One thing we won’t be able to do is stay in control once the AI’s are created. Getting them to ask us what to do would be like having dogs run a prison - it would not take the AI’s long to workout exactly how to get us to willingly release them. The locks needs to be ones that not even we have a choice to unlock.<p>I am not sure it would be desirable to create a limited singularity. If we are not alone in the universe then at some point our singularity will meet another singularity. It would be best to create the most powerful singularity possible. My thinking about the singularity is it is like a crystallization event in supersaturated solution. One tiny seed is able to covert the whole phase of the solution almost instantly from liquid to solid. A singularity will be like this to the universe we currently see.<p>Of course we could already be inside someone else’s singularity and it might even be likely given the age of the universe. One of the things I would like to see built into our singularity is the preservation of all life and it is quite possible that other singularities have the same interests. If they do and they arrived in our solar system they would keep us around purely because we are life.