"We now evolve culturally and are as much as product of our culture as our biology."
More like "devolve" since we've been basically been banishing moral beliefs due to their religious connections.
"For the uninitiated, the term singularity is borrowed from physics and in this context means the point 20, 30 or 100 years out (depending who you ask) at which technological progress will enable computers to reproduce the same level of intelligence as humans."
I'd say it's further out than even 100 yearsm if at all. AI is one of those areas filled with speculation about things that are supposedly near future, but never materialize.
"We are far from understanding human intelligence and the qualities to pull this off."
Bingo. We can't even understand it ourselelves, yet we predict it will happen in our lifetimes? That's a pretty silly assertion.
"The thresholds to human-level computer intelligence include things like vision, language, and locomotion, which are well on their way,"
I'd say a lot of them are already here - we just haven't a clue how to piece them together, or how they fundamentally interact with intelligence.
"These machines have operational morality. In other words, they have values of the designs or corporations that build them. "
Considering how much controvery there is over human morals (and there's even controversy on how you define the term), I'm not certain it's wise to attempt to create a machine that tries to reason morally. And even if we can agree on what makes a machine "moral," there's the next question of whose morals we put in it. Not to mention the question of how it will interact with religions, and even whether it has its own religious beliefs.
"In a Democratic society the public should give at least tacit approval to the future it is creating"
No.
I absolutely do not think that technologies should have absolute free reign over our society, sorry. We know that technology can be just as destructive as it can be constructive. Look at the history of warfare if you don't believe me.
I son't think we should be investing in technologies that bring us to destruction - I'd rather we exist in the stone ages or exist in a state of frozen tech then to stop existing at all.
Hopefully we can make progress wihtout risking our existence - but if we have to make the tough choice of whether we continue down a path that could lead to our destruction, I'd very much not proceed down that path.
I love technology, and I love what it can do for us, and I'm very excited to be a part of this. But I love the human race even more. I'd give up all the technology in the world if that's what it takes to prevent us from destroying ourselves.
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