With regards to my second paragraph, it may indeed be only a matter of (a very long) time. However:

What I tried to critique in my first paragraph is exactly this implicit imputation of human-like motivations to the supposed AI.

My point, which might have been more clearly made, is that there's no reason to think it will have any motivation structure whatsoever.

The problem with this argument is that it always rules out the opinions of those most likely to have correct opinions on any subject. You need evidence for specific instances of corruption involving the specific individuals whose statements are being evaluated in order for this to-the-wallet argument to have any weight.

Good point - though I didn't say that exactly, just that IMHO fame ought to be a lesser factor than domain knowledge in estimating the truth value of statements.

But where do these come from? I submit that each one of these is only suggested here because we already have these motivations.

I consider this antimaterialist. Our bodies aren't vessels (except in that they're literally full of fluids) we inhabit, they are us.

I believe the quoted number is for their entire fleet of automated cars, which AFAIK is of unknown size.

IMHO, all of the fear mongering is based on anthropomorphizing silicon. It implicitly imputes biological ends and emotionally motivated reasoning to so-called AI.

I think that folks who don't have hands on experience with machine learning just don't get how limited the field is right now, and what special conditions are needed to get good results. Similarly, descriptions of machine learning techniques like ANNs as being inspired by actual nervous systems seems to ignore 1) that they are linear combinations of transfer functions (rather than simulated neurons) and 2) even viewed as simplified simulations, ANNs carry the very strong assumption that nothing happening inside a neuron is of any importance.

I disagree with the premise, that fame is more important than domain-specific expertise.

(Emphasis mine). That quote is from Genius, James Gleick's biography of Richard Feynman - the author of TFA apparently makes the same mistake.

My guess is we'd soon find out if ICBMs work.

Say we want to land on Mars. The atmosphere is 100 times less dense than on Earth, so we'll need 100 times more parachute. I'm sure that's still a lot less mass and complexity than the balancing rockets...but what if we want to make a round trip, and need to land on Mars and Earth?

We're going to need parallel parachute systems of different sizes, or a parachute that can be re-packaged combined with variable unfurling, and suddenly the parachute option is looking a lot more complicated. On the other hand, if you get the balancing rockets to work, you can use them anywhere, over and over again.