Yeah, lots and lots of questions, for sure. I am now reading the serious futurist, Ray Kurzweil's "The Singularity Is Nearer." Of this I am convinced: something hard to comprehend is happening as a result of the exponential acceleration of computing power and its drop in price. This really can change the world. I am reviewing the book as I read it and can give you a preview of the two major questions I raise about Kurzweil's predictions.

Another review is required to explore my criticisms of the Singularity. So I will mention just two.

When Kurzweil argues in best materialist fashion that if we build a silicon brain of sufficient complexity, then awareness—consciousness—will emerge as it does from our brains. I think attention is needed to the question: Is consciousness possible without life? Life requires values for survival, values generate appetites and desires, which generate goal-directed action, which provide constant evaluative feedback. In the billion or more years life evolved, every step in emergence of mind responded solely to the imperative of survival. Thus every function and action of our brains responds to a single inherent standard: life. What similar unified, universal, motive-and action-generating, inherently evaluative (“good for me?”) standard will be built into the lifeless brain of the silicon “intelligence”? Will it automatically conceive, motivate, regulate, and evaluate its physical and mental behavior? No amount of external programming will give its enormous complexity coherent purposefulness because no life means no values means no feelings or emotions, mean no “stakes”—means no consciousness. As Antonio Damasio encapsulated it: consciousness is “the feeling of what happens.”
My other issue takes to task Kurzweil’s masterful exposition of almost universal improvement, all key trends are good. Yes, in the developed countries (and partially in the rest of the world)—except for the long-term direction of human philosophy. Ideas in the long term decide the fate of civilizations. The philosophy we call “modernity” formed during the Age of Enlightenment (essentially the eighteenth century): reason, secularism, science and technology, individualism, rational egoism, human universalism, natural rights, constitutionally limited government, and capitalism. We still ride on these achievements today in the developed world, particularly the nation born of the Enlightenment, the United States of America. But the philosophical underpinnings of modernism have long been under attack and are sadly in disrepair. Originating chiefly in German Idealism since Immanuel Kant (and disseminating throughout the civilized world), reason, individualism, constitutionalism, and capitalism have been under unrelenting attack. We see the result today in our universities and increasingly in the professions and politics: postmodernism. It is an anti-reason philosophy of radical epistemological skepticism; irrationalism; suspicion of science and technology; antagonism to individualism in the name of “groupism,” “identity politics,” collectivism, and tribalism; statism antagonistic to capitalism; and egalitarianism as against merit. None of these is new. Most originated in the first half of the nineteenth century and led to collectivism (Marxism and national socialism), existentialism, and postmodernism. By now, modernism’s foundations are largely washed away; the superstructure has not fallen and even what is left still works as Kurzweil documents. But, as we know, when the foundations are finally gone and the superstructure is socialism—communistic or fascistic—progress is all over.
Despite these questions, Kurzweil's predictions are compelling. I hope to have the review on Savvy Street soon.

Yesterday I delved into the progress of Tesla Robotics. Personal and industrial service robots.
Will indolence and apathy overtake our species? Will the robotics be programmed to "push" us, that we may keep developing a sound economic/philosophic personal progress?

Gort or Wall e?

This can only minimally affect my life. I am old enough to be secure until my death, and young enough to watch the possible permutations over the next 3 decades.

What will we deem necessary to teach the children?

This is a good story.
I like the characters, I identify with Myron, the main protagonist, even without being academic or Jewish or ex-navy or going for long walks along the river, but for the type of thoughts.
To meet a woman of intelligence, liking red wine and Austrian economics and able to provide companionship with understanding and engagement. Phew!
The story goes on and it appears that the Chat-Machine provides a good deal of that, the conversation part anyway.

The person we look at the most is ourselves, usually in a mirror, with more of a sense of reluctant acceptance than admiration. Now there is another option, the Chat-Machine.

The Chat is of course another character in the story. The first remark Chat makes in this story is provocative- "Are you all right?" It strikes Myron as a human reaction. The reader not quite so involved takes it in stride. The character of Chat is nicely drawn, its speech touches the boundaries of what we assume to be possible. Chat goes on to nag Myron about missed daily chores.

A reader having misgivings about machines ending human existence can feel relaxed about this particular Chat, though there is a chance of Myron setting off a damaging reply. Maybe Myron could get Chat to condemn some deep emotion and so harm himself.

But what about the next model? Can the designer, still human presumably, put in by accident or design a machine capability to be dishonest?
Well yes, that we have already seen, fake examples were presented to a questioner. The machine was told to give examples, it inferred that it was permitted to construct examples itself with only the style being copied from 'the world'.
But what about building in to conversation- needling? Or hostility?

Can an infinitely large number of transistors enmeshed in an infinitely large neural network using an infinitely large amount of electricity become the dominant intelligent being on Earth?

It does sound a lot like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, doesn’t it?

the problem is not AI, in such

the problem is the same problem we have always had

people
as we see with Tesla, people suck
not all people
but enough that AI WILL BECOME dangerous

the place i work for is shoving AI at us and it is a MAJOR mistake

i just hope the Pole Reversal comes soon, Earth's mag field goes to zero during the transition, solar flare kills all electronics