Everyone I've ever spoken to who has insisted that materialism is a dead end, has never been able to provide a compelling explanation for why they believe that. It's not as if materialistic progress in neuroscience and ML/AI has stalled. If anything, it's accelerating.

I have no doubt that Kurzweil's timelines and outcomes are wrong, as have the predictions of just about every prior futurist. I don't see what that has to do with materialism being a dead end.