I got the 2007-10 dates from Wikipedia on SI. It has a citation for the 2010; and I vaguely seeing Kurzweil on the list of board members as far back as 2007.

Yeah. As far as I can tell from board meeting minutes during those years, there was a miscommunication between Tyler Emerson and Ray Kurzweil, and Ray didn't know he was on the Board during most of the time he was "on" the Board. :)

But this was all before I was around, so I don't have first-hand information to offer.

Part of my skepticism about the need for another recruiting path was that that I got into this in 2005 after simply stumbling upon the SIAI site -- and, maybe, perhaps, at least I hope, I think I'm not crazy :-)

Many useful and non-crazy people did come through the writings about AI — including Edwin Evans, Louie Helm, yourself, and many others — but not enough of them. And those who did are probably better thinkers after reading The Sequences, anyway.