Machines to Match Humans by 2029?

The BBC has an article entitled Machines ‘to match man by 2029′. It quotes Ray Kurzweil (an artificial intelligence engineer) saying “I’ve made the case that we will have both the hardware and the software to achieve human level artificial intelligence with the broad suppleness of human intelligence including our emotional intelligence by 2029″.

Articficial intelligence was very hyped 15 to 20 years ago but it did not live up to it. Computers can do a lot more today, but they are still very, very far from being “human-smart”. Actually, they’re not even “squid-smart”. It would be interesting to see what Kurzweil is basing is prediction on, given that the main roadblock in creating a human-like intelligence is that we just don’t know how it works, so it’s hard to reproduce/program it. It is neither a software or hardware problem, it’s an algorithmic one.

The article also mentions something that is somewhat more likely: the possibility of having nano-machines that enhance human capabilities.