I agree that cults of personality are bad things. But dismissing someone as an evangelist and overrated isn't much of an argument either. It trivializes his very real and important accomplishments, and conveniently allows you to dismiss all of his ideas without looking at them on their individual merits. In short, ad hominem, and unwarranted.
Kurzweil has several functioning products that would have fallen into the mess you dismiss as nonsense two decades ago. Is he wrong on a lot of things? Yes. But so is any other engineer looking for things that haven't been done before. Even if Kurzweil has a spell where he does nothing of any merit for a decade (which has yet to happen) I'll still confidently say you're foolish to rule him out as a crank. He's earned his right to dream aloud.
Kurzweil has several functioning products that would have fallen into the mess you dismiss as nonsense two decades ago. Is he wrong on a lot of things? Yes. But so is any other engineer looking for things that haven't been done before. Even if Kurzweil has a spell where he does nothing of any merit for a decade (which has yet to happen) I'll still confidently say you're foolish to rule him out as a crank. He's earned his right to dream aloud.