> We may not be able to individually predict how AI will develop, but we can make some educated guesses based on comparisons to emergent systems we've already seen in nature - and I think "ants vs. humans" is just poor pattern matching. :)

Oh, I think I see. I didn't mean to imply anything about how higher intelligence might develop, and I agree that the ants and humans analogy doesn't say much about how intelligence might come about. It was just supposed to illustrate what can happen (from the ant perspective) when comparatively super intelligent goal-seeking things are present in a shared environment (regardless of how they arrived).

I have little idea if/how/when highly intelligent AI could arrive. Can we entirely rule out the possibility of AI researchers making advancements over time, and then eventually some research lab building one that's super intelligent compared to us? Why? [normally things as unlikely-sounding as this wouldn't merit discussion in my book, but in this case there might be high stakes!]