How close we are to making genetic enhancement work in a big way. I'm not fully convinced of the magnitudes of gains from iterated embryo selection as projected by Bostrom; but even being able to drag the average level of genetically-determined intelligence up close to the current maxima of the distribution would be immensely helpful, and it's informative that Bostrom suggests we'll have the means within a few decades.

Remember that effect where you read a newspaper and mostly trust what it says, at least until one of the stories is about a subject you have expertise in, and then you notice that it's completely full of errors? It makes it very difficult to trust the newspaper on any subject after that. I started Bostrom's book very skeptical of how well he would be handling the material, since it covers many different fields of expertise that he cannot hope to have mastered.

My personal field of expertise is BCI. I did my doctoral work in that field, 2006-2011. I endorse every word that Bostrom wrote on BCI in the book. And consequently, in the opposite of the newspaper effect, I dramatically raised my confidence that Bostrom has accurately characterized the subjects I'm more ignorant of.

YES. AI under present knowledge systems wont deliver the promise of real live intelligence. And the author[s] get bogged in computational details that delay detract for greater efficiency in the cognitive field. Still it's a rippa of a project. Given how hopeless humans are globally machine logic might offer real time solutions such as less humans to start off with. Would solve heaps of other problems we have and are creating.