I've been aware of this subject through science fiction writing and films for a while but not in such a coherant way and not realising that it was so far advanced.

I could spend a very long time explaining superintelligent AI's and the sigularity that is predicted at the outside 30 years but as soon as the first third of the next decade! However I'm not going to but I will add some links to some very intresting and maybe more lucidly written.

Reason to bother paying any intrest in this subject and following the links include :-
1. Finding out you might never die
2. Ever
3. End of war, money, evils of the world... maybe
4. You could imerse yourself in a self created world of your choice that would be just as real/more real than any lucid.
5. There are things you can do to help
6. It could happen as soon as the first 3rd of the next decade... 2012 anyone?

I listened to this programe yesterday
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/lawsoflife.shtml (you can listen via a replay link at the bottom). The progamme was very intresting about moores law "the exponential growth of computing power" etc.

After listening I did some research into the issues raised and found this article http://www.nickbostrom.com/ethics/ai.html by scientist Nick Bostrom of Oxford uni. http://www.nickbostrom.com

http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/articles...tyactivists.htm

The Singularity Institute http://singinst.org/ has been formed to bring about the Seed AI.

http://www.extropy.org/index.htm

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/smallworlds.shtml 3 programes to listen to about nano technology.