&gt;What makes you think the otherwise very intelligent people are wrong?<p>Mostly history.  Specifically the history of such predictions made by smart people of their own time that never came to pass.<p>I assure you, this has all been predicted before.  AI taking over the earth is always a decade away.<p>There are people who wear tin-foil hats and there are those that sell tin-foil hats.<p>The former think they&#x27;re saving the world, while the latter are just making money off of the former.  It&#x27;s the same business model as religion and global warming.