A.I. Will Match Human Brain in 20 Years

One engineer and futurist says it’s only a matter of time before machines are as smart as people, and people are part machine, the BBC reports. Ray Kurzweil claims that artificial intelligence will produce human-level smarts and even emotions by 2029. Humans, meanwhile, will inject nanobots into their brains to improve intelligence.

“We’re already a human-machine civilization,” says Kurzweil. “We use our technology to expand our physical and mental horizons, and this will be a further extension of that.” Kurzweil is part of a group of thinkers the National Academy of Engineering has tapped to assess the challenges of the 21st century. (More nanotechnology stories.)