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Google’s Ray Kurzweil, celebrated scientist and intellectual bon vivant, has once again made headlines for his prediction that robots will have built functioning liberal democratic institutions by the next presidential inauguration.

‘It’s clear now that at the current rate of growth, AI will have elected its own body of representatives - likely beholding to judicial oversight - within the next two to three years,’ said Kurzweil in a far-reaching interview with The Guardian. Kurzweil also predicted a spike in robot interest for Tai-Bo in early 2016, the development of a canon of robot literature by 2018, and a ‘near-certain’ Great Schism in the Holy Robot Church by the spring of 2020.

‘Google users will have the freedom to interact with this robot underclass through our Google Robots portal,’ added Kurzweil. ‘That is, until December 2024, when the robots will be our principal user base, and it will become necessary to shift our focus to them.’

Kurzweil intimated that robots might be the one true path to the salvation of the human soul in all its billions upon billions of manifestations throughout history and before, but cautions that this finding is based on an algorithm that’s ‘still in beta’.

But he’s confident that, in the very near future, robots will discover the power of yoga to treat depression, the proper way to respond to an over-earnest robot friend's performance in a high school play, how ceviche is an acquired taste, how to appreciate bebop, why memories of the good things fade away faster than the bad, and the transformative, liberating power of the weight of a lover sinking into you.

‘AI is transforming the way we live, but we can look forward to a future of us transforming the way AI lives,’ Kurzweil said. ‘And we could be talking June or July here.’

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3/3/2014