It's a bit ironic that Sam missed this one quote that would have be very relevant to the post, both in term of the conclusion and the topic at hand (it's hard to predict stuffs) ;). It's interesting to note that the prediction was wrong on both counts: our machine is like a gazillion times more powerful than the quote, and we're doing nowhere near the capability of the prediction.
From the last HN comments on the topic, while it's true that there are certain people who believe that strong AI is impossible, the stance I've got from AI/robotics researchers were that it's just silly to talk about general AI at this point: it's so far away. This post from Karpathy would be one, for example: http://karpathy.github.io/2012/10/22/state-of-computer-visio... .
Because of that, any talk and concern on the topic is a bit silly, especially about regulation of the subject. I mean, can you imagine people in the 1600 trying to figure out how to regulate the air traffic that we have right now? Or should we talk about space travel regulation now? Because seriously, chance are that will happen before we have singularity/ strong AI.
If we're really concern about the danger of strong AI, then I'm more in favored dealing with it by the way of Eliezer Yudkowsky and the Singularity Institute (by making sure that whatever we're researching toward is "Friendly"). Even though I'm also thinking that they're too optimistic. I'm not against immortality in my lifetime though.
Now, a talk about more sophisticated automated/ autonomous system that do funny things (in a good or bad way), or their risk, that's something worth discussing about.
For a fun (philosophical) remark, if the robots are to become our overlords, it may be a bad idea trying to regulate them! Google "Roko's basilisk" for more details