"'Intelligent computers are twenty years in the future,'" says a friend of mine, in a voice saturated with sarcasm. "That's what they said in the 1970s. That's what they said in the 1990s. And that's what they're saying now. Intelligent computers are always twenty years in the future."

This friend is himself an intelligent man, and perhaps the most widely and deeply read person I know. He doesn't believe "artificial intelligence," --in the sense that it's generally understood-- will ever exist. Cognitive scientist Stephen Pinker, a man I admire, agrees. "There's no reason at all to believe in a coming singularity," he says. Computers will never "think."

I suspect they already do.  I suspect that artificial intelligence--indeed artificial superintelligence--already exists: that "they" were right, more or less, back in the 1990s.  Superintelligent computers already exist. They just keep a low profile. No need to advertise to be master of the world.