Go read Charles's piece over at Liminality. He offers a cursory review of "Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning, Part I," plus an extended meditation on issues surrounding AI—conceptions, misconceptions, and implications. I have quibbles about some of his definitions of core terms, but overall, I think he's done a very good job of surveying and demystifying many of the major topics related to artificial intelligence.
If you've got the time and patience for a super-long-form essay, you should also read Tim Urban's Wait But Why two-parter on artificial intelligence (here and here), written way back in 2015 but still relevant today. I've written a ton on this topic myself, from many different angles. For recent samples of my work, look here and here for starters.
I suspected there might be some quibbles over definitions of core terms. I was not fully satisfied with them myself (this is primarily what I was referring to at the end when I said the essay wasn't perfect). I spent quite a bit of time trying to hone those definitions, but they kept getting away from me (it doesn't help that people write entire books about consciousness, for example), and I realized that I was never going to finish the essay if I didn't just let them go. Ultimately, I didn't want to be distracted from the main point, and they were distractions.
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