteen years ago, search engines were just getting started. A world without search engines or the Internet sounds like ancient history, but it wasn't so long ago. We very quickly get used to the positive things about technology.

On the 24-Hour News Cycle...

As I go around the world, people are pessimistic. What's actually happening is that our information about what's wrong with the world is getting exponentially better. A century ago you wouldn't even hear about something happening in the next village over. This is actually one of the most peaceful times in human history; your chance of being killed is dramatically less than it was in terms of the scarcity of resources and lack of democratic governments. The rise of democratization has a lot to do with the rise of communication technologies.

On AlphaGo...

[AlphaGo] was a victory for the symbolic school of AI. There have been two competing schools of artificial intelligence. Being able to think things through logically is the symbolic school, and then there's the connections school represented by neural nets. The Deep Blue [IBM chess-playing computer that defeated Gary Kasparov in 1996] worked by figuring out the move-countermove sequence and following a certain line of play.

On the New Wave of Techno Pessimism...

It's remarkable that people can make arguments in the face of all reason. Since 1970 we've seen the rise of the Internet, which has been profoundly transformative in terms of human communications. We've seen the rise of computers, AI, robotics, and seeing machines do things without the provenance of humans like driving a car.

If there's something AI can't do, you can always argue that it's a profound limitation that can't be surpassed. In my view, there's no limit to what machines will be able to do. We have always used machines to extend our own reach.

On Advice for His Younger Self...

My philosophy has always been to learn by doing. Even in junior high school I had my textbook in front of me, but behind me I'd be working on my own projects. It's about having a passion, a goal, or a vision I want to create. I might succeed or I might fail. A tenet to that is pursuing your passions, some vision you have. It could be a piece of music or literature, or a scientific theory or an invention, a new app or mobile device. It could be anything.

On Tech Fears and Planning for the Worst...

Technology is a double-edged sword. These new technologies are that much more powerful. My generation was the first to encounter an existential risk. The drills we had in elementary school under our desks with our hands around our neck bracing for thermonuclear disaster.

Addressing these potential risks is the most important issue we have as humans in this century. The existential risk of something like biotechnology has been with us for a long time. We are using biotechnology as a way to reprogram biology away from disease and away from aging, but that same technology that can be used to reprogram cancer can be used by a bioterrorist to make a disease more deadly. We now have guidelines and regulations to prevent this, and we're getting profound benefits from biotechnology that will be a flood over the next decade, while the number of damaging incidents has been zero. That doesn't mean we cross it off our concern list—the technology grows in sophistication and we have to continue to redesign these guidelines—but it's a good model for how to deal with the dangers of something like artificial intelligence.

On Personal Assistants, Chatbots, and App Ecosystems...

We see all the big companies trying to at least create an interface for all the different apps, centered around natural language. You talk things over and ask your computer in natural langugae and the system you're talking to, whether it's Google, Apple, or Microsoft, will direct you to the appropriate app to manage that task. The road we're on is interacting with your computers through natural language.

On Anti-Aging Tech and Mortality…

There are a number of different challenges with the idea of accelerating longevity, not the least of which is people saying I don't want to be the quintessential 95-year-old for 300 years. With neurological diseases like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, dementia, there are great strides being made and models showing effective treatments I'm confident will make tremendous advances in Alzheimer's in particular, but all these neurological diseases over the next decade. We're talking about overcoming disease, mental impairment, and neurological problems. We're not going to be reversing aging.

On Hillary Clinton and Equal Rights…

In 1868, my mother's mother's mother founded the first school in Europe for higher education for girls. In the 1950s as a young child, my mother was a civil rights marcher. We have made tremendous progress. Today, we're about to see a woman nominated for a major party. Gradually, limitations are falling. We have a consensus, at least, thinking about rights in terms of different backgrounds of all kinds, and I think many of these improvements in tolerance come from better communications technologies because we can actually see and interact with other humans around the world.

On Reaching the Singularity…

I've been consistent on 2029 as the year we will have human-level artificial intelligence. In 1989 I said sometime between the early 2000s and the 2030s, and in 1999 I said 2029. Now we're in 2016 and it's only 13 years away, and polls show that again AI experts are getting more optimistic. We're getting close, but I haven't changed my position. I think we're on par for 2029. I don't think that will immediately revolutionize the world, because we already have human intelligence, and quite a bit of it—7 or 8 billion examples.

On the Manifestation of AI…

We create these tools to compensate for the weaknesses of human intelliegence in some dimensions, like remembering a handful of phone numbers. Computers are extending our own mental reach. When we get to 2030, we'll connect our brains wirelessly and directly to the cloud via our neocortex.

Further Reading