The investor-entrepreneur Peter Thiel - whose own sanity is a topic of some debate - once noted that the disproportionate success of autistic founders in Silicon Valley is no accident. Many good ideas seem crazy until they work. Good listeners tend to be too easily convinced that their potentially transformative idea will never take off. Those impervious to social pressure, for whatever neurological or psychological reason, have the tunnel vision required to blast through mountains of scepticism and inertia.

In response, Yampolskiy told Business Insider he thought Musk was "a bit too conservative" in his guesstimate and that we should abandon development of the technology now because it would be near impossible to control AI once it becomes more advanced.

But the Commissioners are happy in considering the statute under which they are assembled as proof that the legislature is far from the abandonment of objects so interesting: they are sensible that the advantages of well directed education, moral, political & economical are truly above all estimate.