Politics is good; when it works properly, disagreements get solved without people beating each other up. But when a regime knows its days are numbered, there's always the chance it may use its position to change the rules and make the debate it is losing irrelevant.

But every time our ability to access information and to communicate it to others is improved, in some sense we have achieved an increase over natural intelligence.

Life is a green madness just now, trying to squeeze the last bit of warmth from the season.

The physical extinction of the human race is one possibility.

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.

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

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