I said that it would take a book to explain. You are parodying an extremely shortened summary of a complicated subject.
The difference between AI and "alien" is no one is trying to make alien. There aren't research labs and billions of dollars in funding. There is no incentive at all. And the problem is far more difficult. AI is just algorithms.
Second, aliens arent actually that powerful. Superintelligent AI would be godlike in power to us. I'd much rather have aliens.
Similarly my own views are the result of a wealth of material not summarisable in a HN comment. I intend to read the book, although I'm sceptical that AI will be established as an issue of political urgency.
The purpose of my facetious approach is to make clear that statements such as, "Superintelligent AI would be godlike in power to us," are more likely to have originated by analogy to science fiction than from a grounded understanding of what is possible or realistic in the relevant future.
Being "just algorithms" doesn't really mean very much. It's like saying breeding the Alien is "just genetics". It's something we imagine might be possible, but is far beyond our current capabilities.
All speculation about the future will sound like science fiction. Someone in 1800 making accurate predictions about 1900 would have sounded crazy. Someone predicting the atomic bomb in 1900 would have sounded crazy. Or airplanes, or television, or the internet, etc. Just because something sounds absurd doesn't mean it's not possible.
We live in a world where the only intelligences are humans. The idea of superintelligent minds seems absurd to us, because it isn't something we've ever encountered in reality before. But there is absolutely no law of nature that says it's impossible, or even difficult. If you look at history, it'd actually be really surprising if it was. Human minds were just the very first intelligence coughed up by evolution. We are far from the limits of what is possible.
And there is a difference between genetic engineering and AI research. Biology is incredibly complicated. Like millions of complicated, interconnected, moving parts. It really is impossible to make Alien, or really anything beyond modifications to existing biology.
Algorithms are a whole nother ball game. Our current AI algorithms are actually reasonably intelligent at many tasks, even smarter than humans at some things. And they are extremely simple. Could be described in a line or two of equations, or a few paragraphs of text. Not because they are primitive, but because simple algorithms work. And they have been improving every single year for a long time, and will likely improve well into the future.
But you don't have to take my word for it. If you survey AI researchers and experts, they almost unanimously agree that AI will be invented in our lifetime. If you survey biologists, I highly doubt they would make similar claims about Alien.
I said that it would take a book to explain. You are parodying an extremely shortened summary of a complicated subject.
The difference between AI and "alien" is no one is trying to make alien. There aren't research labs and billions of dollars in funding. There is no incentive at all. And the problem is far more difficult. AI is just algorithms.
Second, aliens arent actually that powerful. Superintelligent AI would be godlike in power to us. I'd much rather have aliens.