Who knew Frank Herbert was a prophet? In his epic doorstop sci fi novel Dune, he relates history from the perspective of roughly 8 thousand years in mankind's future. In that time's far past (our near future), mankind rebelled against thinking machines, destroyed them and banned their manufacture more or less successfully. This war of extermination was called the Butlerian Jihad.
One online source has called what now comes the AI Apocalypse. The current movement to AI or artificial intelligence threatens to replace many current office workers, as well as most factory workers. Expecting no Luddite response is asking too much of people.
And yet, needing acreage, huge hangar-like buildings and enough electricity to power a small city to replace what the human brain can do on 2500 calories a day, clean water, and a place to sleep isn't so very impressive. When you think about it, AI seems downright inefficient.
Just because we can build AI is not a necessary justification for why we should do so. However we may have no choice because our near-peer adversary China is doing so.
