Building advanced AI is like launching a rocket. The first challenge is to maximize acceleration, but once it starts picking up speed, you also need to focus on steering.
Once computers can program, they basically take over technological progress because already, today, the majority of technological progress is run by software, by programming.
There is no shortage of embarrassing facts about healthcare, and people die every day in the U.S. due to preventable errors - would you fly planes if you knew several of them would drop out of the sky every day?
I was born behind the Iron Curtain, and I remember heated discussions about large-scale terra-forming projects, such as reversing the direction of the river Ob or putting up large reflectors into space to heat up Siberia.
If you happen to start a new country in the 1990s, you have the advantage of drafting new laws with the knowledge that the Internet is out there.
In my view, the fact that computers caught up to humans and completely dominate humans in chess and some other domains already, that says there's evidence that, yes, in principle, they can be better programmers than humans.
