> I think the author would be well-served to delete the whole piece. The author died in 2011, so I guess that won't happen (though the site might disappear ent

> I think the author would be well-served to delete the whole piece. The author died in 2011, so I guess that won't happen (though the site might disappear entirely at some point): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McCarthy_(computer_scientist) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McCarthy_(computer_scienti... I'd just treat it for what it is: a short off-the-cuff essay written by a retired CS professor in his late 70s, speculating on a subject he hadn't done much research on. It appears among this unfinished draft collection of futurist speculations: http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/future/ http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/future/. Some of them are interesting, some not too great. IMO lots of the stuff he wrote in AI is great, and I'd start with those essays if you want to read something by McCarthy on a subject where he was both knowledgeable and insightful: http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/#pub_ai http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/#pub_ai