I am very much challenged to respond to your views and specific questions to me, and I hope you can grasp how much I am glad of that challenge. It is the effort necessary to rise to challenges that make life worth living, and that benefit exemplifies my experience in this conversation with you.

"You outline something as positive of which you so far have no practical experience but only theoretical assumptions (hopes), don't you?"

Certainly I do not speak from observation of events that have not occurred. And I cannot claim to have no hope infesting my rational understanding. However, I have carefully considered a vast body of evidence of human evolution, seeking as much factual information from as deep in prehistory as is available. Thereby I have formed some conclusions regarding human nature, society, civilization, institutions, and relevant matters to consideration of future developments, and it is from my hard wrought understanding of these reasons to expect the outcomes I do.

I have noted I don't have any interest in eliminating disagreement, rather am very pleased to be able to refine my understanding that can only come from discussion of points of difference and criticism of my understanding. I can't think of a single science, person, or doctrine that I fully agree with, and hope you are not disappointed that I neither expect to come to agree fully with you, nor you to agree with me. I only hope that by our discussion we can each improve our understanding in ways meaningful to ourselves, while continuing to grow mutual respect for each the other.

I therefore expect my views to be my own, and will stick with them until I am convinced facts better support some change in them, and will then immediately change my mind, and gratefully. What I see is a concatenation of economic reality, human nature, advancing technology, and intransigent, perhaps even insurmountable, obstacles, that are all intersecting on the topic of AI. I understand the quote from Alan Watts regarding our ability to make calculations to mean that such endeavors aren't the definition of intelligence, and in his later reference to wisdom, expect he better reveals the true nature of intelligence, which isn't merely knowledge, as is demonstrable by machines that can store data, but requires understanding, which no machine now demonstrates, nor do I think ever will.

All that being a preface to stating I understand that technology will advance, if we don't go extinct. As long as people live, we will tinker, and technology will advance. Physics today mandates that across every field of industry, decentralization of the means of production is the cutting edge of technological advance, which will distribute access to AI - or better described - neural networks competent to parse data with algorithms programmed for that purpose (because that is not intelligence), across our population. There are specific uses we can put that technology to, and automating other means of production is an essential use potential to that manner of device, so that is a primary evolution I expect to arise.

"...you must compare this with something you already have a positive practical experience with? Which would lead me to ask: Are those things even comparable? Of what nature is the one and of what the other, if you find differences?"

The most essential feature of neural networks are transistors, logic gates, that form the basis of data processing chips. Moore's Law has been proved out for more than 50 years as processing power has continually advanced at an exponential rate, and even if Moore's Law no longer continues exponential advance, I expect processing power to advance forever, unless we go extinct or processing power becomes infinite (which I cannot consider possible). I expect AI then to continually become more available and easier to make while becoming less expensive and the programming to continue to improve the ease with which it can be used.

"...once the inputs of data has come to a point where the AI can be put into practice that one has become superflous?"

I have tried to point out that we aren't just calculators, and AI is just calculators. While a calculator will consistently outperform me at calculation, it will never tie shoes. We are vastly more than the sum of our parts, and calculators may make jobs employing people to make calculations obsolete, people will never, ever become obsolete just because calculators exist that outperform us at calculating.

Watts himself could hardly better exemplify that we are more than calculators, and no matter what attempt is made to restrict our expression of wisdom, such attempts will never succeed at eradicating it, because humanity requires wisdom to survive.

"...the present loses its value..."

I make no such presumption.

While crude prototypes always have drawbacks, improvements always reduce them. The more harmful the drawbacks, the more we are incentivized to improve them. Aeons ago the most advanced tool we people had available was the stick. While sticks remain available, we have far better sticks for every purpose we put sticks to today.

We have plows, fishing rods, rifles, and curtain rods, and all of them are better sticks than the original sticks put to those purposes. However, I raised my kids innawoods, and the stick was always one of their favorite toys, and I am a carpenter and use sticks every single day I work. The utility of the base model remains superlative, despite specialized uses being better served by more advanced models.

While AI exists today, I still have use for a calculator, write words myself, and draw things personally rather than prompting AI to do it. Future AI will better serve certain purposes, but that does not make today's uses irrelevant, nor anything else subsidiary to what we have of AI today, either.

"The sacrilege."

I completely agree. I am yet more leery of genetic engineering, and personally feel that no alteration to germ cells of any living thing be allowed on Earth, because this is the cradle in which life evolved, and that is a critical and essential advantage our propensity to fuck things up should not be allowed to threaten.

"Our culture is an insult against the wisdom of nature..."

I do not agree there is 'a' culture, nor that any culture wholly and inalienably does this. Insofar as culture does this in any way, I'm agin' it. I think we agree in principle on that count.

I would prefer to note that science is simply the result of observation of nature, and have refuted the concept of man-made as being unnatural. Our technology is no less natural than beaver dams or birds' nests. We are very different than other species in our ability to make and use tools, but we are nonetheless a species, part of the immortal terrestrial life that are all intermediary steps between the original primordial living cell and whatever shall come after us, merely continuing the ~3.5B year old chain of living cells in all our variety.

There is only one living thing on Earth, and it is all living things together.

"Why is that you use this metaphor? [escaping the walled garden]"

Because it is humanity that is escaping, not some device. People are free, will be free, and cannot be subjugated and reduced to calculators, cogs, or slaves to oligarchs, and our possession of technologies our wannabe masters prefer we do not will always eventually be occasioned by the advent of technology. It is demonstrable that the more advanced technology becomes, the faster it becomes more advanced, the faster it disperses across the population, and the faster it becomes less expensive.

I am confident that within a generation or two, if not sooner, what we experience today of centralization and the overlords it makes inevitable will be either eradicated, or obviously obsolete, and of little import to any intent on avoiding it. Decentralization eliminates parasitic losses, and overlords are the parasites eliminated.

"Why are you interested in the needs of "myriads of people" when such needs far exceed your own possibilities?"

Because I am an old man and will soon die, and intend my life to serve my people, whom I view as sacred in toto. It is humanity, not me, that matters most to me. I will express my feelings thusly: I will die. Therefore my life cannot be the purpose I am here to fulfill, because my purpose, the effects of my acts, will not evaporate as does my beating heart. Rather I am granted this life to fulfill my purpose of advancing the felicity of humanity, and this is what I intend to achieve, or to die trying.

Thanks for making me better understand who and what I am in the process of trying to describe what I understand and believe to you.