Just ML is never going to lead to an AGI. There are lots of other things that need to be first understood about intelligence, common sense reasoning, cognition and other things which we don't have a clue of (though some think they know it all), to build an AGI.
Yes, they will not sell it now. But once everyone is into it thinking ahhh its a great idea and a great tool and share their private/public data though this. Then, these companies will turn around and sell your data to monetize on them which is the first thing any company is going to do.
These are great ideas to monetize now. As it grows, it will be the same as its been happening with the big companies, like Google, Microsoft, Yahoo etc., where law enforcement will force to acquire these data and naturally as its a company which owns it, its going to turn up to be used to scrutinize anyone in the name of security etc., and privacy at all levels will be basically sold for money. These guys start snooping around and project its a great tool for safety. True there could be a fraction of safety around this. But at the end of the day its just about money and becomes another surveillance mechanism to monitor everyone which is bullshit and nonsense.
I like the last one. True, Infosys like companies started as a service company and never expanded their business to develop out of the service sector which is bad. My observation is, all these service companies only focus on their profits and never reinvest to expand the business out of it, maybe developing a product to start with.
I know that there is a terms of service and I also know there are some projects that succeed, but the failure rate is extremely high. Yes, there being zero responsibility for the project which got funded through the Kickstarter like platform where hundreds of thousands of dollars is being handled and having zero responsibility is absurd and should never be allowed, that's what my argument is. As a customer you can only do so much about due diligence about a project and its creators. When Kickstarter like platform is the one which is handing the money over to the project creator, naturally it is their responsibility to do a due diligence about the campaign as they are the ones who are handling a large sum of money on behalf of the backers. When Kickstarter like platforms put that responsibility on the customer to due diligence, it leaves the customer to the mercy of the project creator which is what I have saw in most of the projects which I funded or backed out. Because Kickstarter like platforms suck 7-8% of the campaign as their commission, it seems its easy to have a TOS where you claim zero responsibility and just walk away with the money safely and also just blame or not have any control on the project creator with the money they raise from these sites and the project creator can also walk away free and clear without any repercussions but taking hundreds of thousands of dollars for free.
I understand, we use AI in one form or another in our daily lives. But for very specific and specialized narrow cases. As you mentioned, its that scale that matters which our brain does seamlessly and us as the generation with AI builders around, we are no where anything to perform in scale with an AI except very specialized tasks. It naturally will improve over time, but AI attaining AGI status and maybe taking control over socio-economic or socio-cultural changes would be a long shot unless we humans don't destroy ourselves by destroying life on earth.
"As absurd now as walking around on the moon was in the 1st Century."
Yes true(wonder why we don't shuttle down to the moon since we landed half a century ago and still never went back???), it is going to be absurd till we have an AI which is as capable(or even half as capable) as much as a human and we can debug that AI or maybe that AI debug's itself reflexively. Till then, I would say its absurd anytime to think that an AI could take control of a human and guide the human in its actions. Till then, I will keep my brain intact and keep away from any AI implants or any kind of implant altogether).
"It's a restructuring of the human system around symbiosis with AI".
This sounds more like to basically have a socio-cultural breakthrough, you want a technological entity (some AI or whatever it turns out to be in the future) to control and direct human socio-cultural thoughts and execution. Transhumanism seems to be more oriented towards equipping humans to be interfaced(through some HCI - human computer interface) with computers around an AI, and other human built accessories (atleast for now) to enhance their mental abilities to project them as more powerful humans. One question is, how much do we actually know the power of our brain and abilities, if its properly used rather than enhancing with computers etc., Yes, there are great use-cases for HCI. But giving control to an AI to make your decisions or control humans in the name of technological break through is absurd.
With some of the things online, I can see that its going to be some kind of a glass for sure. They talk about photonic lightfield chip which seems to be almost like a pair of glasses(to be more precise lenses) but it can control light similar to an electronic chip which controls electrons flow. Basically they project images into those glasses which get directly projected into a human eye at various focal lengths which gives you the sense of depth (far and near objects etc.,). Basically the photonic chip should have multiple layers to render images with different focal lengths. What I've read online interprets that it will be a pair of glasses (even Abovitz mentions in one of his talks, thats it going to be a head mounted display like a pair of glasses) which has the lightfield photonic chips for each eye, which then gets fed from a computing unit which the user might have in their pocket (similar in size of a cell phone). With cameras mounted on the HMD (glasses), and doing some SLAM(Simultaneous Localization and Mapping) on those images, they should be able to sense the environment around you and then allow for virtual objects to be placed appropriately to interact.
Check out the article below which gives an in-depth interpretation based on their patents and whatever information/demos magic leap has shared in the past.
Magic Leap's CEO also shows the light field photonic chip which looks like a normal piece of glass, but has the property of projecting images from a fiber optic source at various wavelengths.
I am wondering whether the technology developed can be rendered in such a form factor where its very easy to wear like grasses and use in a day to day basis. The guys at Magic leap seem to be very confident that they have got most of the complex pieces figured out and its already materialized. Even a developer kit from magic leap next year or so should blow every ones mind of, if they have got the projection of images directly to the eye working even with a tethered system to start with.
Hololens from Microsoft seems to be doing something closely similar where they are projecting images through a glass like medium. Read somewhere that hololens was rushed to be first before Magic leap delivers its technology though. Some recent videos form wired on Magic Leap shows some impressive demos taken through their technology and should have a large FOV as hololens has a very limited FOV it seems. Magic leap's CEO Abovitz seems to be very confident that their tech is way superior to whatever exists and are not worried about some products like hololens hitting the market earlier than their products release.