I've been familiar with Kurzweil and his critics since I was in middle school. He's consistently been derided as wildly over-optimistic, but he's been right fa

I've been familiar with Kurzweil and his critics since I was in middle school. He's consistently been derided as wildly over-optimistic, but he's been right far more often than not. People originally thought his predictions of world champ-beating chess AIs by the late 90's were insane, but it actually happened about a year before he predicted. Similarly, his support and predictions for the human genome project were the subject of a great deal of ridicule from both the public and many biologists. He was right in that case, too. I would be very careful about betting against Kurzweil's predictions given his multi-decade track record.