With all the (what I think is misjudged) worry about the existential threat of AI, while in a contemplative mood recently I wondered about how the “brains” that feature in the Ian M Banks Culture series of novels came into being. I don’t think that it was ever explained properly; please correct me if I am wrong. With the untimely death of Ian Banks the history will never be explained.
As AI has become the latest fashionable technological craze (crypto is so last year!), I have been inundated with ‘information’ about it, a lot of it is hysterical and ill-informed. The press is generally having a field day. One side is trying to frighten readers with an existential crisis about how AI will take over the world and destroy the human race, or use us as slaves. The other angle is how AI will create an utopia where it has cured all illness and created prosperity for all.