IM David Levy on the future
In his new book, Robots Unlimited, computer chess expert and International Chess Master David Levy sees robots reaching human-level intelligence in the near future:
I am very confident, partly because of the amazingly fast progress in technology during the past half century, and the dramatic increase in the rate of this progress. The more we know about a science the faster it is to discover even more about that science. But there are other factors as well, for example the inevitability of dramatic increases in computer speeds and memory sizes, both of which will facilitate the development of A.I.
He mentions Kurzweil in his interview on chessbase:
...One of the world's leading technology gurus, Ray Kurzweil, has written that in the next 100 years we will not experience only a century of progress at current rates of development, but 10,000 years of progress. This is the point that the sceptics overlook - the massive rate at which technological progress is increasing.
Ray said in his book that computing power, plus software power have reached a point whereby a program/PC is capable of defeating grand master chess players. Ray remarked that there could come a time when humans lose interest in chess.
However, with advances in reverse brain engineering, it is my opinion that humans would want to become cyborgs, so that would be capable of operating on a level with strong artificial intelligence, rather than against it.
We should be aware that medicine/health care is sucking up technology like a Orreck vacuum cleaner.