The prospect of machines capable of following moral principles, let alone understanding them, seems as remote today as the word "robot" is old. Some technologists enthusiastically extrapolate from the observation that computing power doubles every 18 months to predict an imminent technological singularity in which a threshold for machines of superhuman intelligence will be suddenly surpassed. ... I am skeptical about the Singularity, and even if "artificial intelligence" is not an oxymoron, "friendly A.I." will require considerable scientific progress on a number of fronts.

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...decisions about how machines are used and whether they will enhance or replace human qualities are now being played out in a multitude of ways, and the real value of Watson may ultimately be in forcing society to consider where the line between human and machine should be drawn. For the past four decades that basic tension between artificial intelligence and intelligence augmentation — A.I. versus I.A. — has been at the heart of progress in computing science as the field has produced a series of ever more powerful technologies that are transforming the world. ... Indeed, for the computer scientist John Seely Brown, machines that are facile at answering questions only serve to obscure what remains fundamentally human. “The essence of being human involves asking questions, not answering them,” he said.

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