Don't freak out. I'm personally dubious of most things he says. The ideas are often evocative, but I feel he has no grasp of the practical difficulties of his claims.
Except that he has been building leading-edge artificial intelligence systems since he was a teenager and studying those practical difficulties you mention for decades, and has now been hired as a Director of Engineering at the world's leading information technology company to lead the effort to build the most capable natural language understanding system ever created.
Would you like to be more specific about those technical difficulties that Mr. Kurzweil hasn't grasped? Or are you just saying that because you find it hard to believe his predictions?
Ray Kurzweil has been discussed several times on HN, I recommend diving in archives to read in-depth conversations about the topic with arguments from both sides.
But to summarize what a lot of smart people say about him– he hasn't produced any original research in the past decade or so, and his latest "revolutionary" book contains a lot of information that neurobiologists consider either plain out wrong or grossly over-simplified. Mitch Kapor called his ideas "intelligent design for the IQ 140 people".
It is also worth noting that the timeframe he lays out for most of his predictions about singularity-style technology ("computers that feel and love", "eternal life") seem to match the boundaries of his natural lifespan (i.e. in the next 30 years). Some have seen here the signs of a man who's getting older, terrified of death, and trying to convince himself and everyone else that he is not doomed to go through the human condition.
As you highlight, he has produced a lot of great things, but it is not unheard of for brilliant minds to become quite kooky in their old age.
>Except that he has been building leading-edge artificial intelligence systems since he was a teenager and studying those practical difficulties you mention for decades,
Except that you can do all these things and still be prone to wishful thinking.
Especially if there was a traumatic event involving, say, the loss of your father, an event that makes you obsessive about your mortality, eternal life through tech et al.
Linus Pauling even had two nobels, but he was saying BS about Vitamin C. And Wilhelm Reich was a smart guy too, until he got lost on his own make believe world. Ditto for Nash, ditto for Godel, Howard Hughes, the list goes on.
Genius and insanity are not that far. And merely-brilliant (which Kurzweill is) to obsessive wishful thinker, are even closer.
Especially if you have an audience of ex-hippy rich Californians that like to hear your transcendental techno-religious jive.
Maybe we should all be a little bit more obsessive about our mortality.
I think that if you can look at all of the amazing transformations technology has made in the last century and not have high expectations for even more incredibleness then you are not understanding reality correctly.
>Maybe we should all be a little bit more obsessive about our mortality.
This generally leads to an early grave, emotional paralysis in real life, and the "thousand small deaths" of the coward. Like Howard Hughes, Godel, Michael Jackson, and tons of other examples.
Nothing worse for living your life to the fullest than being obsessive about mortality.
