alt Hacker News> Was he vindicated in some sense?
No. He's still saying AGI will demand political rights in 2029. Like Geoffrey Hinton, Kurzweil gets a pass because he's brilliant and acomplished. But also like Hinton, he's wrong about this one issue. With Hinton it appears to be fear driving his fantasies. With Kurzwel it's probably over-confidence.
> > Kurzweil’s brand of AGI, which is about merging with machines
> With Kurzwel it's probably over-confidence.
It's his fear of mortality, which also helps explain the "merging" emphasis.
Every new Kurzweil "prediction" involves technologies that are just amazing-enough and the timeline just aggressive-enough that they converge into a future where a guy of Ray Kurzweil's age just manages to hop onto the first departure of the train to immortality.
If y'all have seen any exception to that pattern, please let me know, I'm genuinely curious.