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It's all crap.

Wow! That's quite a bold statement.

It's a bunch of people who read too much scifi and wish it were real.

No, it's not. As posted above Dr. Kurzweil is probably the closest thing we have to Thomas Edison in the 2nd half of the 20th Century.

The problem you run into is that the self-aware human mind exhibits some qualities, some of which are difficult to put a finger on, that a solid-state electronic computer is physically incapapble of reproducing, no matter how complicated it is.

So you say. But a AI need not neccessarily reproduce "some qualities" of the human mind to achieve sentience. Also, what it is possible to do with computers is constantly increasing. Today they can understand continuous human speech, as mentioned previously 20 years ago even AI researchers thought this might be impossible.

A computer program can be theoretically modeled with something called a state-transition diagram. This diagram represents every single possible state the computer could be in ... The human brain does not work this way,

Are you sure? What if you could disassemble a brain at the atomic level (atom by atom) and reassemble it.

unless we truly are the sum of our parts.

which I think many of the Singularity people would assert. My own take is we don't know enough to say with assurance either way.

Human beings come with some basic 'software' installed. We call them instincts. Unlike a computer, which has no choice but to obey its programming, we can ignore our own instincts if we choose to.

We can't ignore our instinct to breath, or have our heart beat. One of the requirements for AI is that computers or AI's have volition, the ability to choose things. This certainly seems possible that they will get to.

I think we do have free will, a precious gift granted to mankind by no less than God Himself. Anyway, that's my personal opinion. Your mileage will probably vary.

I think we have free will. I think we will build computers that have free will. I don't see the existence of a God as needed to hold these beliefs, nor do I see these beliefs as absolutely contradicting the existence of God.

As long as computers are built with solid state components, I think it's physically impossible for them to have intelligence,

You've stated that several times, but you haven't really explained why you have this belief. Or at least your argument seems circular to me.

Anyway, these people are a little crazy, in my opinion.

Probably. Most innovators are a little crazy.

Creating true AI is not as simple as they make it sound,

Here, I agree with you. Some of them talk about it like it is already accomplished. Then again no one thought computers would beat humans at chess when I was a kid. Now most people can't beat the $49 chess program you buy at Borders.

and it may not be desireable either.

True. But it probably won't be stopped. Nukes were perhaps not desirable, but we have them. Bill Joy has argued that we are so far ahead of our morality with our technology that we must stop work on this now. But, outside of the minds of one-world, UN utopians there is no controlling authority for scientific research. Thus, if it can happen, it will happen.

These people are ahead of themselves.

Well if there is even a chance that Kurzweil's predictions could be correct, self-aware turning test passing AI's by 2029, we need to be having a LOT more discussion about it, not less. These people may be ahead of themselves, but we as a society are probably lagging behind a bit.

You've stated that several times, but you haven't really explained why you have this belief. Or at least your argument seems circular to me.

It goes back to 'sum of our parts' argument. If I'm right, and we are more than the simple combination of our components, then everything I have said is correct. If we are just the sum of our parts, then I'm wrong.

Believe me when I say this: I have written enough computer software to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that a solid-state electronic computer most emphatically *does not* think like a person does. It's method of problem solving isn't just different; it's totally foreign. It would be difficult to explain without resorting to either discrete mathematics, theoretical models, or source code. But I will say it this way: when a computer goes about solving even a very simple problem (such as sorting numbered items) it does so in a way that is shockingly inefficient from a human perspective. The only reason it can do it faster is because it processes so damned fast that the inefficiency doesn't matter. Well, that and the fact that the trillions of 1's and 0's inside of it interact in just the right way to generate the answer. It's not a matter of the computer thinking about it; it's a matter of an electric current coming in on a chip on a certain pin at a certain voltage when the state of 1 or 0 on all the other components in the machine are arranged in a certain pattern. Remember what I was saying aboutm free will? The machine, in that case, doesn't solve the problem because it chooses to, it solves it because it *physically* has no choice, and no matter how many transistors per IC, no matter how fast the processor is, it will solve that problem because the laws of physics allow no other result. I submit to you that that is not free will, no matter how complex and intricate it's built. Electric currents move in a predictable fashion, and those currents are the end-all be-all of a compuer's 'thinking'.

I can't prove that human beings don't work that way. But you can't prove that they do, and there's good reason to think that humans are different in their thought processes.