Department of Defense outlines Skynet and Terminator development

they're not only spending $250mil, they're spending an ADDITIONAL $250mil on this new project.

Agreed. In fact, none of it is indicative of terminator development. That's a totally different DoD initiative.

We are very very far away from having any kind of artificial intelligence on the level we currently exist. We don't even understand the mechanics behind our own intelligence.

So if a machine is killing humans somewhere, it's because some human pressed the button.

So I agree with you, I find the thought of humans killing other humans much more disturbing.

I hope you're aware that that's an entirely irrational thought. It really doesn't make a difference to a dead person who killed them.

No. An AI arms race between the US and China means one of the many bad versions of the Singularity is on its way. You know, the ones where computers eventually hit self-improving territory and grow so powerful so fast that all the design mistakes inevitably made get magnified and the pathetic attempts at safety that were implemented prove to be completely pointless, leaving the computers to eventually wipe us out, whether by accident or on purpose. If we're lucky we'll get to lose an actual war against them that plays out on a human timescale, but chances are that won't even be an option, our loss will be so quick and decisive.

That this is military research makes this outcome vastly more certain, as the systems would be weaponized from the beginning.

However, there's hope. They mention "big data", which means they're unlikely to ever get truly general AI, let alone the self-improving kind - "big data" is what you do when your system is stupid and your data is cheap, and if that's your situation, you're never going to be build a system that's smart, because that requires extracting as much information from minimal input as possible. AGI is not an incremental improvement on machine learning methods, it's a whole different beast. As long as they're fundamentally misguided from the start, they won't be much of a threat.

China, on the other hand, does have people working on the "right" parts of this problem, and that's a lot more concerning...

May you live in interesting times.

Most singularities are probably not good things. (I would say one that starts as a war between the US and China would go South pretty quickly.)