Yeah, I read it, and found it rather long-winded, but most of what he has to say is fairly accurate. A lot of the "transhumanists" are IMHO a bit over-confident of the time it will take to get such scientific witchcraft as "downloading" achievable, but when it comes to cybernetics, I agree with Kurzweil that all bets are off. The beauty of cybernetics is that so long as you have sufficient terraflops you should be able to do artificially what nature takes millions of years to do; evolve an AI. You just need to get that feedback loop started (a cybernetic entity that can improve itself). Then you are off to the races. But frankly I have no idea what a self-evolved AI would look like. I can't see it having much of a personality. It might resemble a glorified google.

i have to say that i just watched a remarkably worthwhile documentary among the extras of the "matrix" movies box set, called "the hard problem: the science behind the matrix." has anyone seen it? the cast is remarkable (chalmers, dennett, kurzweil, et al), and the film is wonderful. even if you didn't like the movies, you should check this documentary out. it talks a lot about artificial life and AI and requirements of consciousness.