I have this kinda particular interpretation that "the best science is the one that makes fewer assumptions", or that, at least, is better equipped to access and

I have this kinda particular interpretation that "the best science is the one that makes fewer assumptions", or that, at least, is better equipped to access and deal with its own assumptions. In that vein, what bothers me about Kurzweil is that he seems to be just taking some assumptions and running with them. Specifically, i believe that he assumes that intelligence and computation are the same thing. At least, he asserts that both are equimaterial --- that a sufficient powerful calculating machine is bound to be able to generate intelligence. I do not know if intelligence == computation. I do accept that, in many domains, the two things are interchangeable. Like, for example, if you are interviewing for a programming job and you can't do division in your head, that is a bad sign. But if we are looking to build intelligence from computation, then i think we will bump into any differences that exist. If computation and intelligence are equal or at least similar, that would be an interesting fact. It would teach us a lot about ourselves. To my taste it is a very interesting line of questioning. But it is not proven. Really, we can't even really define intelligence! (As a sidenote, i think that is exactly the point of the "Turing Test", not to prove AI, but to show that intelligence is not clearly defined.) If intelligence is a kind of computation, then Moore's Law means AI, definitely. And in that case, Kurzweil estimate of 2 decades is as good as any. If intelligence != computation, then some completely unrelated discovery has to intervene. There is one thing that makes me doubt the assumption of equality, though. Namely, computers are already extremely better at computation than we are. I am 30yo and i can't recall a time when i didn't have available calculators way more powerful and fast than myself. If the translation from computation to intelligence was straightforward, my feeling is that the exponential nature of Moore's should have already made AI a reality before i went out of college.