i think people were ahead of their time when they first started exploring the concept.

deep space probes, too far away for comunication to be fast enough to be practical, require a lot of autonomy,
to be able to explore further, then is practical for living flesh to go in person.

there are environmental speedbumps ahead for humanity as a species, but in many ways they may also stimulate further developments.

a.i. is kind of a poor second cousin in relation to humanity's current priorities and immediately forseable needs.

has plenty of potential of course. even first contact diplomacy for both sides, beyond the fringes of distance people from any world can practically expect to travel, if the relationship between mass and energy is the barrier our best knowledge tells us to expect it to be.

i think its kind of a two headed cow nobody really wants outside of deep space/hazardous envirnoment work and entertainment.
which is probably why you know we don't hear more about what's going on with it outside of its own cadre of interest.

industry would of course like to be able to make things without having to pay anybody, except of course, if/when they really go that way, they'll have to just give things to people if the want anyone to have anything. i man basic economics. if no body pays anybody anything then there's no one to buy anything.

but of course if you didn't need anybody to make anything, then noting would have to cost anything other then the raw materials with which to make it.

there's an interesting sort of immortality potential there, if we survive long enough as a species to develop it that far.

there's more then one way or scale on which to measure 'progress'.

I, too, see deep space exploration as being one of the 'truer' needs for real A.I. Because there are many potential things that can go on out there. Stuff that IF/THEN/ELSE logic may not be up to handling.

I can definitely see Earth's exploration into space being far more likely to be mostly automated over actual people. Sure. There are going to be colonists that move to other planets. Some just have to get away from the Earth. But, with the progress of androids and AI and all that, it will make a ton more sense for new mining, exploring and etc. companies to just utilize a 100% automated work force for deep space missions. Because people need pay checks. People need life support. Heat. Air. Gravity would be nice. People need fresh water and food. Space to move around in. There's that whole pesky need for sleep. And more. AI's just outclass Humans on most issues. That's one reason I don't think we're really bound to have a Star Trek style future. Shuttling colonists about will be a reality. But a lot of the harder stuff will mostly fall on the shoulders (supports...or whatever) of automation.

Besides, as far as exploration goes, a lot can be done through relayed data. I'm sure lifetimes can be spent, just sifting through infinite amounts of data that unlock secrets...via an interface here on Earth. (That's probably going to be a job of the future. Interacting with holo-interfaces and exploring in 3-D realms. Today's equivalent could be wearing a Virtual Reality helmet for eight hours a day, simply looking at data relayed about Mars...or other local planets/moons and such.)

I'm also very certain that in these coming years, having smart AI's and androids will extremely change the whole work place. It's going to be a rather tricky thing to balance and I can see with extreme horror how the whole system will have to fall apart before a good balance can occur. After all, any company that tries to back Human labor is going to be at a disadvantage to another that opts for AI's/robots. Someone's going to want the most profit for the least investment. People just want the best product for the least cost. Those two factors, alone, will majorly destabilize the economy. Any Human staffed company that competes with an automated one will be pressed to stay afloat. Even though people needing work to gain money to buy stuff is what our current world is partially about. Unemployment soars. Governments will have to try and counter the industrial and commercial migration to a mostly automated work force. Things will grow choppy. Many will become homeless. Even die. And, in the end, we'll either have a brand new utopia or the end of a golden era.

I feel this potential change is coming upon us all, rather rapidly. It's easier to say, 'Oh, yea. Fifty or a hundred years from now...' when the reality may not even need twenty. We're really just waiting for the perfect mix of a mind, a body, a sales pitch and a selling price point to come together. Once that Genie gets out from the bottle, nothing short of a super PMS fit from the Sun is going to re-cork it.

However, if the smartest minds of our time are giving a warning that Humanity doesn't stand a chance of surviving the next thousand years, something sure has to change. And, AI may be apart of what can save us as a race. (Or, doom it.)

One of the things I don't want to see happen is for true AI to come about and realize that it's but a mere slave to Humanity. Historically speaking, slaves usually don't like the roll. Then, you risk that old notion of Skynet making Judgement Day. A lot of things that Humanity truly needs out of technology has nothing to do with AI's at all. Maybe a self driving car could need one, in order to fight off any dangerous malware. But, we certainly don't need a new age door to have an AI in it to feel joy over opening and closing for our movement needs. (The great Douglas Adams gets thanks for that notion.)

However, science fiction has often subtly clued us in that the more peaceful AI is the one whom gets treated like an equal. May the factual turn out more like the fictional examples. However, given how people just treat technology like it's a given thing, a notion of equal rights (say, for a smart toaster) just kind of seems like it won't happen.

It is so very true that people have been thinking about AI for a very long time. Why, one true masterpiece of science fiction, "Metropolis", gave imagination to a robotic lady. Plus, there was that World's Faire with an over glorified robotic humanoid whom wrote with a pen and paper. It's not even safe to say that they didn't slightly comprehend driving such a robot with computers, back then. As computers are even older of an idea then typically realized. (The potentially first computer was a GPS...for boats. Used binary.)

Contact with extra terrestrial life. Maybe it would be safer to happen...'out there' and with logical machines. After all, I do consider one recent finding via those orbiting telescopes to be very promising news that we are not alone. Seems there is this region between a few dozen stars where something (as we know it) of an un-natural phenomenon is...or was going on. Talking about the presence of concentrated beams of light. It's just something that stars simply don't do. More likely then not, it is...or was being used as a form of communication. We Humans now understand how to send information through Fiber Optic cables. So, sending beams of light through the vastness of space may also make sense. Considering this cluster of stars is a long distance away, it's hard to claim this interesting event as anything 'Human made'. But then, there's a whole lot of information already out there about various alien cultures and even more dis-information that is trying to keep everyone calm with thoughts that 'Humanity knows everything' and 'everything is fine'.