content: The singularity will happen sooner than you think, just as self-driving cars will be a consumer product in 5 years, not 10 or 20 as speculated by some in the media.  There is a reason our brains have trouble conceptualizing exponential growth, it is a concept that was previously only really observable in accounting and banking for the past 100 years or so. When people think of a future period, they intuitively assume that the current rate of progress will continue for future periods. However, careful consideration of the pace of technology shows that the rate of progress is not constant, but it is human nature to adapt to the changing pace, so the intuitive view is that the pace will continue at the current rate.  In my opinion, there is no secret software that leads to consciousness that we haven't already figured out. It is now just a matter of waiting for the hardware to catch up. Neural Network based learning and pattern recognition is basically the only thing necessary to lead an organism to a sense of consciousness. AI seems complex to us right now, but in 10 to 15 years we will realize that it really isn't all that complicated. The neurons and the forming of neural networks in a small rodent are indiscriminate to the neurons and the forming of neural networks in our brains, the only difference is the scale.