"The debate about...the singularity...is a colossal red herring."

In "The Coming Wave: AI, Power and Our Future," by Mustafa Suleyman, Mr. Suleyman said "I believe the debate about whether and when the Singularity will be achieved is a colossal red herring. Debating timelines to AGI is an exercise in reading crystal balls."

When Mr. Suleyman refers to the Singularity, or Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), he means what I've been referring to as super human AI, super intelligent AI, or Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI). I apologize for flinging terminology around, but it's a quickly evolving environment.

He could well be right that discussing super intelligent AI misses the point. Perhaps focus should be more on all the things AI is able to do and is doing now and the social, economic, and political ramifications, than something that may or may not happen, now or in the distant future. AI as it exists and is being used now does and will have an immediate and drastic impact on humanity. I believe AGI is different from any type of super intelligence, although both will have huge impacts on humans and the world.

The reason I'm focused on super intelligence is, once it's out there, humans will have zero chance of containing it or aligning it with human goals or needs. An AI that isn't aligned is very likely a mortal threat. It seems fundamentally different from other problems humanity also may not survive.

Regarding present and near future state AI related problems:

• What will happen to the economy when a huge number of jobs are taken over by AI?
• What will happen to our governing bodies when they haven't figured out that there will soon be massive jobless rates due to AI?
• What will happen when AI controls and manages financial markets?

These are also serious questions I don't have answers for that concern me. I don't believe humanity has answers for these yet. I do think they are the types of issues we can figure out and we can deal with them on a condensed, but human time scale.

There are many people much more knowledgeable than I who believe super intelligent AI is a humanity ending threat. There are companies, governments, and possibly educational institutions racing to achieve super intelligent AI. Geoffrey Hinton, a Nobel Prize winning Computer Scientist at the University of Toronto, gives frequent interviews about the danger of super intelligent AI. He gave testimony to the Canadian Senate on the dangers of AI and super intelligent AI.

Eliezer Yudkowsky, "a founding researcher of the field of AI alignment and the co-founder of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute" according to his Bio, & Nate Soares, "...President of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute. He has been working in the field for over a decade, after previous experience at Microsoft and Google," thought it was so dangerous they wrote a book together called "If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies, Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us All." A well written account of how dangerous superhuman AI is and why we have to care and take the threat very, very seriously. Reading that book was what raised the alarm for me about how serious and urgent the issue is and prompted me to create this site.

Most recently, in the documentary, "The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocoloptimist," by Daniel Rohr and Charlie Tyrell, the interviews with some of the top minds and CEO's in the field of AI seemed genuinely, deeply fearful of the threat posed by superhuman AI. Tristan Harris, the co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology, said "I know people who work on AI risk who don't expect their children to make it to High School." Wow! His interviews with some of the CEO's of big tech companies researching AI are even more hair raising. I'll let you discover for yourself.

With all my respect to Mustafa Suleyman, and appreciation for his knowledge of the subject, and well written book, which I recommend, I disagree with him on how serious and imminent the threat from super intelligent AI is. I think it demands our immediate attention. If I could choose, I'd rather I be wrong and Mr. Suleyman be right, but can we afford to take the chance?

Mr. Suleyman's points that we also have to focus on the huge changes coming about as a result of currently available and near future AI is also correct and I hope there's relevant focus in them in politics and support in the media.