Honestly fully-sentient machines in 16 years seems totally ridiculous on its face to me regardless of what kind of graphs and charts about technological progress can be shown off. While I'm not really up to speed on AI research, in the consumer space at least we've just barely achieved a semi-automated house-vacuuming robot and fumbling speech-recognition in call centers. Unless I'm totally off-base with what's capable today, emotions and intelligence in a decade and a half would seem to require breakthrough after breakthrough in a vast number of nearly unrelated disciplines; plus there'd have to be the commercial demand needed to fund it. (Space stations and flying cars may be technically possible today, but nobody wants to pay for them.)
Kurzweil has invented a few cool things but today the guy is essentially a talented sci-fi writer. While those kinds of people are important, I have no idea why so many people take him so seriously.
Kurzweil has invented a few cool things but today the guy is essentially a talented sci-fi writer. While those kinds of people are important, I have no idea why so many people take him so seriously.