I have come to kill you."The death's heads shrugged. "You have come to try.

What we have is a data glut.

In fact, there was general agreement that minds can exist on nonbiological substrates and that algorithms are of central importance to the existence of minds.

We will soon create intelligences greater than our own ... When this happens, human history will have reached a kind of singularity, an intellectual transition as impenetrable as the knotted space-time at the center of a black hole, and the world will pass far beyond our understanding.

Here I had tried a straightforward extrapolation of technology, and found myself precipitated over an abyss. It's a problem we face every time we consider the creation of intelligences greater than our own. When this happens, human history will have reached a kind of singularity - a place where extrapolation breaks down and new models must be applied - and the world will pass beyond our understanding.

We humans have millions of years of evolutionary baggage that makes us regard competition in a deadly light.

The physical extinction of the human race is one possibility.