The illusion of self-awareness. Happy automatons, running on trivial programs. I'll bet you never guess. From the inside, how can you?

Peregrine Wickwrackscar was flying. A pilgrim with legends that went back almost a thousand years-and not one of them could come near to this!

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.

I argue in this paper that we are on the edge of change comparable to the rise of human life on Earth.

Note that I am not proposing that AI research be ignored or less funded.

When I began writing science fiction in the middle 60s, it seemed very easy to find ideas that took decades to percolate into the cultural consciousness; now the lead time seems more like eighteen months.

When people speak of creating superhumanly intelligent beings, they are usually imagining an AI project.