Professor Stuart Russell is a long term researcher into Artificial Intelligence and wrote (along with Peter Norvig) a widely used undergraduate text called “Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach”. Last month he delivered this excellent lecture at The Centre for the Study of Existential Risk. He makes very good arguments that although sentient AI may be far in the future, it is worth considering the ethical possibilities as soon as possible.
It’s quite a long video, but worth the time to watch through.
[Note the sound quality is poor for the first several minutes but is clear thereafter.]
On Machine Intelligence 