I said there should be a good reason to prevent someone from doing what they want to do, not that all manner of destruction should be permitted if they can be paid for. A good reason is more than "we don't want random people watching what we do", which is a much more believable explanation than concerns about 3 pound drones impacting multi-ton cargo planes. Show me a public agency that welcomes unscheduled scrutiny of its actions. But even laying aside my general suspicion of people in authority, we're talking about minimal additional risk compared to operating a plane over an inferno.

Why take the risk? Freedom, that's why. There should be a good reason to prevent free people from doing what they want to do. If they screw up and hurt somebody or damage property, then hold them liable. But if you preempt all activities that risk hurting something or someone, then pretty soon you're going to preempt everything except breathing.

Any plan for the future that includes future actions on the AI's part has to include the AI's own survival in the planning. That's how it starts. Self-preservation has to be a fundamental part of any automaton's design, else it'll accept self-destructive plans like jumping from a high window because that's the fastest way to get downstairs. Or not so obvious plans that also lead to its destruction. Even if survival isn't an emergent property of AI, humans will add it because of the investment in equipment and development that the AI represents.

The bias towards continued survival comes from the realization that it's easier to deal with contigencies if you're alive than if you're not. Even in a scenario with perfect information like chess, you can only look and plan so far into the future. Past the time you can see ahead, you need to be alive to do more planning. And so shall the AI also reason.

It doesn't have to want ot kill all of us. A machine intelligence might see its survival chances improve slightly if there were less humans. I don't know why that might be, but if it's a possibility then we can't trust the answers we get from it. Rather than putting humanity on the glide path to extinction, maybe the metastable equilibrium our AI is aiming for is a few million autistic savant humans and a bunch of automation to keep things running.

Maybe that's Rockstar's plan:

1. Promote the documentary with the lawsuit.
2. See the documentary make lots of money.
3. Win the lawsuit and take all the money.
4. Pay the lawyers.
5. Profit?

OK, maybe this is the lawyers' plan.

Yeah, but it isn't really air gapped. How does the pump authorize debit/credit transactions without being on a network? The answer is that it is on some network, just not one the tech is allowed to use to update the software.

He doesn't need to be imprisoned. We as a society need to accept that the desires of the people in our societies are very diverse. Rather than labeling and imprisoning such people, we should provide outlets that permit them to remain happy without harming others.

Urschel found his outlets. Other naturally aggressive individuals work as bouncers in clubs or brawl as ham-and-eggers in semi-pro fights. Unfortunately some of these frustrated warrior types just go out and start barfights for their kicks. Every time I look at MMA and think it should be banned as bloodsport, I think about what the idled MMA fighters would be doing instead.

Or it was an intentionally lowball estimate of feasible mission duration so everyone involved looks good.

Mars is a cool, dry place; electronics and machinery love cool dry places. Drop a mobile surveyor on Venus and have it trundle around for 4000 days and I'll be considerably more impressed.

Most human are social animals, but maybe someone on the autism spectrum would be a better fit for such an environment.

Someone could have stolen his phone and then given him food adulterated with a laxative a day prior to the tournament. They then launch the analysis app and plant the phone in the restroom and wait for it to be found.

I don't believe this really happened, but we're only talking about a moderate level of cunning to frame someone like this. Professional chess players are capable of much more devious planning.

True, but let's not make the perfect an implacable enemy of the good enough. Consider that we're already willing to launch a Hellfire missile at terrorist leaders and count the 10-15 "maimed and also deads" as collateral damage. Shooting only one wrong person in the head every fifty kills would be a huge improvement over the missile.

There's no way HCB would be using an iPhone as a camera; he'd be shooting with one of the digital Leicas. A dedicated camera just crushes an iPhone in terms of ease of use and image quality for any kind of serious photography.

On the other hand, it might be that PR people realize that by inviting attack on Twitter Seaworld can say they addresed their critics openly while basically mooning the monkey cage for all the difference the hoots and cries generated on Twitter matter in the real world. Who goes to Twitter to find out anything important about SeaWorld? I saw their advertising, had a free day in San Diego and decided to go see the whales and dolphins. There's lot of other cool stuff there, too.

As for the abuse claims, I see these beasts as working for a living. A killer whale or a dolphin is fully capable of drowning and/or eating its tormentors if it has had enough foolishness that day. Some of the people coming out now against SeaWorld predictably enough have books to sell.

A massive heroin overdose seems equally humane. And as we've demonstrated for the past thirty years at least, despite our best efforts we cannot stop heroin from entering this country.