Editing Ray Kurzweil (section)

===Criticism===

Although technological singularity is a popular concept in science fiction, authors such as [[Neal Stephenson]]<ref>{{cite web |url=http://interviews.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/20/1518217 |title=Neal Stephenson Responds With Wit and Humor |date=October 20, 2004 |access-date=2008-08-28 |last=Miller |first=Robin |publisher=[[Slashdot]] |quote=My thoughts are more in line with those of Jaron Lanier, who points out that while hardware might be getting faster all the time, software is shit (I am paraphrasing his argument). And without software to do something useful with all that hardware, the hardware's nothing more than a really complicated space heater.}}</ref> and [[Bruce Sterling]] have voiced skepticism about its real-world plausibility. Sterling expressed his view in a 2004 talk at the [[Long Now Foundation]] called ''The Singularity: Your Future as a Black Hole''.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://blog.longnow.org/2004/06/14/bruce-sterling-the-singularity-your-future-as-a-black-hole/ |title=Bruce Sterling – "The Singularity: Your Future as a Black Hole" |date=June 14, 2004 |access-date=2009-06-08 |last=Brand |first=Stewart |publisher=The Long Now Foundation}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://media.longnow.org/seminars/salt-0200406-sterling/salt-0200406-sterling.mp3 |title=The Singularity: Your Future as a Black Hole |last=Sterling |first=Bruce |author-link=Bruce Sterling |format=MP3 |quote=It's an end-of-history notion, and like most end-of-history notions, it is showing its age. |url-status=bot: unknown |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081004120035/http://media.longnow.org/seminars/salt-0200406-sterling/salt-0200406-sterling.mp3 |archive-date=2008-10-04 }}</ref> Other prominent AI thinkers and computer scientists who have criticized Kurzweil's projections include [[Daniel Dennett]],<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.edge.org/conversation/jaron_lanier-one-half-a-manifesto |title=The Reality Club: One Half Of A Manifesto |last=Dennett |first=Daniel |author-link=Daniel Dennett |publisher=[[Edge.org]] |quote="I'm glad that Lanier entertains the hunch that Dawkins and I (and Hofstadter and others) 'see some flaw in logic that insulates [our] thinking from the eschatalogical implications' drawn by Kurzweil and Moravec. He's right. I, for one, do see such a flaw, and I expect Dawkins and Hofstadter would say the same."}}</ref> [[Rodney Brooks]],<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.edge.org/discourse/jaron_manifesto.html#brooks |title=The Reality Club: One Half Of A Manifesto |last=Brooks |first=Rodney |author-link=Rodney Brooks |publisher=Edge.org |quote=I do not at all agree with Moravec and Kurzweil's predictions for an eschatological cataclysm, just in time for their own memories and thoughts and person hood to be preserved before they might otherwise die. |access-date=2016-01-05 |archive-date=2015-11-07 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151107044838/http://edge.org/discourse/jaron_manifesto.html#brooks |url-status=dead }}</ref> [[David Gelernter]],<ref>Transcript of debate over feasibility of near-term AI (moderated by Rodney Brooks): {{cite web |url=http://www.edge.org/discourse/jaron_manifesto.html#brooks |title=Gelernter, Kurzweil debate machine consciousness |publisher=KurzweilAI.net |access-date=2016-01-05 |archive-date=2015-11-07 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151107044838/http://edge.org/discourse/jaron_manifesto.html#brooks |url-status=dead }}</ref> and [[Paul Allen]].<ref>{{Cite web |title=Paul Allen: The Singularity Isn't Near |url=https://www.technologyreview.com/2011/10/12/190773/paul-allen-the-singularity-isnt-near/ |access-date=2022-07-25 |website=MIT Technology Review |language=en |quote=Kurzweil's reasoning rests on the Law of Accelerating Returns and its siblings, but these are not physical laws. They are assertions about how past rates of scientific and technical progress can predict the future rate. Therefore, like other attempts to forecast the future from the past, these "laws" will work until they don't.}}</ref> 

In the December 2010 issue of ''[[IEEE Spectrum]]'', [[John Rennie (editor)|John Rennie]] criticized Kurzweil for several predictions that did not come true by the originally predicted date.<ref>{{cite web |first=John |last=Rennie |title=Ray Kurzweil's Slippery Futurism |date=December 2010 |url=https://spectrum.ieee.org/ray-kurzweils-slippery-futurism |work=[[IEEE Spectrum]] |access-date=2012-08-13}}</ref> [[Sun Microsystems]] co-founder [[Bill Joy]] agrees with Kurzweil's timeline of future progress, but thinks that technologies such as AI, nanotechnology, and advanced biotechnology will create a [[dystopia]]n world.<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy_pr.html |title=Why the future doesn't need us |access-date=2008-09-21 |last=Joy |first=Bill |date=April 2000 |magazine=Wired |quote=...it was only in the autumn of 1998 that I became anxiously aware of how great are the dangers facing us in the 21st century. I can date the onset of my unease to the day I met Ray Kurzweil...}}</ref> [[Lotus Development Corporation]] founder [[Mitch Kapor]] has called the notion of a technological singularity "[[intelligent design]] for the [[Intelligence quotient|IQ]] 140 people... This proposition that we're heading to this point at which everything is going to be just unimaginably different—it's fundamentally, in my view, driven by a religious impulse. And all of the frantic arm-waving can't obscure that fact for me."<ref name="okeefe" /> Cognitive scientist [[Douglas Hofstadter]] has said of Kurzweil's and [[Hans Moravec]]'s books: "It's an intimate mixture of rubbish and good ideas, and it's very hard to disentangle the two, because these are smart people; they're not stupid."<ref>{{cite web |last=Ross |first=Greg |title=An interview with Douglas R. Hofstadter |url=http://www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/pub/douglas-r-hofstadter |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140122012828/https://www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/pub/douglas-r-hofstadter |archive-date=2014-01-22 |access-date=2008-08-28 |work=[[American Scientist]]}}</ref> VR pioneer [[Jaron Lanier]] has called Kurzweil's ideas "cybernetic totalism" and outlined his view on the culture surrounding Kurzweil's predictions in an essay for the [[Edge.org|Edge Foundation]] called "One Half of a Manifesto".<ref name="ieet">{{cite web |date=March 1, 2013 |title=The Singularity: A Documentary by Doug Wolens |url=http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/olson20130301 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140629111738/http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/olson20130301 |archive-date=2014-06-29 |access-date=2013-10-22 |publisher=Ieet.org}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/lanier/lanier_p1.html |title=One Half of a Manifesto |access-date=2008-08-28 |last=Lanier |first=Jaron |publisher=[[Edge.org]]}}</ref> Physicist and futurist [[Theodore Modis]] claims that Kurzweil's thesis of a technological singularity lacks scientific rigor.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Modis |first=Theodore |date=2006 |title=The Singularity Myth |url=http://www.growth-dynamics.com/articles/Kurzweil_critique.pdf |journal=Technological Forecasting & Social Change|volume=73 |issue=2 |pages=104–112 |doi=10.1016/j.techfore.2005.12.004 }}</ref>