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There's a more recent article in the New Yorker that follows Mr. Bostrom around a bit and is a good general read: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/11/23/doomsday-invent...

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One sentence in that article made me do a double take: "He was learning to code." Past tense, but it's about what Bostrom was doing at the time of the interview (last year, well after the publication of "Superintelligence").

So the most influential AI doomsayer on the planet has been writing about artificial minds for a couple of decades, without even knowing enough to get a computer to say "Hello, world"? OK...

I believe a key factor in AI doomsayers' thinking is the interconnectedness, complexity and automation of an AI-driven world. The actual presence of intelligence is a red herring: we already have problems with complex automatic systems failing catastrophically: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003

Actually, that article is fluff reporting that doesn't convey Bostrom's central arguments, and spends a lot of time on his lifestyle. I walked away from it thinking that neither the reporter, nor Mr. Bostrom, knew what they were talking about.

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