From the article:

  We contacted our lawyer, the hard-fightin' cyber-lawyer Lauren Gelman, and she cooled us out. She sent the agent this note:

And that was it.

Only if there isn't a rational basis for the fear, I've laid out plenty.

I think weaponization of AI is a threat, though not necessarily a different threat than we typically deal with.

But there are extremely good reasons to be skeptical of our ability to safely control AI, including my other three points that you've completely ignored.

It's a bit of a side-track but man has a well established record of trying to wipe out slightly different members of it's own species, and the situation you describe has already arisen with Neanderthals and although we don't know the full details of their extinction we know they're generally not around any more.

  Regardless that suggests we have a lot to fear from AI even it's no different than human intelligence!

I don't necessarily think is would necessarily have a survival instinct, and I'm not sure if one would make it more or less dangerous.

There's a disconnect between your last two sentences. We have no idea how it will behave and it's a complete wildcard in possession of an extremely potent ability (intelligence), it's maybe benign but also possibly extremely dangerous.

Of course a psychopath with instant replication and extreme intelligence would also be extremely dangerous.

I was willing to give you the benefit of the doubt before the casual homophobia, go ahead and be an asshole, there's no excuse to toss in bigotry.

It was also a Republican policy full of Republican amendments, it was divisive because they acted like it was.

It's possible, but to be honest what are his good ideas? All I've heard is general mud-slinging and policy proposals that have been all over the map.

He has said that he'll kick out the illegals and create jobs for the legal immigrants.

Deportation are up under Obama.

As for "creating legal jobs" that's a talking point not a policy, are you sure he didn't pledge to cut taxes, raise spending, and reduce the deficit at the same time?

He knows how to run a company, completely different than macroeconomics needed to create jobs.

I thought it was supposed to be because those marginal workers weren't productive enough, and the cheap labour was essential for the economy. Because I'm sure he'd use those arguments against the minimum wage hike.

It's not that it wouldn't have a system, it's that it would be a different system.

Think of it like genetics. We share a ton of genes with other life, 18% of our genes are shared with yeast, that means they're critical enough to our life that they've been preserved over billions of years. If you start screwing around with that 18% things probably break very very quickly so any life you're going to see on earth is likely going to have that 18% because they're a foundation on which everything else rests.

But that doesn't mean that 18% of genes is critical to life in principal. If you went to a different planet you could have a completely different set of foundational genes and a very different ecosystem.

I suspect our intelligence is the same, there's a lot of stuff in the comparable "18%" that every functional human is going to share just because it's so deep and essential. An artificial brain may not share that foundation.

If there's one real legitimate criticism I'd have of Obama it's that he was elected too young.

If Hillary had won and he was just running now I think he'd be a far stronger President, I think his willingness to enact change was stymied by his lack of experience in dealing with the Republican counter response.

Trump is the kind of person who will follow through with an absolutely terrible idea because it's his idea and he won't let anyone deter him, he can cause real damage.

Perhaps, but what if it is a good idea?

Also, I pointed out that he wouldn't become King (despite what Obama has been trying), he has to deal with Congress and the SCOTUS.

It's possible, but to be honest what are his good ideas? All I've heard is general mud-slinging and policy proposals that have been all over the map.

Well Obama did achieve health care reform, but I think the lesson of Obama is the opposition can just decide en-mass to politicize everything, cooperate on nothing, and the President gets the blame.

CEO is a very different skillset than President.

So... leading a very large company of many diverse people... is very different than leading a very large nation of many diverse people?

I have to disagree, I think they are a very compatible skill set. Leadership is leadership, be it in the military, a company, or a nation...

No one can do it all themselves, you must be able to build groups of people up and get them to work together. This is true in the military, in companies, and in nations.

Right now we're a nation divided, nothing Obama says is anything but dividing in nature.

Trump may well kick out half the illegals, then put the other half to work.

I don't know what Obama you're listening to but he doesn't actually do much that's divisive. As evidence a lot of the major political complaints (easy on illegals, easy on terror, anti-Christian, etc) are demonstrably false.

Either way even Obama does offend he does it as a side effect, Trump offends on purpose, that's not a healthy characteristic for a leader.

As for the CEO, they've got a lot more unilateral power, they aren't fighting factions in the company the same way a President would be. I think that's a lot of Trump's flaw, he's used to saying "I'm the boss, so do it my way" and when that doesn't work he basically throws a tantrum. But a President can't run government that way, a Trump presidency would just be a stream of tantrums.

Possibly, but neither are acting erratic (at least no more than when they were younger). Trump is, I think there's a substantial probability that within 5 years he'll be in steep cognitive decline.

