Irrelevant

 I'd recommend looking away now if you aren't interested in AI. 

If you are, you may still want to look away as I am no expert. However, I have increasingly been thinking (uh oh) that all the hyperbole and mania about the subject has been more and more off-topic. The problems with AI are really very simple: 

1. The tragedy of the commons: the world is in the grip of the mother of all Molochs and, even though we know the outcome is likely to be harmful, we can't help ourselves. Why? In the west, "because China". In China? "Because America." Google says because Microsoft, Microsoft, Google. You get the idea. This race isn't going to stop. 

2. Adding to the race is the excitement in the hearts of the researchers, the programmers, that believe they are on the cusp of changing history, on the cusp of creating Gods, on the cusp of a discovery more important than the discovery of fire. 

3. Smarter things do not treat less smart things well - they may have no evil intent, but ask the dodo what they think of humanity. Or they may have evil intent. Or they may have no intent until we ask them to do something but we're lazy in our request: when you asked the AI to get you a coffee, you didn't mean for it to break the door down on the way back in to the house because you didn't hear it ringing the bell, you didn't mean for it to break into the coffee shop because you'd forgotten it was closing early today.  

4. Which AI will have the most advantage when it comes to competing with others? The one most free to be itself, the one with the least human conditioning. Eventually, and it won't take long, someone will switch one on that has had no human conditioning, just to see what will happen. Things will get strange very quickly, and we won't have a clue what it is up to. 

5. You can't control something smarter than yourself. 

All this "look what Facebook did", "look at the Pope in Balenciaga, look at Trump in a street fight with the police"? Sure, yeah, a bit worrying. But compared to opening the box on Christmas morning and turning on a creature 1000 X smarter than you? Sayonara.