Ang will settle for anything with a tiger in it.
It's no secret that Ang's long term goal is to own cat videos.
Massive large projects like this almost always end in utter failure.
I can think of quite a few successful ones between the Manhattan Project and the LHC
Even the IBM cat brain project failed to accomplish much.
This is a continuation of IBM's "cat brain" (Blue Brain Project), it's got a new name to reflect the fact it's no longer just IBM paying the bills. The reason it has been given taxpayer bucks is because the "cat brain" was very successful from a scientific POV. The main goal of the project has always been medical research, AI is a sub-goal.
Intelligence is much more complicated than a mere randomly connected neural network.
IBM's Watson convincingly disproves your hypothesis. Besides this project is based on anatomical correctness, it's a detailed physical model of a real brain for medical research via simulation, nothing random about it. It is hoped that creating such a model will give us new insights in how the brain works in the same way "numerical wind tunnels" have given us new insights into engineering.
My dad retired in the 80's, he was chief (mechanical) engineer at a large firm, computer simulation was just starting to appear in the industry. Today there is not a hope in hell of winning a major engineering contract without it. Computer modeling has revolutionized both industry and science since I left HS in the mid-seventies, there are no signs that revolution is losing momentum, in fact just the opposite.
I haven't read the singularity book, however it seems to me, our species may be heading down the same evolutionary path as ants, in that an ants nest can be considered a single intelligent organism (the Borg, if you prefer). Many people claim that the difference is that ants had no choice, but I doubt humans are totally immune to evolution just because our technology now allows us to air-condition our buildings like ants have been doing for millions of years.
the U.S. government has effectively banned internet gambling...[snip]... it's basically an internal U.S. matter.
No, if the US banned online gambling outright there would not be a problem. The problem is they allow US companies to run gambling sites but will not allow companies from other nations to compete under the same laws (such as paying tax). The other member countries are also obliged to allow US companies to offer gambling in their country under the same regulatory regime as their local companies.
Disadvantaging overseas competition is called "protectionism", it gives domestic companies an "unfair" advantage. One of the reasons the WTO was set up was to discourage protectionism, that's why the WTO has punished the US.
It will end badly for pretty much everyone involved.
No, the US will simply ignore it, it's a very cheap alternative to a trade war.
The key issue (that I see) can lead to abuse is the widespread phenomenon of 'plea bargaining'.
Bingo, been saying that for years. I'm also assuming they are judged by the quantity of convictions, not the quality of the charges. Other western nations seem to be able to get guilty pleas without turning the whole thing into a Turkish bazaar, so it's certainly possible that it could be improved by democratic oversight. The fact that someone in the US is 7X as likely as someone in the EU to be locked up is a pretty strong signal that there is a systemic problem within the US justice system.
punishing more developed countries while letting other ones off the hook
The "punishment" was to include the past emissions of developed nations in the accounting. In other words when Kyoto was drawn up the developed world had already pumped out a half a trillion tons, the idea was to balance that with the virtually zero emissions of other nations. The US and Australia were among the few western nations who disagreed with that principle.
"If I do not want others to quote me, I do not speak." -- Phil Wayne