Thanks for the comment, natch. You may be right. That said, Hawking didn't use the term AGI. If he is only warning of strong AI, then there is nothing urgent o

Thanks for the comment, natch. You may be right. That said, Hawking didn't use the term AGI. If he is only warning of strong AI, then there is nothing urgent or topical about his piece. It's a long way off. But Hawking seems to think his warning is urgent. That's one reason why I assume he's not just talking about AGI. In fact, many algorithms, including the deep-learning nets the LinkedIn author describes, are self-improving by combining stochastic gradient descent with a loss function. I think it is that aspect of self-improvement that frightens Hawking, because it allows machines to attain levels of performance and perfection beyond the reach of human beings. Neither I nor the author find that frightening.