After reading both articles I think I agree more with Joy, in that we should proceed with great caution towards a near future where humans will co-exist with robots. I am more inclined to be hopeful about such a (near) future where Kurzweil says within roughly 2(!) years computers will cease to exist in lieu of technology integrated onto our very clothing, creating this semi-virtual experiential existence, and in 20 some odd years nanorobots will be in our very own fibers. The latter still escapes me and I didn't quite grasp exactly what that meant and the extreme implication of such a reality. I have to be hopeful because they speak of the technology of the future as inevitable and not as once was merely fiction. What I did read of Kurzweil's Accelerating Intelligence took me quite a back. I guess I just never knew how soon scientists were developing these technologies.
When Joy spoke of confronting societies problems with new, helpful technology, one problem at a time, similarly to the turn of the century inventions of the Industrial Revolution, I understood how this seemed much less daunting than coping with possible inventions that would conflict with human existence. And that which are looming on our very horizon. What is different about the technological revolutions that took place a century plus ago to that which is happening now is that it seemed much more beneficial for the greater good. I don't think the ability to rely completely upon a robotic being is like returning to Eden, without a care in the world. An existence of leisure? I don't think so. Not for me anyway. I think humans should develop a cultivation of art, literature, study, and creation to be happy. Kurzweil seems like an overzealous, yet well-intentioned obsessed person.