There will always be economic incentives to create such a thing. Suppose there isn’t permanent economic collapse. In order for human-level machine intelligence to never get made, people would have to consider it too long-term of an investment to even try; that is, everyone would have to consider it like that, forever.
At this point, you might be saying, “Okay, fine. Maybe in a thousand years.” I don’t want to get into a debate about when human-level machine intelligence will be made, but I do want you to keep reading, and I’m concerned you won’t if you think this is a thousand years off.
At least entertain a 10% chance that this happens in the next 50 years, and I hope that that level of credence will convince you that it’s worth continuing to read. And if you’re having trouble even assigning a 10% chance to that, ask yourself what you could possibly know that could justify so much confidence about what billions of dollars and thousands of geniuses can’t accomplish in 50 years. Here’s one of my favorite crazy facts: it took 66 years to go from the Wright Brothers to the Moon Landing.
Extinction Risk from Artificial Intelligence 