<i>Caught between atheism and a crippling fear of death, Ray Kurzweil and other futurists feed this mischaracterization by trumpeting the impending technological apotheosis of humanity, their breathless idiocy echoing through popular media.</i><p>Wat. Why was this bit of out-of-place and mostly off-topic divisiveness dropped into an article about Go?<p>I don't expect "the Singularity" to come in my lifetime, although smaller victories in "AI" have <i>already</i> proven themselves very useful; but let's leave God out of AI debates. Whether there exists a God or gods (all "atheism" means is not believing in gods, and nothing either way about life after death), whether there is life after death, and what AI can do are orthogonal matters. The one that we can do something about, is the last of these.<p>For me, I'm a huge fan of AI and would love to see more research in that vein, but I don't dread or fear my eventual death. I don't intend to bring death on prematurely, but my curiosity has me looking forward to it. I certainly don't expect to see a "Singularity" by 2045. That said, if I could program a computer to (say) cure cancer, or extend the human lifespan, I would do it in a heartbeat.<p>The stereotype that all AI researchers are "atheists" (as if that were a negative, or even a meaningful category) driven by a "fear of death" is (a) untrue, and (b) irrelevant. The great thing about science is that <i>it doesn't matter</i> what your religious beliefs are, and it seems to work regardless of whether gods exist.