Nice link. I also did AI in grad school, and I firmly agree that posts like sama's are, as Ng says, "a distraction from the conversation about... serious issues." The OP is much much more aimed at marketing a plausible future of AI than producing any sort of rigorous prediction. It doesn't even matter if the OP predicts correctly; the post doesn't contribute anything substantially meaningful. I'm sad to see Sam spend so much of his precious time and energy on this post.