Those with engineering skills will build tomorrow's genius computers. But those with the ability to create knowledge of any kind will be the ones who are best able to extract great value from them. The way to create value in the age of genius machines will be to compile and disseminate knowledge that other people will find useful.
Ray KurzweilMy view is that consciousness, the seat of "personalness," is the ultimate reality, and is also scientifically impenetrable. In other words, there is no scientific test one can postulate that would definitively prove its existence in another entity. We assume that other biological human persons, at least those who are at least acting conscious, are indeed conscious. But this too is an assumption, and this shared human consensus breaks down when we go beyond human experience (e.g., the debate on animal consciousness, and by extension animal rights).
Ray KurzweilThe Singularity denotes an event that will take place in the material world, the inevitable next step in the evolutionary process that started with biological evolution and has extended through human-directed technological evolution. however, it is precisely in the world of matter and energy that we encounter transcendence, a principal connotation of what people refer to as spirituality.
Ray Kurzweil