I attended this talk in person and some context is needed. He was invited for the “test of time” talk series. This explains the historical part of the talk. I think his general persona and association with ai led to the fluffy speculation at the end.

I notice with Ilya he wants to talk about these out there speculative topics but defends himself with statements like “I’m not saying when or how just that it will happen” which makes his arguments impossible to address. Stuff like this openly invites the crazies to to interact with him, as seen with the cryptocurrency question at the end.

Right before this was a talk reviewing the impact of GANs that stayed on topic for the conference session throughout.