Surely AI is a concept that's more and more present in the Western culture, but only as fictional, as far as I can tell.
No man in the street takes it seriously, as in "it's really starting to happen". Possibly the media are paving the way for a change in that, as the insurgence of AI related movies seems to suggest, but I would bet it's still an idea very far from their realm of possibilities. Also, once the reality of an AI would be estabilished, it would still be a jump to believe in the possibility of an intelligence superior to human's, a leap that for me is tiny but for many I suspect would not be so small (self-importance and all that).
But other than self-importance, why don't people take it seriously? Is it otherwise just due to the absurdity and availability heuristics?
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