Can AI Help Ray Kurzweil Cheat Death?

[The Information] Ray Kurzweil does not want to die, but at 78 he has been thinking about it more, a preoccupation he describes as a "major motivating force of human beings." Over the past year, Kurzweil, whose observations and 2005 bestseller "The Singularity Is Near" made him one of the most influential prophets of the AI age, has devoted himself to a project to ensure a version of himself lives on by creating an AI replica. He calls it Rai. The AI is accessible through a browser on a computer or smartphone, and interacting with it is much like a Zoom call: once opened, a three-dimensional image of Kurzweil appears against a cosmos-themed backdrop and responds to a person's voice.