The silicon valley fear of AI stems, in large part, from misunderstandings of cognition, the human brain, and consciousness. They believe that thought arises from matter - Nick Land, and others, would argue that it arises from a spirit, or a "will to think". From Nick Land's Xenosystems: "The only reason to believe the artificial intelligentsia, when they claim that mechanical cognition is—of course—possible, is their argument that the human brain is concrete proof that matter can think. If this argument is granted, it follows that the human brain is serving as an authoritative model of what nature can do. What it can’t do, evidently, is anything remotely like paper-clipping—i.e., cognitive slaving to transcendent imperatives....there can be no production of thinking without production of a will-to-think."
