# Human and Machine Intelligence Will Be Deeply Melded by Ray Kurzweil > “When machines are derived from human intelligence but are a million times more capable, we’ll have a different respect for machines, and there won’t be a clear distinction between human and machine intelligence—there’s going to be a merger. We’re already really well along that way. If all the machines in the world stopped today, our civilization would grind to a halt. That wasn’t true as recently as 25 years ago. In 2040, our human intelligence and our machine intelligence will be very deeply and very intimately melded. But all of this is an expression of the human civilization—it’s all coming out of our civilization, it’s all a continuation of that exponential curve that I showed you.” > **— Ray Kurzweil**, *“The Human-Machine Merger,” 2003* ## Sources and Context - **Primary source:** [Ray Kurzweil, “The Human-Machine Merger”](https://www.writingsbyraykurzweil.com/the-human-machine-merger-why-we-will-spend-most-of-our-time-in-virtual-reality-in-the-twenty-first-century) — verifies the wording, attribution and immediate source setting. - **Interpretive context:** Kurzweil’s merger is not an encounter between unrelated species. He presents nonbiological intelligence as derived from human intelligence and embedded in human civilization, then uses present dependence on machines as the beginning of the same continuity he predicts will become intimate cognitive integration. - **Editorial treatment:** The complete contiguous passage is reproduced with an em dash replacing the source’s typographic dash; no substantive wording is changed. ## Related Articles and Collections - **Collection:** [[collections/Machine Succession|Machine Succession]] - **Collection:** [[collections/Consciousness Continuity|Consciousness Continuity]] - **Collection:** [[collections/Neurotech|Neurotech]] - **Article:** [[articles/Sam Altman and The Merge|The Merge: A Message in a Bottle from Sam Altman]] - **Article:** [[articles/The Next Interface Layer|The Next Interface Layer]] - **Wiki map:** [[wiki/Transhumanism|Transhumanism]] ## Related Topics - [[wiki/Ray Kurzweil|Ray Kurzweil]] - [[wiki/Human-Machine Merger|Human-Machine Merger]] - [[wiki/Human-Machine Symbiosis|Human-Machine Symbiosis]] - [[wiki/Transhumanism|Transhumanism]] ## Share on Social Media ``` “When machines are derived from human intelligence but are a million times more capable, we’ll have a different respect for machines, and there won’t be a clear distinction between human and machine intelligence—there’s going to be a merger. We’re already really well along that way. If all the machines in the world stopped today, our civilization would grind to a halt. That wasn’t true as recently as 25 years ago. In 2040, our human intelligence and our machine intelligence will be very deeply and very intimately melded. But all of this is an expression of the human civilization—it’s all coming out of our civilization, it’s all a continuation of that exponential curve that I showed you.” — Ray Kurzweil, “The Human-Machine Merger,” 2003 https://bryantmcgill.com/simple-reminders-ray-kurzweil-human-machine-intelligence-deeply-melded ```