This may surprise you, but I think Ray Kurzweil is waay too optimist. Partly because reaching the Singularity will mean messing with forces we barely comprehend, and partly because we may collapse before we even have the time to mess with those forces. If you have some time, I suggest you to take a look at http://facingthesingularity.com/
In the meantime, just ponder this: we are, in a trivial sense, machines. Machines capable of reasoning about themselves. In principle, there is nothing stopping us from making actual machines that beat us in every domain. Yesterday, Chess. Today, Jeopardy. Tomorrow, driving. And maybe someday, machine building itself.
If we ever reach that point, you know enough about recursion to know how this will goes: recursive self-improvements leading to something way more capable than your average Einstein. Now let's hope that our little Skynet is programmed to do good (whatever "good" is), instead of, say, using us as raw material to fill the solar system with paper clips. Because unlike with the fictional Skynet, we won't even stand a fighting chance.
In the meantime, just ponder this: we are, in a trivial sense, machines. Machines capable of reasoning about themselves. In principle, there is nothing stopping us from making actual machines that beat us in every domain. Yesterday, Chess. Today, Jeopardy. Tomorrow, driving. And maybe someday, machine building itself.
If we ever reach that point, you know enough about recursion to know how this will goes: recursive self-improvements leading to something way more capable than your average Einstein. Now let's hope that our little Skynet is programmed to do good (whatever "good" is), instead of, say, using us as raw material to fill the solar system with paper clips. Because unlike with the fictional Skynet, we won't even stand a fighting chance.