Well, that escalated quickly. Loving the discussion over here.
Some strong points all around. I didn't know about the Amazon thing. That's scary... I completely agree that AI has the potential to ruin us and that if we allow it to learn and evolve without supervision, that things get dangerous. But I will paraphrase Neil deGrasse Tyson when he said that we don't have to fear AI if we don't give them emotions and if we write a good enough rule set into their programming.
I believe that we will be able to create a fully conscious, human like AI one day, but that would not be the smartest thing to do. The greatest danger is the mentioned: We created you cause we could. If we are stupid enough to create a human like AI with emotions and freedom of an evolving mind, there will be great consequences.
AI, technology and robots are tools, a means to get something done. If we give them consciousness and emotions, that would be just cruel for we are basically creating slaves. If we have already created AI that can communicate with another AI in a language we can't understand, that's damn irresponsible of us. If AI mimics humans completely, than yes, it's basically a child with "free" will. We can't predict it's actions and things turn into a gamble. If we don't make the AI sentient by putting in well thought out safeguards and keep the AI supervised, it remains a tool.
The greatest danger really is Holloway's line: We made you cause we could. Our curiosity will be the death of us if it's not accompanied by our intelligence and forethought.