The prospect of having him in power scares me more than Sarah Palin.

Now THAT scares me... that you'd rather have her than him.

She is an idiot who doesn't know anything about anything, at least Trump knows about business.

Yes, he is a walking ego trip, perhaps a blowhard and a PITA...

At the end of the day I'd expect a Palin Whitehouse to be a bit of chaos quickly taken over by bureaucrats as she realizes that being President is a) confusing, and b) a lot of hard work. It would be incompetent and shoddily run but the kind of damage people can work around.

Trump is the kind of person who will follow through with an absolutely terrible idea because it's his idea and he won't let anyone deter him, he can cause real damage.

Have you stopped to consider he's only polling so high because he has huge name recognition and he's essentially a sideshow. The Republican primaries have been a gong-show since 2012 and I'm doubtful that most of the people indicating him would be actually do so if they thought he had a chance of winning.

CEO is a very different skillset than President. I don't have any objection to CEOs as Presidents in general though I think Trump would be terrible. Jobs too, I don't think he'd have been bad, but the things that made him special as a CEO wouldn't translate to being a President.

And back to Trump, have you considered the possibility that his behaviour is just some early manifestation of senile dementia? I don't want to focus on it because it sounds very insulting, but at the same time his behaviour and seeming obliviousness is downright bizarre. He wouldn't be the first politician past retirement age to start acting erratically and be diagnosed with dementia a few years later, if you're considering him for President I think it's a possibility you have to take seriously.

That doesn't mean he cares about you, it just means he's responding to different incentives.

The fact he has different baggage doesn't he has no baggage. If anything I'd say he's more likely to have some massive skeletons stuffed in the closet of an unsavoury operator.

As for a new direction 'new' doesn't necessary mean better, I don't see how a guy batting to the looniest of the fringes is going to be a change for the better.

Just read this twitter exchange. It's not a policy position or anything like that but I think it's illustrative.

First, who in their right mind gets in an insult fight with a professional comedy writer?

Second, once they're in that fight who throws out insults like a 5 year old and acts like they're kicking ass?

Trump was obviously once competent enough at one thing to make billions, but at this point, in this context, it's pretty clear that he's spent so long surrounded with yes-men that he's completely out of touch with reality. The prospect of having him in power scares me more than Sarah Palin.

So if you have a long term medical condition that prevents you from eating anything non-liquid what do they give you and why wouldn't they want to make it suitable for long-term one-food use?

My guess is it's because it's really hard and they don't know how to do that. If Soylent thinks they've done it they're probably just shooting at a lot easier target.

They may have other advantages over Ensure such as taste or market image, but I'm really dubious it's a medically superior drink.

Well for one thing in my original post I listed 4 factors that made AI dangerous in a way human intellect isn't. You've only argued one of those 4, and even if I were to completely concede the point the other 3 still makes AI uniquely dangerous.

Second the "mystical force or agency" you're referring to is evolution. When we have good ethical instincts that's a product of evolution, when we have bad ethical instincts (ie psychopaths) that's also a product of evolution. That's because those instincts are just a method for operating with other intelligent creatures, there's huge adaptive pressure to get that right so it's built into our minds at a very low level.

Every intelligent human is going to have an operational system of instincts for dealing with other intelligent creatures simply because you can't take out that much basic functionality and still have a working mind.

But an AI won't have that same foundation, it is going to be extremely difficult to predict how it will think or to constrain it to have certain instincts.

Except the machine may be exponentially smarter and able to replicate with extreme speed.

That's a poor metaphor since prosthetic limbs fulfil a relatively simple task with simple constraints.

A much better metaphor might be artificial vs natural weapons. Natural weapons include fists, feet, and teeth. Artificial include knifes, guns, bombs, and nukes. It's clear that artificial weapons change things significantly.

They're a risk too but humans are much better understood as an intelligent entity.

Huh? I'm having a little trouble parsing. You seem to be claiming that what we consider ethics are both integrally linked to our intelligence and that they are going to exist in artificial intelligence? (It actually looks like you say they're unlikely to exist in AI, but I think that would hurt your point).

"Ethics" as we define them, but more broadly every action we take that isn't completely rational, is likely a product of evolution and culture, hardwired into what we consider our intelligence. There's no reason to think AI would naturally have these characteristics, nor that we could easily replicate them if we wished.

We simply don't understand how a highly intelligent AI would think, for instance is desire or want a fundamental characteristic of intelligence or just intelligence as its evolved? What if we make a mind that doesn't have a comparable characteristic, what does it do?