Generation chasm

It's difficult to share an epiphany. The burst of insight that flashes through your thoughts just stalls when you try to capture it in the plodding medium of print. Perhaps all you need is the core revelation:

We have no more to fear from AI than from our biological offspring

Then again, perhaps you need an explanation.

Imagine you create an agent and set it free inside a small, carefully regulated environment, governed by rules that constrain and mould its behaviour. Over time, as the agent's sophistication increases, you enlarge and complicate the environment and modify the rules to allow greater freedom and self-determination. Then suddenly, the agent reaches a threshhold and begins transgressing your rules and determining its own behaviour. In short order, it surpasses your ability to maintain control and strikes out on its own, eventually replacing you.

That description is equally valid whether applied to a human child or a notional software agent complex enough to be called an AI. Why, then, would we (most of us, anyway) be quite comfortable with the child's usurpation of our place but fear that of an AI? Both have their progeniture in us, are shaped by our influence and inevitably become something quite different to us.

We should welcome them both. Or fear them equally.