Weird. I was just reading William Hertling's Avogadro Corp (http://www.amazon.com/Avogadro-Corp-Singularity-Closer-Appea...) and the premise of that book is that someone builds this product exactly. Unfortunately, it very quickly goes all Skynet/HAL on the world.. oh well.
That's the problem with the increasing speed of technological advance, it makes it impossibile to enjoy SF as by the time you are halfway through the book it's already happened in real life!