I think the main threat from AI is as a means of capitalist exploitation. And this is not because AI's are even adequately good at the things these corporations want to apply them to. They're just an excuse to look good to stockholders for doing more layoffs while their product quality plummets. If AIs do ever become capable of autonomous decision-making on the level of a human (or even like, a dog or a cat), then that's a completely separate issue from what's going on at present. However, I think a lot of people are worried about current or future machines actually being able to outthink us.

But I don't think we need to worry about an AI explosion making exponentially more intelligent AI in any near future. I don't think the process by which programs like ChatGPT are made can scale in any reasonable way. If you look at the gargantuan knowledge base that ChatGPT was trained on, and you look at the conceptual basis by which the people making these programs think they can improve them, it doesn't add up.

ChatGPT is good at sounding smart--much less so at actually being smart. And the idea is to take these incredibly limited programs that have already required enormous resources to create (the combined corpus of a huge percentage of the internet and who knows how much computer hardware) and just...add more resources. The model doesn't scale. 

And not only that, but I just really, really don't think that's how brains work. I don't think that's how they evolved. And I don't think it's realistic to expect to recreate cognition by thinking we can just add more and more neurons and feed them more and more data. I think the idea of depending on the superficial similarity of neural nets to brains with neurons to eventually lead to a deeper similarity if we just keep adding more is a form of magical thinking.

It's like how we invented flight. Nature can inspire, but it's often infeasible to emulate nature precisely, and inefficient as well. Airplanes and helicoptors allow us to fly, but not by exactly imitating the flight patterns of, say, birds to do so. Birds are both more complex than necessary for flight and less efficient than our purposes call for. Airplanes don't need to flap their wings, and helicopters can employ a mechanism that doesn't even exist in any known lifeform to fly.

I don't think making a brain capable of complex thought is just about adding neurons. I think it's about adding a lot of abilities we have that our brains likely implement in unnecessarily complex ways through accidents of evolution. I think we have to be able to break cognition down and understand its component parts, truly and completely, before we can emulate it. I think we can't just make programs that are structured vaguely like brains and expect them to behave truly intelligently any more than we can make machines that are structured vaguely like wing muscles and expect them to fly for us.

I also think that the concepts that underlie the methods by which brains work are many orders of magnitude more complex than the concepts that underlie the methods by which wings work. And I think they will absolutely require a deep understanding of their mechanisms and processes to implement, which the current black box methods of implementation simply aren't compatible with.

Though the primary reason I didn't decide to become a doctor as a kid was because I thought the process to become one sounded grueling and that it would be a high stress job, I also had a strong involuntary response to discussions of the human body when I was younger and any discussion of certain parts of the body, especially the circulatory or nervous system made me nauseated.  Health classes were really a nightmare for me sometimes.  Though it was easier for me to absorb the material on my own time outside of a class setting, and I've always found it intensely interesting.  As I've gotten older I've found it easier to learn about such things, and my first reaction to any health problem is generally to look it up and try to deal with it myself.  

It's only when my research and my assessment of my symptoms points to the necessity of tests, medications, or procedures I'm unable to obtain myself that I resort to outside medical intervention.  In that case, I'll tell the doctor what my symptoms are and see what they have to say.  I almost invariably try to avoid telling them any guesses I have about the problem, not because I think I must be wrong, but because then I also get an independent professional medical opinion on what the issue is that isn't biased either for or against any of my guesses.  I also am generally aware that certain symptoms can have more than one possible cause, so getting a doctor's opinion can be useful for limiting those down.

That is what I did for the (slightly less) mysterious medical issue I am having now, and though they haven't decided on how to resolve it, the tests I've had so far have made it a bit clearer what the issue is.  This in turn has given me some ideas for actions to take myself to mitigate this unfortunate issue as best I can while I wait to see what treatment the doctor will advise.  The pain is thankfully already greatly decreased, either through one or more of the recent changes I've made in how much I sleep or exercise or one or more of the foods I've started eating more often, or through some sort of spontaneous improvement.  I'm almost certain that how terrible my sleep habits had gotten were making the problem worse, though, since the pain almost invariably tends to be worse when I'm tired.

But anyway, I find biology and medicine fascinating as well as useful, so I always try to use what knowledge I have and can find on those topics as a first line reaction to try to diagnose and treat issues myself.  At the same time, I also use that knowledge to judge when I probably won't be able to resolve a health issue myself.  Except for routine checkups, I usually only see the doctor when I have a more persistent issue like this one which does not go away in a short amount of time.  When I've only had something a short time, even if it's extremely unpleasant, I typically won't go see the doctor.  I do worry this means I may be less good at diagnosing acute emergencies in myself, but it might also just mean that I've correctly judged that past issues weren't life-threatening and would resolve on their own.  The fact that I haven't already died either means I did correctly judge those cases or that I've just been lucky so far, and I think a strong argument could be made for either of those possibilities.