The great Singularity debate

At his talk at the Singularity Summit, Ray Kurzweil is quoted as having said the following.

Within a few decades, machine intelligence will surpass human intelligence, leading to The Singularity — technological change so rapid and profound it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history. The implications include the merger of biological and nonbiological intelligence, immortal software-based humans, and ultra-high levels of intelligence that expand outward in the universe at the speed of light.

I have the following questions for Ray.

• Do you think we are the first civilization in the universe to reach the singularity?
• If so, isn't that too amazing to be true?
• If not, what evidence do we see that ultra-high levels of intelligence have been expanding from other sources in the Universe?

P.S. My theory about change is that it's not getting faster; it's getting denser. Until we develop an artificial intelligence that can create change faster than we can think, change won't happen any faster than we can think it up. But since more and more people are thinking about things, more and more things will be changing all the time. That means that the density of change, i.e., the sense that more and more of the world is changing around us, will continue to increase.

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