Comments on – “How to Make a Mind” by Ray Kurzweil

I recently added following comments here on the article “How to Make a Mind” by Ray Kurzweil

The article “How to Make a Mind” by Ray Kurzweil is very comprehensive and thought provoking. However, it is not clear whether what is being talked of is near term (couple of decades away), a distant future or science fiction. I know that Ray believes in exponential growth and singularity arriving in not so distant future. My personal beliefs are also on the same lines. However, if we restrict ourselves exclusively to the contents of this article, it is difficult to make any such determination. Although there are references to some ongoing research, the statements like “We are now in a position to speed up the learning process by a factor of thousands or millions” still seem a bit far-fetched. The article would have benefited from some indication of time frame for different stages of artificial brain development, backed by pointers to supporting material. But for this, it indeed is an article of eye opening nature.