This might have something to do with how public commitment may be counterproductive: once you've effectively signaled your intentions, the pressure to actually implement them fades away.

I was thinking about this today in the context of Kurzweil's future predictions and I wonder if it is possible that there is some overlap. Obviously Kurzweil is not designing the systems he is predicting but likely the people who are designing them will read his predictions.

I wonder, if they see the time lines that he predicts if they will potentially think: "oh, well [this or that technology] will be designed by 2019, so I can put it off for a little while longer, or maybe someone else will take the project instead"

It might not be the case and in fact they might use the predicted time line as a motivator to beat. Regardless, I think it would be good for developers to keep things like that in mind.