alt Hacker NewsAI that we have now is not a digital animal in capability or kind, and is not currently anywhere close to taking over.
But it's still in its present form very intelligent in meaningful and useful ways. And it is not too soon to talk about concerns of a potential existential threat in the future. Because it could sooner than we might realize, threaten our existence.
Because of the potential, we should have a culture of caution as we continue to rapidly improve AI.
It will only become an existential threat (in my humble opinion) when they can run influenced inference locally offline almost instantaneously. Then we need to be concerned about not being able to switch it off.