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"Within a few decades, machine intelligence will surpass human intelligence, allowing nonbiological intelligence to combine the subtleties of human intelligence with the speed and knowledge sharing ability of machines. The results will include the merger of biological and nonbiological intelligence, downloading the brain and immortal software-based humans -- the next step in evolution." Also found in Are We Spiritual machines? Ray Kurzweil vs the Critics of Strong AI, Gilder and Richards, eds. 1999.

Robots.net recently featured the Whole Brain Emulation Roadmap (pdf) produced by the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University.

'The Pentagon's Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program recently sent out a call for contractors to design a pack of robots whose main purpose would be to track down what the SBIR ominously referred to as "noncooperative human subject[s]."' | Media and Technology | AlterNet

"Another headline pops up: "Scientists aim to make computer that thinks like a human". And I think no, No, NO! Don't, whatever you do, do that. Even if Ray Kurzweil is the one suggesting it's coming." (Charles Arthur | Technology | guardian.co.uk)

"If HAL believed (we can't be sure on what grounds) that his being so rendered comatose would jeopardize the whole mission, then he would be in exactly the same moral dilemma a human being in the same predicament would face. Not surprisingly, we figure out the answer to our question by figuring out what would be true if we put ourselves in Hal's place. If you believed the mission to which your life was devoted was more important, in the last analysis, than anything else, what would you do?"

"Everyone wants wisdom and wealth. Nevertheless, our health often gives out before we achieve them. To lengthen our lives, and improve our minds, in the future we will need to change our our bodies and brains. To that end, we first must consider how normal Darwinian evolution brought us to where we are. Then we must imagine ways in which future replacements for worn body parts might solve most problems of failing health. We must then invent strategies to augment our brains and gain greater wisdom. Eventually we will entirely replace our brains -- using nanotechnology. Once delivered from the limitations of biology, we will be able to decide the length of our lives--with the option of immortality-- and choose among other, unimagined capabilities as well." Scientific American, Oct, 1994

These examples of experimental evolution with robots verify the power of evolution by mutation, recombination, and natural selection. In all cases, robots initially exhibited completely uncoordinated behaviour because their genomes had random values. However, a few hundreds of generations of random mutations and selective reproduction were sufficient to promote the evolution of efficient behaviours in a wide range of environmental conditions. The ability of robots to orientate, escape predators, and even cooperate is particularly remarkable given that they had deliberately simple genotypes directly mapped into the connection weights of neural networks comprising only a few dozen neurons. PLoS Biology