I know this sounds all conspiracy theory like, but it seems possible that people like Bill Gates and Elon Musk, who have recently made comments about the potential threat of an artificial intelligence take over, were only doing it so that there would be more articles written about AI and how its highly unlikely given current state of the art.  I mean there has been so much press about this issue lately that I don’t think that as many people would have even known about the true current state of AI.  So, the conspiracy is that Bill and Elon really know how unlikely it is to happen any time soon and they know how hard getting all of the news outlets to talk about AI and the current research.  So, they made the outrageous claims to get attention to an area that needs it.  Which other than making them look bad I think it was useful.