[Reach]

Agreed with the above.

On the energy issue, we certainly know from physics already that an infinite energy source can't exist. Our best shot is probably the construction of efficient fusion reactors, since at least we know fusion is possible...but short of collapsing a nebula, it's still going to require massive investment and resources to build a reactor that could contain such a reaction. The ability to sustain a reaction here on earth is going to be limited, and I think we'd much sooner use it to fix our own energy problems than to power an AI.

On the other topic, how realistic is the idea of building an AI that can come up with novel ideas on its own?

Have there been any major breakthroughs in general-purpose AI? I've been following various AI scenes for awhile now (chess, poker), and while everyone is excited every time an AI is able to beat a human at these tasks (humans were recently defeated in poker, !), the methods they're using aren't much different than they were 15 years ago. The search and learning algorithms are much more efficient now and take advantage of massive improvements in hardware, but ultimately the computers are still just...computing. Most of these wins came from advancements in learning from simulation.

The CPUs that beat humans in poker still can't 'bluff', the AI just ran different lines in the same situation a million different times and calculated that betting is more profitable than checking even though it has a weak hand...therefore it bets since it's programmed to take the most profitable line.

I see these as human achievements at this point, where we're doing all of the thinking and simply need these tools to crunch numbers we can't crunch ourselves. This is a far cry from a computer being able to produce a thought of its own. I guess from a theoretical perspective, would that not require the AI to be able to write its own code?