Just to be clear, I didn't read the book. I even just skimmed the original post. I was just responding to the parent comment and it's claim about the sketchiness of (the definition of) consciousness.
Perhaps I should read Kurzweil once even if just to see how much our views are aligned..
The book review in question is crap. I'm happy to read Kurzweil critics but claiming something is too complex to understand to does not make for legitimate criticism, in any field.
Pattern recognition is a given, how to do it is not. That is really what the book is about (hint: hierarchical hidden markov models.) As for the philosophical stuff, I read The Age of Spiritual Machines many years ago when it came out (and I was barely in high school), so there was nothing in How to Create A Mind that challenged views I've had over a decade to think about.
The whole issue of consciousness I think is minor. Which, I personally would explain consciousness as "living" awareness ( in the book Kurzweil says even the smartest people start to sound stupid when trying to describe this.)
The good news is our industry is not going to get dull anytime soon.