All speculation about the future will sound like science fiction. Someone in 1800 making accurate predictions about 1900 would have sounded crazy. Someone predicting the atomic bomb in 1900 would have sounded crazy. Or airplanes, or television, or the internet, etc. Just because something <i>sounds absurd</i> doesn&#x27;t mean it&#x27;s not possible.<p>We live in a world where the only intelligences are humans. The idea of superintelligent minds seems absurd to us, because it isn&#x27;t something we&#x27;ve ever encountered in reality before. But there is absolutely no law of nature that says it&#x27;s impossible, or even difficult. If you look at history, it&#x27;d actually be really surprising if it was. Human minds were just the very first intelligence coughed up by evolution. We are far from the limits of what is possible.<p>And there is a difference between genetic engineering and AI research. Biology is incredibly complicated. Like millions of complicated, interconnected, moving parts. It really is impossible to make Alien, or really anything beyond modifications to existing biology.<p>Algorithms are a whole nother ball game. Our current AI algorithms are actually reasonably intelligent at many tasks, even smarter than humans at some things. And they are extremely simple. Could be described in a line or two of equations, or a few paragraphs of text. Not because they are primitive, but because simple algorithms work. And they have been improving every single year for a long time, and will likely improve well into the future.<p>But you don&#x27;t have to take my word for it. If you survey AI researchers and experts, they almost unanimously agree that AI will be invented in our lifetime. If you survey biologists, I highly doubt they would make similar claims about Alien.