> ... then we all go to heaven and/or the world ends because robots kill us all. Scary and/or overhyped language aside, I don't get why is this such a hard con

> ... then we all go to heaven and/or the world ends because robots kill us all. Scary and/or overhyped language aside, I don't get why is this such a hard concept to grasp for generally educated people. Humans were a singularity from the perspective of chimps (and various other animals). It doesn't mean we immediately hunted down every chimp in existence, it means chimps became irrelevant and only a few of them remain - mainly in zoos and reservations. I would've called it a "phase transition" rather than a "singularity", but the main point is pretty clear. It's about a new adaptive system taking over the task of burning through local resources faster than its forerunner. Eukaryotes were a phase transition (better biochemical specialization), Multi-cellular organisms were a phase transition (better biological / behavioral specialization), Mammals were a phase transition (energy regulation, better brains, social systems), Humans were a phase transition (general-purpose language & culture, scalable coordination), and now machines will be the next phase transition (shedding the biochemical shackles & incremental evolution, so to speak). BTW, humans were a phase transition primarily for exhibiting Turing-complete structured communication and imagination (there's a thesis around this topic called the Romulus and Remus theory of prefrontal synthesis [1]). In a way, we're living in a world that has already gone through a recent singularity, and it was us who caused it. [1] https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/166520v9.full https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/166520v9.full