<i>The answer is &quot;no. we are nowhere near the smartest creatures possible&quot;.</i><p>Right, like I said, this whole thing was just &quot;thinking out loud&quot; more than any thoroughly researched and validated idea.  And I didn&#x27;t do a very good job of even explaining what I was getting at.  It&#x27;s not so much that the question is &quot;are we the smartest creatures possible&quot;.  It&#x27;s more like:<p>&quot;as smart as we are, and given the constraints of the physical world, is there room for a hypothetical &#x27;smarter than human AGI&#x27; to represent an existential threat, or something that justifies the analogy to nuclear weapons?&quot;<p>See also skybrian&#x27;s comment which actually states it better than I did originally:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10755109" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10755109</a>