Oh, and on a vaguely related note...

The pastors in the churches from my fundamentalist upbringing are saying, "Aha! I told you so!"

And when I saw this new item, I immediately thought of this:

(Don't think those pastors would appreciate the song, though...)

Something to come back to when I get a chance (I always say that...)

A student in one of my first-year writing classes is doing research on "technological singularity" and it jogged my memory of a book I once owned (and might have actually read some of!) years ago by Stephen L. Talbott: The Future Does Not Compute: Transcending the Machines in our Midst. (I'm amazed that I can actually remember the whole title! Must have been memorable!) Unfortunately, I no longer seem to have that book unless it's in my in-laws' house in Taiwan, but I was able to find some notes on the book by C. M. Mayo, who did a lot of research on the ideas behind the book. She also points out that Talbott has put the book online on his website, so I don't have to buy it again...

I don't know (yet) how Talbott's book might connect to the questions my student will be trying to answer about technological singularity, but it might be that the warnings that he raises are even more fundamental to our relationship with each other and technology than the question of what AI might be able to do in the future.