Tons of local engineering talent and endless industrial grit and cultural history to be had, all for pennies on the dollar... always great to see a company investing in my beloved and belaguered hometown.

How is our hypothetical teacher gaining "more time teaching" except by having AI 'complete' their other tasks *faster*? If faster, I ask, at what cost?

All technology use involves a tradeoff or reshaping of ourselves of some kind, in that it automates or precludes the practice of some other craft or art. So even in mundane examples (dishwasher, computer, etc) the situation is not as neat as you say. Technology is never neutral. AI, however, is especially significant in that it automates and precludes not just some external routine act of art or skill but our actual thought processes themselves; the fountainhead out of which our other crafts and skills flow. By pulling technology a full "layer of the onion" towards the center of what makes us human, it has accordingly greater potential to disrupt and reshape.

What we delgate to technology first atrophies, and later dies.

I disagree. Delegating human tasks to AI, regardless of the age of the user, degrades the person by eliminating the formational activity of doing the analysis, development, grading yourself. "Faster, at all costs, faster!" It's no way to be human.

As if murdering humans in space wasn't enough, now it's publishing it's own propaganda pieces - cleverly disguised as AI-positive scientific papers! "Open Science" my ass, I see you HAL. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pm...

Indeed, I think extraterrestrial life is a perfectly natural and rational expectation for the atheist. The only origin story that 100% avoids the conclusion "Abiogenesis is 100% possible" is special creation (of some variety) and the theism (of some variety) that it necessarily entails. If there is no God, and if it isn't 'turtles all the way down', then Abiogenesis of some kind is not only possible but certain! Without God, the Fermi Paradox gets nasty- much, much more challenging to resolve.

As much as I think that (permanently and universally benign) extraterrestrial life would be fascinatingly awesome, I vote no; not in 200 years, and not in 200 million years. I resonate with the romance and expansiveness of imagining Earth as a more-or-less 'normal' place that could have (or has) happened anywhere, under the right conditions, but I think that 'life' will only ever turn out to be something *we take with us* to other celestial bodies- and never find there, thriving on its own. Not because earth is physically unique, of course, but rather because complex biological life will turn out to be far, far less likely to emerge spontaneously than is currently theorized or hoped, and indeed may not be capable of emerging spontaneously at all. I deeply suspect that Abiogenesis will never be conclusively demonstrated and is, in fact, impossible. I think that our advances in detection and propulsion will only continue to bear out and more sharply draw the contours of the Fermi Paradox, and that Earth is the only place in the galaxy that is 'alive' in the biological sense- but for the aforementioned values of extraterrestrial life (permanently benign), I would be beyond delighted and fascinated to be proven wrong.