[hcarvalhoalves]

Well, I'm skeptical of Kurzweil's prediction too, but I see where he's coming from. His prediction is solely based on computing power because he also sees general AI as a pure brute force problem. It's the same approach he took to predict that a computer would beat a human in chess before 2000 - and he got that one right.

[gargantian]

Another one he got right was that we wouldn't think more of computers when it happened -- we would simply think less of chess.

[lukev]

Yes, and that's precisely why he's wrong.

[hcarvalhoalves]

If intelligence is just an emergent property of a complex-enough system we won't need more than brute force. This seems a very reasonable hypothesis considering the wetware prior-art, so I wouldn't be as quick to say he's wrong.

What I'm skeptical about are the predictions that we will reach something more intelligent than humans (how to quantify intelligence even?), that it will improve our culture, and other sci-fi stuff...

Even if it turns out the predictions are wrong, the brute force can reach something interesting anyway, not human-like intelligence, but something new and complementary.