You have a very precisely defined goal and you build a machine that's superhuman in its capabilities for achieving goals. If it turns out that the subsequent behavior of the robot in achieving that goal was not what you want, you have a real problem.

I used to say that if you gave me a trillion dollars to build a sentient or conscious machine I would give it back. I could not honestly say I knew how it works.

Its really important to understand the difference between sentience and consciousness, which are important for human beings.

The singularity has nothing to do with consciousness.

The more we learn about AI and about how the brain works, the more amazing the brain seems. Just the sheer amount of computation it does is truly incredible, especially for a couple of pounds of meat.

I expect that people are going to feel differently about that once they're aware that AI systems can watch through a camera and can, in some sense, understand what it's seeing.

Most of the AI goes into figuring which are the important pages you want. And to some extent what your query means, and what you're likely to be after based on your previous behavior and other information it collects about you.