Because Obama is the current President, and is responsible for the current policy?

The nutcakes are the ones living in a fantasy land where we don't hold our currently elected representatives accountable. Hope and change, still waiting for the change. (I've given up hope)

Babies are unconscious then are some point they are. That's the mystery, and why my use of the word initial is appropriate. How do I trigger the process of consciousness, does it occur automatically once all the pieces are present, perhaps, or does it need a bootstrap or pilot light. Interfering with part of a brain to cause unconsciousness is super interesting, but by itself it doesn't give us all the answers. (nothing ever does)

If you want to talk about mechanisms, like recursion, then we're going into theory. Theories which I don't have the resources or capabilities to test on my own, so I don't really wish to speculate too deeply there. Maybe it emerges gradually, maybe it is quick like waking up. No idea, but it seems that part of what happens is testable. Should be an interesting future when we find out more.

You can live and work in the US without being a citizen, and still enjoy our wonderful holidays.

Oh I agree it's being worked on. But it sounds like a very familiar article, as in I think I read similar articles in the 80s, 90s and 2000s. But the mechanism that triggers initial consciousness is, to the best of my knowledge, still a mystery. It will one day be solved. maybe the article you read really does have it figured out, the ones I've seen were just speculation with theories that could not be realistically tested without interfering with the process.

So now I can't even hide my one time pad? Which I keep for perfectly legitimate purposes.

I'm going to start hiding beef jerky in random places in my house.

Oh and understanding what needs to be simulated and the initial state of the human brain. How is consciousness born? We've wondered that for centuries, we don't have the answer yet. Will we eventually know all of this and have the capability to duplicate human intelligence? I don't doubt it one bit! Will we be there in 30 years, at least down the path you suggest? Extremely unlikely.

A cascade of AI's capabilities in a short period of time seems likely, but we haven't made much progress yet. And even with a 100 fold increase in processing power we haven't managed to take our simple learning models and make them 100 times more powerful. There is a real scalability problem right now. So it feels a bit like putting the cart before the horse to worry about these what ifs.

Your cell phone is less capable of learning than a jellyfish. Although your cell phone can sometimes simulate very simple learning under extremely rigid frameworks for learning.

a human competitive AI in 30 years? seems unlikely given the almost zero progress on the subject in the last 30 years. But maybe we'll hit some point where it all cascades very quickly. Like if we could do a dog level intelligence it is not a far leap to do human level and super human level. But we have trouble with cockroach levels of intelligence, or even defining what intelligence is or how to measure it.

AI research for the last several decades have taught us how little we know about the fundamental nature of ourselves.

We can hope that eventually a judge is going to be annoyed and start treating the conscious action that businesses take when issuing a DMCA takedown notice as sufficient for being "knowingly false".

"Websites don't come with a nationality,"

Mine has an America flag in the website logo.

Yup we didn't need print magazines in the 80's. Because downloading images at 2400 baud and displaying them on your 8 color computer was vastly superior to full color printing and inexpensive monthly delivery.

I used to print out source to do code reviews, because I was too impatient to wait for VGA projectors to be invented.

I like it when my brakes stop me before I slide into something.
(I ride a motorcycle, I find riding in the rain to be unpleasant for a variety of reasons)

Well, let's think about that for a minute. Let's guess that on average filling up your tank from near empty to near full is around 13 gallons. An extra 12 cents per gallon will come to around $1.50.

If people fill up weekly, that'll be about $6/month. I don't think that'll impact the poor so very much...

Also, wealthy people tend to drive bigger vehicles, such as SUVs, and tend to commute longer distances from expensive suburbs. This will certainly cost wealthier people more money (but still probably not enough to matter).

This proposed 12 cents per gallon tax increase is peanuts, but be prepared for republicans in congress to scream and holler and shout about how it'll destroy America, cause more homosexuality, etc.

Guaranteed death in a car accident -- what's not to love?

I'm accepting gov seized coins at 50% value.
If someone wants to accept at a higher percentage, then I guess the free market will decide how much they are worth.