[majewsky]

There was a talk at the 30C3 where the speaker argued that we do not need to fear AIs. A human-level AI is an information processing system (what we have already, and which is not harmful) plus a motivation system. The latter is the one that's to be worried about, but it already exists in the form of corporations (which fittingly also work against our collective interest in many ways, e.g. environmental protection).