I don't think a public company answerable to investors and other stake holders will ever work toward a SciFi futuristic concept.
But AI definitely has a lot of benefits. Start from self driving cars to automation in manufacturing industries. And that is just the very beginning. Google's line of businesses can benefit immensely from such work. There is endless money to be made. And it is better you grab it when it is a low hanging fruit.
Most of Kurzweil has to say about robotics, nanotechnology and AI. Has a direct benefit to humanity in the immediate future. Humans can have longer lives, the world can have a smaller population, many diseases we know can be eradicated. Problems like hunger, pollution, disease etc can be solved. The list is endless. Why wouldn't any one want a share of that business?
And yes the whole AI taking over the world and making us extinct thing- It won't happen anything like just turning on a switch. I believe even a run away super intelligent will still need biological life forms for their own very survival.
Like some one mentioned in this thread, copies of your self will continue live in the cloud and such copies will provide a great wealth of insight for the machines themselves to survive.
> I don't think a public company answerable to investors and other stake holders will ever work toward a SciFi futuristic concept.
I think Google has a proven track record of working on whatever they find interesting/beneficial to humanity, not necessarily minding shareholders - cf. self-driving cars, Project Loon, 10^100, whatever was that stuff they did in clean energy business (I recall them working on wind energy or sth?).
If anyone is going to pull off something like an real AI, I'd bet it will be Google - it's the only company I know that has the size, manpower, minds, money, know-how and a healthy attitude toward profits (bettering human kind > short term gains) all in one place.
But AI definitely has a lot of benefits. Start from self driving cars to automation in manufacturing industries. And that is just the very beginning. Google's line of businesses can benefit immensely from such work. There is endless money to be made. And it is better you grab it when it is a low hanging fruit.
Most of Kurzweil has to say about robotics, nanotechnology and AI. Has a direct benefit to humanity in the immediate future. Humans can have longer lives, the world can have a smaller population, many diseases we know can be eradicated. Problems like hunger, pollution, disease etc can be solved. The list is endless. Why wouldn't any one want a share of that business?
And yes the whole AI taking over the world and making us extinct thing- It won't happen anything like just turning on a switch. I believe even a run away super intelligent will still need biological life forms for their own very survival.
Like some one mentioned in this thread, copies of your self will continue live in the cloud and such copies will provide a great wealth of insight for the machines themselves to survive.