Physicists

[stevebowers]

Rather than assuming that the first AIs would be hyper-logical like Spock (or Data) I tend to follow Anders' ideas and expect that they would be hyperautistic, or psychologically different in some other way. Human normal (and normative) psychology is the product of millions, or billions, of years of evolution, and I doubt that we could get anywhere near it on the first attempts.

However an AI which was competent could still be useful, even if it had limited resemblance to a human mentality. In fact, given certain characteristics (improved memory and attention span, and access to a range of analytical tools) a non-human AI could be very useful indeed.