For developers, the challenge is teaching computers to think like people, improving the artificial-intelligence aspect of software so that it replicates the human elements of job search and recruitment, says Matt Sigelman, CEO of Burning Glass International Inc.

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That is why our urge to personify machines, as in the seemingly never-ending quest for so-called artificial intelligence, will never produce anything more than a cold, lifeless calculator.

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All of this will be thrust on us by something that Kurzweil calls the Singularity, a theorized point in time in the not-so-distant future when machines become vastly superior to humans in every way, aka the emergence of true artificial intelligence.

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