Your view on singularity largely depends on your relationships with John Searle Chinese room argument; I accept it, and do not find Kurzweil views convincing.
I read the Chinese room argument, it seems really naive. It's like saying "my neurons aren't conscious therefore I am not conscious", which is clearly not the case.
We're made of matter, computers are made of matter, where is the difference?
> It's like saying "my neurons aren't conscious therefore I am not conscious", which is clearly not the case.
You need to read Searle's works again; his point is actually the opposite - we are machines made out of biological neurons, which seem to have an externally unobservable property of being conscious; we do not know what it is caused by, but we can see today that it is possible to create a simulation of human behavior by means of logical gates. We have no idea if it will have mind or not.
> We're made of matter, computers are made of matter, where is the difference?
That's an odd argument. And actually does not contradict Searle at all.
We're made of matter, computers are made of matter, where is the difference?