I’ve been a Kurzweil supporter since high school, but to the wider world he was a crackpot (inventor who should stick to his lane) who had made a couple randomly lucky predictions.
He wasn’t taken seriously, especially not when he painted a future of spiritual machines.
Recently on the Lex Fridman podcast he himself said as much: his predictions seemed impossible and practically religious in the late 90s and up until fairly recently, but now experts in the field are lowering their projections every year for when the Turing test will be passed.
Half of their projections are now coming in line with the guy they had dismissed for so long, and every year this gap narrows.
He wasn’t taken seriously, especially not when he painted a future of spiritual machines.
Recently on the Lex Fridman podcast he himself said as much: his predictions seemed impossible and practically religious in the late 90s and up until fairly recently, but now experts in the field are lowering their projections every year for when the Turing test will be passed.
Half of their projections are now coming in line with the guy they had dismissed for so long, and every year this gap narrows.