Will we create intelligent machines? - will the 'Singularity' occur?

[stucoy]

I have read a fascinating article in Time magazine, and I would like to ask you cats a few questions concerning it. But before you do, I would love you to read the article. Just type in 'time magazine singularity' into Google and you'll find it. Reading the article will not be a chore; the article is fascinating and very well-written.

1. Do you think that it will one day be possible to create machines which are as intelligent as humans? (To quote page 3 of the article: 'We will sucessfully reverse-engineer the human brain by the mid-2020s. By the end of that decade, computers will be capable of human-level intelligence. Kurtzweil puts the date of the singularity...at 2045...In that year, he estimates,...the quantity of artificial intelligence created will be about a billion times the sum of all human intelligence that exists today'.)

2. Do you think that the entire human brain can be replicated completely - that is, not just the intelligence part, but the emotion part also?

3. Do you think that it could be possible to one day 'download' our own consciousness onto a software program, thereby creating a 'virtual' consciousness, indistinguishable from the one we have now?  (On a philosophical note, would you consider a person to still exist, if they had died, but had had their consciousness downloaded onto a software program?)

[SWM]

As the op cannot post links yet here is a link and quote from the article at http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2048138,00.html

"Creating a work of art is one of those activities we reserve for humans and humans only. It's an act of self-expression; you're not supposed to be able to do it if you don't have a self. To see creativity, the exclusive domain of humans, usurped by a computer built by a 17-year-old is to watch a line blur that cannot be unblurred, the line between organic intelligence and artificial intelligence.

That was Kurzweil's real secret, and back in 1965 nobody guessed it. Maybe not even him, not yet. But now, 46 years later, Kurzweil believes that we're approaching a moment when computers will become intelligent, and not just intelligent but more intelligent than humans. When that happens, humanity — our bodies, our minds, our civilization — will be completely and irreversibly transformed. He believes that this moment is not only inevitable but imminent. According to his calculations, the end of human civilization as we know it is about 35 years away."