@old-guy-photos sent me your way. I loved your article.
And, to answer your question "Do I welcome becoming more machine-like," the answer is most assuredly, "No."
And, I think your premise needs a re-think. Science does not know what "life is." It does not know what "consciousness is" ... they even call it, "the hard problem of consciousness." After almost 50 years of spending untold billions on Alzheimer's research, science cannot say what causes it, let alone what cures it. Ditto for MS. Ditto for Parkinson's and Autism, etc.
The idea that we'll be able to wire up our brains to communicate with sentient AI, in any meaningful way sometime in the imaginable future, is extremely unlikely. Yes, we'll likely be able to create simple connections between our motor cortex and robotic prosthetic limbs (this is already occurring in a crude fashion) but "thinking" ... that's dozens, if not hundreds, of orders of magnitude more complex.
A far more likely scenario is what you discuss in the first part of your article ... we'll create strong-AI computers (who even knows what "sentience" in a computer would look like) thereby making "human thinking" obsolete ... or at least, valueless.
This is a ridiculously dangerous path we're on, and it's one we should get off. I wrote a poem, accompanied with an in-depth discussion on this very matter (which is undoubtedly why @old-guy-photos sent me to check out your blog).
I'd love to get your feedback. https://steemit.com/poetry/@quillfire/so-said-they-of-looms-poem-i-m-with-elon-musk-ai-has-the-potential-to-wreak-havoc
Oh man, I'm so glad @old-guy-photos sent you my way! OK, please forgive me, I'm coming back to this. I'm actually travelling today and so can't hang around too long, but when I get where I'm going to answer your points.
In-depth discussion coming in 3, ... 2, .... :-D
Cg
@cryptogee,
When I saw your Comments last night , including this one, it was 3:30 AM and I could feel my brain had gotten stupid. So, I decided to get some sleep and defer responding until the morning (now). For the sake of preserving bandwidth, I'm going to save my ammo for your other, more lengthy Comments on the other post.
(Update: Even this post will have to wait as I've been "badwidth-frozen" ... for about the tenth time in a week. FYI: The "bandwidth counter" on Steemd.com ... it doesn't work worth sh*t.)
Argh!
In case anyone else is interested in following the exchange, you can find it in the Comments section of: https://steemit.com/poetry/@quillfire/so-said-they-of-looms-poem-i-m-with-elon-musk-ai-has-the-potential-to-wreak-havoc