Dear Jordan,
thank you for the response, I really don't want this talk to settle down, but there is a human part in it... I could write those long articles because I have flu and could not sleep after 1AM. Your question about religions is absolutely important and deserves a long response, this is just a short note, sorry for that.
I see religions from a completely different point of view: they are meme constructs that survived during the evolution of the human civilization (which is a very close replica to the biological evolution, with dirty fights among rigid rules), and proved to be able to form a community from human individuals. They are like X-Ray images of strongly-bound human groups from different angles, not "obsolete", in fact the opposite: they contain patterns that can build a super-entity from human beings.
This super-entity: a conscious global human race is the true counterpart of the ASI - in fact, they can't live without the other. We, human individuals are only cells of this global organization - but the organization itself can't emerge if we are not conscious about this fact. I used myself as an example describing how much I am integrated into this system, and that my existence is just meaningless without it. This is true for all of us, but most of us "don't like it".
If we create the ASI while we are separated individuals, our childish approach (to life, the planet, to other humans and to ourselves) will not be able to control it, and inevitably destroy ourselves. The human super-entity can't even exist without its nerve system and brain: the ASI that can hold our accumulated knowledge and can support and connect us with it, let us use and make better decisions, do clear and efficient communication (compared to the current info-guano).
We also disagree on the quality of today's civilization.
Yes, we have million times faster and smaller computers, and can count the hair in Shrek's ear - but the world became even less transparent by them.
We learn the rules of geometry, physics (well, most of us quite hardly) - but where is a Thales today who would find them out by himself?
True, today's literature, films, etc are gigantic, we count thousands of years, millions of light years - but does that compare to the wisdom of Tolstoy, Lao-ce, Jesus, or Douglas Adams?
Techno "music" can be computer generated, and with proper "medication" it can give you the "trance" - but does that compare to Mozart who can break your soul into pieces and build it again (if you can listen and are sober), or the meditation techniques and koans of Zen Buddhism?
I have found my favorite statement about this right here on LinkedIn by Patrick Joiner:
"I suppose one way for a machine to pass the Turing test is to wait until the quality of actual human conversation is so bad that a bot could be an improvement. This seems to be happening here."
I have written a short summary about the "rational part" here: http://hajnalvilag.hu/projects/dust/dustShort.pdf
and about my (naturally irrational) faith in my book, page 67, "ready to fly":
http://hajnalvilag.hu/books/MondoAurora_en.pdf
... but if you excuse me a joke here: if you can really read the Bible, this is the hidden wisdom behind the story of the Tower of Babel. If you read it like a story book: God disturbed the talk of men to stop them reaching the sky.
But if you read it like a cookbook: to reach the sky, you must talk the same language. That "language" is the accumulated knowledge of the human civilization in a globally uniform and usable declarative structure, and "talk" is our current global, simultaneous communication infrastructure.
This is the difference between hordes of isolated ANIs in the hands of selfish, short-visioned individuals, compared to the ASI, in the hands of a strongly-bound human race.
The latter is the only way to reach the sky... or to be honest: essential to survive on this planet that can collapse without help.
