I don't even have my flying car yet ...

I don't even have my flying car yet... and yet some folks are pondering robot spirituality.  Really!

I'm frequently startled by things like Elon Musk's fears about the possible dangers of artificial intelligence (AI).  Startled because they apparently imagine far greater successes in the field than I do (and for those readers who don't know me, my entire career was in computer hardware and software).  I cannot account for the disjoint, unless those folks have access to much more information than I do. 

I look at things like the utter failure of autonomous driving systems (very advanced AI) to handle bad weather, and I see enormous gaps between current AI and the ability to emulate one tiny aspect of human capability.  Just getting autonomous driving “right” looks like decades of hard work to me, and I'm not at all sure it can be accomplished without technological assists (for instance, by having buried road edge wires along every highway and street).  Getting to the point where robots are autonomously designing new things, and contemplating the presence of a deity?  I can't even imagine it...