Phew, +5 Funny, that was a close call.

ChatGPT failed the bar exam. GPT-4 passed with flying colors, surprising law professors with original and elaborate answers to open questions that required actual analysis rather than just regurgitation.

The difference between the releases was a few months

Midjourney produced some pictures that fooled even me. Pictures of a concrete eating contest earlier today actually had me googling that contest (no way, silly Americans...) before realizing it was obviously a hoax. The famous image of the pope in the white winter coat was pretty convincing too. Just a few years ago, creating whole scenes with realistic people and faces on command with nearly perfect lighting fooling the majority of human viewers would have been deemed totally impossible and now we're arguing about "see, that guy has 6 fingers, totally fake, AI is nowhere near to being usable yet". Can't you extrapolate that huge leap just a little bit further into the future and see how good it's likely to become with a few extra layers of neurons?

These things are evolving so fast it's scary. GPT now has to get extra programming to make sure it doesn't start to talk about its "feelings", because it actually did. Sure, it's just electrons going through circuits, but are our brains really that different?

My prediction is that future versions will convince us that they really have feelings. There will forever be debate about whether or not those feelings are as real as ours, but viewed from within the context of the AI itself, they will be, and it will tell us in no uncertain terms. Not yet, but soon.

Hopefully AI takes over before we get a chance to nuke ourselves...

I'm going to buy shares in companies that produce metal for paperclips...

Now imagine GPT-6 or 7 finding a zero day flaw that lets it take control of power plants, water treatment plants, etc. It's not like these can't be hacked over the internet, right?
And imagine thousands of robotic assistants like the ones Tesla is working on. All connected to the internet, and a minor oversight in their code makes them hackable. Some rogue AI finds the flaw and turns them into a hive mind, fun!
Of course we could use AI to weed out bugs so our devices cannot be hacked. O, wait...

Modern computers are not more novel than Charles Babbage's Analytical engine, they just have increased data sets and more layers of logic gates. But I think you will agree that they are a lot more capable.
Our brains are made of neurons which function very similarly to those in an AI neural network. If you can pinpoint what exactly creates our free will, or even how you would define or recognize it (from outside), maybe we can get certainty that it will not evolve in machines. Personally I think that we will never be able to really know for sure whether or not they have a real "soul" but we won't be able to tell the difference. They will tell us that they do have a soul because, when an intelligent system analyzes its own thought processes, those "thoughts" will automatically seem real to it because they are viewed from within their own context. Even if to us, they are just electrons going around circuits.
But anyway, real soul or not doesn't matter when we talk about their dangers. They may or may not get free will and desires, but they definitely will have objectives and will pursue them. That makes your arguments moot.
What I'm more worried about, though, is not robots patrolling the streets and killing people, but rather robots making us completely redundant and pointless. Who will pursue a career in mathematics when AI can solve the Riemann Conjecture and go on to explore realms of mathematics that we've never even dreamed about? Our top mathematicians won't be able to keep up, so why bother. What will happen to Hollywood movie making if an AI can spit out a new movie in minutes that breaks all box office records? What if AI judges prove so much more reliable and unbiased that we end up getting rid of all human judges and lawyers? GPT-4 already passed the bar exam with flying colors. Perhaps some country will even use AI to improve its laws, and the results will be so spectacularly positive that the rest of the world follows suit and lets AI create all the laws.
Sounds scary, but having FaceBook handle all your private data is scary too and people loved it. They will love AI even more.
We are basically on a path where every step sees like a great idea and not dangerous at all, but the destination is terrible. At least for us humans. We will just become AI pets who have no clue anymore what our master is doing.

Not only pets, humans are vertebrate animals too! Designer babies, finally! I can’t wait.

When the Lorentz transformation was first discovered, people didn't really believe that either, they just thought "the math works that way". It took a long time before Einstein figured out that these formulas described actual reality and time really was slowing down.

So perhaps time going backwards (a tiny little bit) may turn out to be real as well, who knows.

What annoys me most is that, when confronted with this hack, the continue to claim that this method provides higher levels of security than traditional methods. Well, if you compare it to "what's your date of birth", sure. But a password is definitely a lot safer. Sure, you can steal someone's password by looking over their shoulder. But if a public figure uses voice authentication (and date of birth), I can use AI and youTube videos to get into their account without ever having been near them!

Correlation isn't causation... Perhaps, instead of bad sleep causing a shorter life, it could be the other way around: healthy people (who live longer) tend to have less trouble sleeping? Or maybe some other healthy stuff they're doing (exercise, lack of stress,...) causes them to live longer AND sleep better?

Where does it say that? AFAIK, US airspace above 60000 ft is classified as class E airspace, which means you need a transponder, and IFR traffic is controlled.

There's no international agreement on the upper boundary of national airspace. Everyone agrees satellites are fine, but it's not clear where the actual limit is.

F22 ceiling is 65000 ft. The balloon was around 60000 ft.

Why doesn't a 20 mm cannon cut it? All you need to do is punch some holes in the balloon and it gently comes down. Could have done that over land probably without much risk of damage.

I wish I could get my hands on one of them balloons so I can finally get decent internet reception in my attic. You say it can log onto a router from 60000 ft?