> Those "demons" didn't eat our lunch?

Tell that to the Europeans who were so afraid of naming the bear that its original name is still lost to us :) The Luddites also had a lot to say about the mechanical demons that were eating their lunches.

> Cognition is in the process of taking the leap from glacially slow biology under blind evolution, to lightening fast (scales of software in days, hardware in months) engineered self-optimization.

Yes-but, time scales are relevant only relative to other time scales (or the Planck time, if we get there). If the whole universe were to start running at 1,000,000× speed, you wouldn't notice. Speed is important to us humans currently because of our individual perspective and associated limited lifespan, but not in a universal sense (modulo some big hurdles like star lifetime and heat death). There are already self-replicating organisms with much faster iteration cycles than humans or human technology, like bacteria.

> Within 10 years, the robotics side will catch up with the speed of the software side. Biological cognition, bodies and economic status are all getting revolutionized within the next 10-15 years.

Just like it was in the 1980s, or the 1800s? I don't claim that these things _won't_ happen in the next ten years, but looking at it empirically people thinking that they will coïncides with every new technology and is a poor predictor.

> If there is reason in the short term to be discouraged, it is due to ourselves. But pushing for more ethical systems, hard, right now, is a better and right response.

I don't disagree, but it's not like we haven't been trying. Attempts to codify ethics go back about as far as human civilization, and it's not obvious to me that there's any faster road, and certainly not one fast enough to outpace our current rate of technological development (before you even start talking about AGI!).