In his book The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology (Viking, 2005), futurist Ray Kurzweil predicted that computers will be as smart as humans by 2029, and that by 2045, “computers will be billions of times more powerful than unaided human intelligence,” Kurzweil wrote in an e-mail to LiveScience.

Some believe in a utopian future, in which humans can transcend their physical limitations with the aid of machines. But others think humans will eventually relinquish most of their abilities and gradually become absorbed into artificial intelligence-based organisms, much like the energy making machinery in our own cells.

“My estimates have not changed, but the consensus view of AI scientists has been changing to be much closer to my view,” Kurzweil wrote. […]